Travel

Solomon Manevich
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: March 2003

Solomon Manevich is a nice-looking old man. He doesn’t look his age. He is always well shaved and is wearing an elegant casual jacket at home. He lives in a small but cozy one-room apartment in one of the newer residential districts of Kiev. There is a huge bookcase in the room with a collection of books: poetry, novels, biographies and memoirs of outstanding artists, poets and musicians. He is a very intelligent man. He reads a lot and collects memoirs about writers and artists. Solomon himself writes memoirs and is interested in all kinds of events. There are pictures of Solomon, his wife, his mother and cousin on the walls. Solomon’s wife is a beautiful woman. She is much younger than Solomon.

Family Background

Growing Up

During the War

After the War

Glossary

Family Background

My maternal and paternal ancestors came from small towns of the tsarist Russia (Belarus at present). It happened so that my father left the family when I was about 5 years old. I don’t remember him and didn’t know any of his relatives. My mother told me a little. Any subject associated with my father or his relatives was a taboo for my mother. She didn’t wish to discuss this subject and didn’t allow me to get much information about them. As for my father’s parents, my mother didn’t meet them.

All I know is that my paternal grandfather Peisach Manevich was born and lived in Mstislavl town, but I don’t know anything about my grandmother or what they did for a living. I don’t know when they were born or died. I only knew my father’s sister Dina who lived in Moscow in 1930s. I visited her in 1935. I have dim memories of her. All I know is that she had a higher technical education and lived with her husband and children. I have no information about what happened to her after the Great Patriotic War 1. My father had another sister Guta who lived in Moscow. I never saw her and have no information about her. As far as I know neither of them observed Jewish traditions. They spoke Russian. I know no other brothers or sisters of my father even if he had any.

My father Henry Manevich (his Jewish name was Evzer-Genekh) was born in 1888. I have no information about his childhood or young years, except that my father finished cheder and a 7-year Jewish school. I know that he met my mother before WWI I don’t know where, and fell in love with her. My mother worked at a military hospital and my father followed her when the hospital relocated with the frontline during the Civil War 2. My father grew up in a poor family and like many other children from poor families got very enthusiastic about new ideas brought by the revolution and Bolsheviks. He joined the Bolshevik party. When he served during WWI, in the tsarist army he carried on propaganda against the tsar and the imperialist war. After the October revolution of 1917 3 he finished School of Red Directors and became an officer at the revolutionary committee of Ekaterinoslav [Dnepropetrovsk at present]. My parents got married there. It took him a while to convince my mother to marry him.

I know little about my mother’s family. My grandmother and grandfather died before I was born and I know about them what my mother and her brother told me. My grandfather’s name was Yankel-Leizer-Evzer Katz and my grandmother’s name was Sarra. They were born in a small town of Chahussy in Belarus in the 1850s. They lived in this town all their life. My mother told me that Chaussy where she was born and Mstislavl where my father was born were small towns with numerous Jewish population. Jews lived in small houses in central parts of the town. There was a synagogue and market square in the center: farmers came to sell their products at weekend. Jews were mainly handicraftsmen. My grandfather belonged to the middle class. He had Jewish education. I don’t know whether he finished cheder or studied at yeshivah or was self-educated, but he had deep knowledge of the Jewish religion, traditions and history. Leizer read Torah and Talmud and had reputation of a wise man in the town. He held an official position at the synagogue – I know no details about this – and many Jews came to ask his advice on everyday matters: how to teach their children, or what to buy and how to deal with family budget. The family lived in strict accordance with halakhah, followed the kashrut and celebrated Sabbath and all Jewish holidays. My mother didn’t tell me any details since she and her sisters and brothers found their father’s requirement to strictly observe Jewish religious traditions a burden. It wasn’t a burden only for Nohim, one of my mother’s brothers. Grandmother Sarra was a housewife like all Jewish women. The family was very poor since grandfather didn’t know any craft to enable him to provide for the family and reading religious books did not bring any earnings. The children were leaving their home when they were able to do some work to provide for themselves. Grandfather and grandmother died in 1910s – long before I was born.

Their older son Avel, born around 1875, moved to America in the 1900s. His younger brother Itzhok and Israel-Movshe followed him. I don’t know when they were born. I have no information about my mother’s sisters Etia and Lisa. Perhaps, they left the country as well.  My mother never told me anything about them. We corresponded with my mother’s brothers until around 1925 and they supported us a little, but then we stopped corresponding 4 with them since it was not safe at that period. I never heard about them again.

I knew well my mother’s brother Nohim Berko Katz, born in 1878. Nohim received traditional Jewish education: he studied at cheder and later had classes with a melamed who taught him at home. Grandfather Leizer also taught Nohim hoping that in due time he would become a rabbi. My mother’s brother became a similarly well-educated man reading the Talmud and Torah like his father, but he was not adjusted to everyday life whatsoever. After the revolution of 1917 Nohim tried to do different things starting one business or another, but it didn’t work. He was an apprentice of a shoemaker, but that was no success either. His brothers helped him sending him money or clothes. Once they even sent him some Indian rubber and Nohim started shoemaking business that fell apart like all his previous efforts. His wife Riva and their children Sarra, born in 1924 and named after our grandmother and Yan, born in 1926 and named after our grandfather, lived on what they received from America and when their connection with abroad came to an end my mother was helping them. We lived together before the Great Patriotic War. Riva died of cancer in the mid of the 1930s.

My mother Rachil Katz was born in Chaussy in 1886. At birth she was given the Jewish name of Rokhlia-Genia. My mother didn’t like talking about her childhood and so I know only fragments of her life. After finishing the Jewish school she spent few years at home helping her mother around the house. My mother read a lot. She was fond of Russian classics and liked Pushkin, Tolstoy and Turgenev 5. She was bored with living in a small town with its old traditions and customs, she was attracted by new progressive ideas. Besides, my mother was eager to get a good education and become a teacher or a doctor. She left home at the age of 16. Looking for a job she visited few towns in Belarus. Somehow she happened to come to Tomsk, a big town in Siberia, in 1907. She found a job and was an attendant at the pharmacy in the town hospital, then assistant pharmacist and later she became a pharmacist. She didn’t attend any school, but she was smart and the doctor she worked for sympathized with her and trained her after work. Her brother Nohim came to visit her there. My mother lived in Tomsk until 1910 and then she began to travel in Russia. She worked in Syzran, a town near the Volga River, Troitsk and few other Russian towns. I don’t know where or how she lived at that time. I think she probably rented rooms from various people. At that time she became fond of Bolshevik ideas and attended clubs: there were communist units in every town, but I don’t know how she got there. They studied Marx and Engels. My mother didn’t become a Bolshevik, but in one of Bolshevik groups she met my father Henry Manevich. They went to the front together in 1914 when WWI began. My mother was the director of pharmacy in the hospital in the Southern front. She worked in Tiflis (the capital of Georgia, Tbilissi at present) and Sverdlovsk. In 1918 she and my father settled down in Ekaterinoslav [Dnepropetrovsk at present, a big industrial town in central part of Ukraine]. My parents were married by that time, but I have no idea when or where they got married or whether they had a wedding of any kind.

Growing Up

I was born in Ekaterinoslav on 29th March 1919. From Ekaterinoslav the family moved to Rostov-on-the-Don and then in Kharkov. All I know is that it had something to do with my father’s job. He was a logistics supervisor an official in public economy. My mother’s dream of getting education came true in Kharkov. She studied and graduated from the Kharkov University and became a pharmacist. In 1924 we all moved to Kiev. Shortly after we moved, my father left the family. He remarried and left Kiev. It was a tragedy for my mother. She was a very proud woman and never forgave my father. I never saw my father again. My mother refused him to see me. She also refused from my father’s money support. She never told me about my father. When I asked her questions about him she only told me negative things. I know that my father was a Deputy director of Berdichev leather factory for some time. From there he was transferred to Commercial representation in Berlin. In 1937 6 my father and all other employees of the Commercial representation were called to Moscow where they were arrested. He then disappeared like millions of other communists.

We lived in the apartment that my father received in Kiev. The house belonged to Kiev eparchy. It was in Rylski Lane near the St. Sophia cathedral. [Editor’s note: St. Sophia Cathedral was a Christian church in the center of Kiev built in the XIth century. After the revolution it became a monument of architecture.] Before the revolution tenants of this house were clergymen and after the revolution the Soviet power made these apartments communal. Our apartment had 7 rooms. It belonged to a high-level clergyman, but at our time there were few other families in the same apartment where we lived. I think there were five or six families and each of them lived in one room. The toilet, bathroom and kitchen were of common use. I don’t remember names of our neighbors. After my father left, my mother’s brother Nohim, his wife Riva and their daughter Sarra moved into the second room in this this apartment. Since then we lived together, sharing food and sorrows and joys of life. Every family had their own lamp in the toilet and kitchen with a switch in their room. Every family had their own table and a primus or kerosene stove in the kitchen. [Editor’s note: a primus stove was a small portable stove with a container for about 1 liter of kerosene that was pumped into burners.] There was also a schedule for toilet cleaning that all tenants had to do in turns and there were always quarrels about it. I have a dim memory of a Jewish family that were always quarreling about cleaning the toilet. On the door of the toilet room there was a schedule of using the toilet where specific hours when every tenant of the apartment could go to the toilet were indicated. The schedule was based on a number of members in the family: the more there were the more often they had to do cleaning. It was based on work and school hours of all tenants. Working tenants and students could use the toilet in the morning and housewives and other tenants that didn’t work could use the toilet afterward. We didn’t really communicate with the other tenants.

I was raised in the international and communist spirit. My mother spoke Russian to me and demanded that her brother and his wife did the same. They sometimes exchanged words in Yiddish and I could understand few words. My mother wanted me to study in Russian school. She believed that it would make it easier for me to enter an institute after finishing Russian secondary school. In 1920s the national policy required every child to go to school of his nationality. Since I was a Jew I was supposed to go to a Jewish school. Before my mother and I went to an interview at the Russian school, my mother told me to pretend I didn’t know a word in Yiddish even if interviewers asked me questions in Yiddish.I did as my mother told me and was admitted to a Russian lower 7 year-secondary school. I had many Jewish class and school mates. Many Jewish children wished to study Russian since it was the only way to continue education.

Probably because I grew up without father I developed the feeling of responsibility. I knew that I had to study well and get a good education to go to work and support my mother. I was the youngest pupil at school since I went to school before I turned 7. I was a disciplined and industrious child. I became a pioneer and the ceremony was conducted at the Lenin Museum. It was a big honor, I remember. Idolatry of Stalin developed later, in the middle of the 1930s. I remember, when I was a junior student at school I had a book with the title Who Can be Example for Pioneers.There were portraits and biographies of Lenin and Trotsky 7 on the first pages, smaller portraits of Zinoviev 8 and Kamenev 9 and a small portrait and brief biography of Stalin at the very end of the book. Gradually portraits of Stalin appeared in stores, schools and theaters. There was a statue of Lenin and Stalin on the bench installed on the bank of the Dnipro River. All textbooks began to praise the Great Stalin.

In 1928-29 people began to be called to NKVD 10 authorities asking them about relatives abroad and whether they corresponded with them. If people admitted that they did NKVD officers demanded gold and valuables from them and in many cases people even were arrested for this. My mother demanded that Nohim stopped corresponding with his brothers in America (she had stopped writing them long before) or receiving any help from them. Nohim obeyed and my mother was now responsible for supporting my uncle’s family.

At school we celebrated the Soviet holidays and went to parades on 1st May and 7th November 11. At home we had a festive dinner, but no guests since my mother had a secluded life. We didn’t celebrate New Year and didn’t have a Christmas tree since this was forbidden as vestige of the bourgeois past. Uncle Nohim celebrated Pesach and bought matzah, but gradually he stopped doing that, too. I don’t know any details since my mother didn’t allow me to enter my uncle’s room on religious holidays. She didn’t enter his room either. She thought that being a Soviet child I had nothing to do there. I don’t think he went to synagogue. He probably prayed at home, but I didn’t see it. He looked like an ordinary man wearing ordinary clothes. He wore no hat and I don’t think he followed kashrut since it was impossible in those years. There was no place to buy kosher products. It was even hard to get non-kosher food. We shared the kitchen and meals living together. In 1920s struggle against religion 12 was at its height. Religious people were losing their jobs and imprisoned and we stopped celebrating religious holidays at home.

I often went to the Sophia Square where during Christian holidays: Easter, Christmas, anti-religious meetings were conducted. People paraded with portraits of Stalin and slogans ‘accelerated labor is our response to Chamberlain’ 13 singing ‘away with monks, rabbis and priests – we shall get as high as heavens to chase away all Gods from there’. Members of the Union of militant atheists and crowds teased parishioners walking to St. Sophia Cathedral. I was curious about what was happening around. I thought it was right that authorities wanted to rid people from religious oppression. I watched such events.

In 1932 famine 14 began in the country. At this period Torgsin stores 15 were opened in Kiev  where people could buy food and delicacies like caviar or sea fish for gold and valuables. There was a saying ‘Look, kids, what your ancestors ate before the first 5-year plan’ 16. We didn’t have any gold or valuables and didn’t go to these stores, but I remember how other boys went to look at the windows of one of these stores. Watchful NKVD officers put down names of customers taking them to their cells to find out where they kept their gold treasures. I remember peasants from surrounding villages dying of starvation in the streets. They came to Kiev looking for work or food. Special trucks patrolled the streets to take away dead bodies. People said that those starving villagers kidnapped and murdered children to sell their meat at the market. My mother told me to be on guard and not to talk to strangers. Mother received some bread and food per coupons. She also brought some food packages and exchanged clothes for food. Sometimes we got a bowl of soup and a bun at school. The period of famine lasted all through 1933. This was a horrible time.

I finished school in 1933 and entered the Industrial Rabfak 17. This was a free educational institution for workers. To be admitted young people had to work and my mother’s acquaintances helped me to get a position of apprentice of mechanic at a shop. I didn’t have to go to work, but was on the list of employees to be able to enter the Rabfak as a worker. I joined Komsomol 18 at school. It was mandatory to be a Komsomol member to be able to go to work or enter a College after finishing studies at school. I finished the Rabfak in 1935 and went to Moscow at the invitation of my aunt Dina, my father’s sister who corresponded with us. I stayed a week at her place. I saw my father there for the first and the last time in my life. I was a maximalist and had a negative attitude inspired by my mother. I didn’t even want to talk with him. Before and after this meeting I always wrote in application forms for the College, or employment requests that my father left the family in 1924 and I didn’t know or see him.

I was aware of the actual situation and knew that historians manipulated with the history and I decided to stay aside from any political or social sciences and go to study at the Industrial College (that became Polytechnic College after the war). I entered the Faculty of Chemistry at the Industrial College in 1935. Efimov, the rector of this college was arrested and executed as a Trotskist 19 when I was a 1st year student. Then every year there was another director of the college assigned. Nobody asked where a previous one disappeared. [Editor’s note: each year the actual director was arrested, then killed. So while Solomon studied there the college had 4 directors, from which 3 was killed.] We were all aware that they were exterminated as ‘enemies of the people’ and that they were innocent victims. The last rector during my studies – a postgraduate student called Shpilko, shook every student’s hand fearing that one might be an informer and write a report on him. He was assigned by the Party committee of the College and was afraid to refuse this position.

I remember the Komsomol meetings conducted in the biggest conference hall of the College. They started after the lectures and ended at 2-3 at night, or at 6-7 next day in the morning. There were streetcars waiting at the entrance of the building. The main issue on the agenda was identification and denunciation of ‘enemies of people’. We had discussions of the following kind: one saw Ivanov talking with Sidorov and Sidorov was having beer with Petrov who met with an ‘enemy of the people’ Stepanov that was arrested later. Summary: Ivanov, Petrov and Sidorov didn’t report on Stepanov, which means that they were also ‘enemies of the people and were to be expelled from College and Komsomol. [Editor’s note: all names are fictive.] Decision of the meeting was sent to ‘competent’ NKVD authorities and nobody ever saw Ivanov, Petrov or Sidorov again. All these people were innocent victims of Stalin’s regime. They vanished in camps and exile. Nobody questioned what happened to them. There was a person and then he disappeared. Keep your mouth shut if you want to live – this was a rule of life.

I remember how the secretary of the Komsomol committee of the College was expelled from the Party. At the time when Kosarev was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Lenin Komsomol, the secretary of the college said a few good words about him not knowing that Kosarev would become an ‘enemy of the people’. He was repressed immediately after the meeting at the College. Going home late I saw people pushed into the cars that people called ‘Black Maria’ cars. The head of the Chair of Higher Mathematics, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the UkrSSR Kravchuk was repressed and so was the head of the Military Department of the College Kozko awarded with two Orders of the Combat Red Banner during the Civil War. People said that the reason for Kozko execution was his friendship with Yakir 20, Commander of Kiev regiment, who had been executed shortly before. Kozko asked me once about my patronymic of Henrikhovich thinking that it might be of German origin and whether my father was German [everything related to foreigners aroused suspicions in espionage]. I explained that my father was a Jew and change his Jewish name Genekh to Henry.

It was impossible to believe that people who had recently protected their country from fascism were traitors. Party and state officials and common people suffered from repression. My mother’s friend Grigori Sitnitski, a bank employee was arrested by a false report. He was incriminated acquaintance with his former supervisor, ‘enemy of the people’, ties with foreign intelligence agencies and some other nonsense. Grigori was ‘lucky’. After tortures in NKVD cells he became an invalid and was released for absence of corpus delicti. He had to sign confirmation that he would not disclosed what happened to him in prison for the fear of death penalty. He told it in secret to his wife and she told my mother after Grigori died shortly after he was released. 

I was fortunate as well: since I wrote in all forms that I didn’t know my father I managed to escape the fate of the so-called ‘members of the family of an enemy of the people’ who perished in Stalin’s camps. I realized that I had to adjust to the system or it might destroy me. I was an active Komsomol member and when I was a senior student I became the head of Academic sector of the Komsomol Committee of the College (This sector was responsible for successful studies of students.) Besides, this was a beautiful time of my youth. I read contemporary and classical books, went to the cinema and theaters – of Ukrainian Drama, Opera and even Jewish theater. I met with girls and often went out with my fellow students: Jewish and Russian. 

After I finished the first year of studies of our military classes in the summer of 1940, which were mandatory in all technical higher educational institutions of the USSR, the training was cancelled. This military training allowed graduates to receive a military rank. I finished College with honors in November 1940. Before graduation I was called to the military registry office where I got an assignment to serve in the army in Saratov, a big Russian town near the Volga after I defended my diploma thesis. In December 1940 I arrived to Saratov. The headquarters assigned me as a machine gunner to the rifle regiment no. 110. I suffered all intimidation of a private of the army there. Any commanding officer could abuse or hurt us especially the first sergeant. 

In February 1941 I was sent to Kuibyshev, a big town in Russia. As one with higher education I became cadet of the Regional school of the reserve political officers. The war was in the air. There were no discussions about the war or any preparations to the war, but we knew about the war in Europe and realized that Hitler could attack our country at any moment. In April-May many military schools in Kuibyshev accelerated graduation terms. Military units were relocating to the West. Many members or candidates of the Party graduated in the rank of junior political officers.

Komsomol members were in uncertain situation. Junior political officers were required to be members or candidates of the Communist Party. Recommendations to the Party could be issued only by members of the Party, who had known us at least for a year, but we studied in school for few months.

During the War

On 22 June 1941 my friend Misha Polesov from Zaporozhiye and I watched First Lieutenant Lermontov 21 at the Drama Theater in Kuibyshev. During an interval someone said to us ‘Guys, the war began’. We left the theater. 

We were on the waiting list to go to the front. Meanwhile we listened to news and couldn’t understand why our victorious army was retreating with enormous casualties. In July 1941 we received an assignment to military schools in Kuibyshev for positions of Komsomol leaders at battalions. Since I was a chemical engineer I was sent to the Volsk school of chemical defense in the town of Sheihana Saratov region. At this school I was insistently advised to join the party since only a member of the Party could hold my position. After I worked at school for a year I was given a recommendation and became a candidate and then – member of the Party. I had no choice and had to join the Party. It was my duty as a military. I lived in a separate room at a barrack. In November 1941 my mother and cousin Sarra, who were in evacuation in Stavropol region, moved in with me. Nohim and his son Yan were evacuated to Stalingrad region. Nohim died of starvation and hardships there. Some time later I managed to find my cousin Yan near Stalingrad and the four of us lived in this room of mine for four years during the war. Sarra and mother worked at a hospital and Yan worked at a military plant. I lectured to cadets. The training lasted three months before they were sent to the front.

In 1944 my mother, Yan and Sarra returned to Kiev. I was transferred to reserve regiment of chemical defense #24 in the vicinity of Sheihana. I never faced any anti-Semitism. After the war ended in 1945 I submitted my request for demobilization. It was not approved and I requested to leave. I went to Kiev to help my mother get back our apartment where other tenants settled down during the war. According to the law militaries had the priority right for having their apartments returned to them. It took me several weeks to work on it. I also had to apply some violence: my friends and I simply threw belongings of those tenants out of our apartment. The court made a verdict in our favor. After a month’s vacation I returned to my military unit.

After the War

In 1946 my acquaintances wrote a request to release me from the army. This request was approved by a military plant in Kiev. I demobilized and returned to Kiev, only I was not going to work at the plant, but wanted to be involved in science. I looked for a job at educational institutions and scientific research institutes. After the potential employers saw my nationality in application form they always gave me a polite refusal. This was the first time in my life when I faced stable anti-Semitism on a state level. 

I looked for a job for about three months before I went to work at the military plant that manufactured radar sets. I was a senior foreman and deputy superintendent of galvanic shop.  When working at the plant I got a good knowledge of greatly praised socialist organization of labor and planned economy. There was no work in the first two weeks of a month when all employees had to come to work to pretend they worked hard between 8am – 6pm. In the next two weeks the shop got overloaded with work. We worked until 2-3 am to complete the plan or otherwise workers might be fired or even arrested for ‘sabotage’. There were terrible conditions at the plant when exhaust ventilation didn’t function and workers refused to work. Lower management had to give an example of work in such conditions. 

In the summer of 1947 the Town Party Committee sent me to Kopachev village, Obukhov district, Kiev region. I was responsible for harvesting. 20-30 people, mostly women, worked in this village. There was no equipment, but starved horses. However, it was necessary to collect the crops and I had to demand superhuman efforts from these miserable exhausted people. We worked 12-14 hours per day. Another difficulty was that the chairman of the kolkhoz was permanently drunk and it was next to impossible to make him work. Villagers were treated with all severity. There was a decree issued in 1932 according to which spikelets left on a field were declared a socialist property and villagers were not allowed to collect them. Starving villagers who collected them were declared ‘enemy of the people’ and sent to camps for a long term. I still remember with pain an invalid of the war who had lost his leg and had a self-made wooden limb. His neighbors reported on him for collecting a small bag of spikelets and he was taken to a sell in Obukhov. I don’t know what happened to him.

In the autumn of 1947 I returned to the plant in Kiev. In January 1948 I managed to get out of the hell of rushed work at the plant. I was invited to the position of senior lab assistant at the Department of general chemistry of Kiev College of Civil Aviation which was newly established. I also taught at seminars and supervised laboratory activities at the daytime department and lectured at the evening department. I also wrote manuals for extramural students. In some time Professor Izbekov, Head of Department of General Chemistry of Kiev Polytechnic College invited me to become a lecturer at the College. Since the College of Civil Aviation was located across the street from the Chemical department of Polytechnic College and I managed to commute between two Colleges during an interval. Working in two Colleges I also passed exams for the title of candidate of sciences and became a scientific researcher. 

There were two campaigns in progress in the country at that period: struggle against servility and reverence for the West. All biggest discoveries in the world were declared to have been achieved by Russian scientists. The history of science was rewritten. The second campaign was openly anti-Semitic. Mass media had publications about struggle against ‘rootless cosmopolites’ 22 – Jewish intellectuals and workers of culture. In both Colleges where I worked Jewish lecturers were not allowed to participate in commissions during entrance exams or even were dismissed. Party officials found formal reasons to fire people. Many Jewish employees from our College lost their job. I don’t know whether any Jewish employee kept his job at that time. We didn’t discuss this subject since we might be punished for such discussions. People didn’t trust one another. I was also fired from the Polytechnic College in 1948.

At the end of the academic year 1947–48 the director of the College of Civil Aviation Pochasov told me that I was to be dismissed since the program in chemistry was reduced. I asked to resign after vacation to be able to find a job during vacation. I couldn’t find a job at any College or scientific institute since they also were firing their Jewish employees. I was given polite refusals at all institutions.

Once I met my former co-student who worked at the commissioning trust called Orgcommuneenergo responsible for the power supply in Kiev. My former co-student helped me to get employed by this trust. Valia Gordienko, another friend of mine from the prewar time was a supervisor at this trust. I became an equipment mechanic and liked this job. I worked with new equipment and was involved in its commissioning, start up and modifications. I trained the personnel and installed this equipment. I was promoted to an engineer’s positions in due time, then to senior engineer, to crew engineer and foreman. I received a higher salary than a standard engineer at any other enterprise. I worked at the commissioning departments for the rest of my life until I retired in 1982.

I remember Stalin’s death in 1953. I sighed with relief when he died, although many of my acquaintances including Jews, were in panic. They believed that Stalin protected them from anti-Semites and that the situation would be worth after his death. I always believed that there would be time, when Stalin’s tyranny would come into open, but I never thought that in less than three years after his death I would be reading a secret report of Khrushchev 23 ‘The cult of Stalin and how to overcome its consequences’ on XX Party Congress 24 under the portrait of Stalin at a party meeting in the office of director of the trust. I would like to mention that working at the plant after the war, at Colleges and commissioning departments I never faced any prejudiced attitude caused by my nationality. This was another proof that ‘fish gets rotten from its head’ and anti-Semitism was forced from higher levels of power.

I don’t feel like talking about my personal life. I was no monk and met with women, but I got married rather late. My wife Emma Matseiko is much younger than I. She was born in a Ukrainian village in Vinnitsa region in 1939. Emma is Ukrainian. She was in occupation during the war. She graduated from Kiev State University. She is also a chemist. We got married in 1968 and have been together since then. We have no children, but this enabled us to dedicate our life to one another. Emma shares her outlooks with me and we are very much alike. We are fond of reading and go to theaters and concerts together. We spent vacations in the Crimea and Caucasus. We could afford traveling. Only I never traveled abroad – Jews were not allowed to travel abroad. My wife is a teacher of chemistry at school and I am retired.

My mother worked as a pharmacist in a pharmacy after the war until she retired. She lived along life and died in 1980. My cousin Yan graduated from Kiev Polytechnic College after the war and Sarra graduated from the Faculty of Letters of the Pedagogical Institute, at the Depatrment of Russian Language and Literature also in Kiew. Now she is a specialist in the Russian language and literature. Sarra and her husband Abram (he is a Jewish) followed their children and moved to Israel in the late 1980s. Yan and his family also resides in Israel, they also moved in the late 1980s. If we had children we would probably move to another country. Since we don’t have any children we don’t feel like living in a different country just by ourselves.

I have a dual attitude towards perestroika. Pensioners suffered from it. We lost our savings and have miserable pensions. But I wouldn’t want any return of the past. I don’t want to live in the country where no human rights were observed. During the rule of Gorbachev I quit the Party in 1980s. I voluntarily returned my Party membership card to the Party authorities. I think Ukraine is right to seek independence and it would be wrong to seek unification with Russia at the moment. Russia inherited ruinous features from the Soviet Union: aggressiveness and ties with Arab regimes. I am convinced that there must be no union with Russia since communist fascists are very strong there. I vote for independent Ukraine. If I were young I would find a place in this new life. I believe that young people have more opportunities in life nowadays.

I’ve never celebrated Jewish holidays or observed traditions. I attend the Hesed in Kiev and am a member of the Jewish Culture Society. We, elderly Jews, get together once a month in Hesed. We listen to music, exchange books, discuss what we have read, talk about biographies of Soviet and Jewish writers and have various discussions. I attend lectures about Jewish life and read Jewish newspapers. I find it all interesting, but I feel it is too late to change my habits. I shall never believe in God, although I think there is some higher power, but it is nothing certain. I give tribute to Jewish traditions during Pesach: my wife and I eat matzah and no bread during this time.

Glossary:

Deva

Romania

Interviewer: Oana Aioanei

Date of interview: October 2003

Mr. Lorincz is a rather short man who looks remarkably like his maternal great-grandmother, as his old photographs obviously show. He spends his mornings at the headquarters of the Jewish community in Deva, whose secretary he is. On Saturday mornings, he never misses attending the synagogue - even on good days, there aren’t more than eight men who gather for prayer. I first met him at the community’s office, located right next to the synagogue. When I visited him at home, I admired his neatly arranged library: he has about 2,500 books, including, for instance, an eleven-volume world history in Hungarian. The walls are decorated with paintings. He lives with his wife, his daughter, who has undertaken the process of restitution of the family property, and a cat, which they all consider the fourth member of the family. [Andrei Lorincz died in March 2005.]

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

My maternal great-grandparents, the Seigers, came from Peremishl [Przemysl], Poland. My maternal grandfather, Gottlieb Seiger, was born in 1864, in Hunedoara County, and lived in Deva. He was a butcher by trade. He had a brother, Lazar Seiger, who married Ida Czitrom from Blaj. They didn’t have children and Lazar died of tuberculosis, long before 1930; he’s buried at the Jewish cemetery in Deva. My maternal grandmother, Hermina, nee Roth, was born in 1878, in a village near Deva, I don’t know its name, and lived in Deva. She was a housewife. Both my grandparents were extremely religious, very Orthodox 1. But, despite that, they didn’t go to the synagogue every week, only during the holidays. My grandfather didn’t go during the week and not even on Saturdays.

My maternal grandparents’ house is still there today, but it no longer looks like it used to. It’s a 180-year-old house built at the time of my great-grandmother and great-grandfather. It fell into ruins in the 50 years of Communism and there’s not much of it left now. However, in my childhood, it looked all right, relatively well. It had three rooms and a kitchen; there was no bathroom. My grandparents had electricity, but no gas. The kitchen was plumbed. They didn’t have a garden, only a courtyard, and they had cows, horses, and a dog.

My grandmother was a nice person; she kept the accounts for my grandfather’s butcher’s shop. We didn’t use to eat at her place, but we visited her at least three or four times a week, especially because she lived very close to us: ten or twenty meters away. My most beautiful memory about my grandmother is that, every Sunday, before noon, my brothers and I would pay her a visit and she would give us money to go see a movie. Back then, a theater ticket cost about 1 leu and 50 bani. When the war started, in 1940, she didn’t live on her own, but with her granddaughter, Irina Lorincz. My maternal grandparents both died in Deva. My grandfather died in November 1924, and my grandmother on 17th January 1941.

My mother had two younger brothers: Bernat and Ernest. Bernat was born in 1900 and graduated from the School of Electrical Engineers in Bratislava. He lived in Deva and worked as a butcher and stock exporter. He was a very hard-working man and made a fortune after my grandfather’s death. He delivered cattle and swine – live or slaughtered. Uncle Bernat owned refrigerating cars. In winter, he stored ice in cellars; ice was collected from the Mures River. He went to many places, from Israel to England: he delivered cattle in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany, England; he went to Constantinople [today Istanbul] or to Rome countless times, for instance. He traveled across the entire Europe from 1930 until 1940, that’s for ten years. Bernat never got married; he didn’t have a family. He died in 1980, in Deva.

Ernest was born in 1901. He worked as a butcher in Deva too. He sold both kosher and non-kosher meat. He and his wife, Gabriela Herschkowitz, had two daughters: Sonia, born in 1929 and Nadia, born in 1932. The family also raised a third child, Vera Breier, who was Gabriela’s daughter from her first marriage to a man named Eugen Breier. Ernest lived in two other places: he stayed in Cluj Napoca until he was arrested by the communist regime, but he never worked there, and in Ineu, where he died, in 1976. However, he was buried back home, in Deva. At that time, I was living in Ineu too; Uncle Ernest died at my place. His wife left for Israel before he died. Sonia and Nadia lived in Cluj until his death, and then they left for Israel too. Sonia married Doctor Mihai Marina and bore him a daughter, Marina Monica. Marina is a doctor in Fula, Israel, and is married to engineer Blanaru. Nadia married Victor Klein; the two of them had a boy, and then got divorced. Their son, Norbert Klein, became an engineer in Israel, but I don’t know where exactly he lives.

My mother, Gabriella Seiger, was born on 10th January 1899, in Deva. Between 1916 and 1918, she went to the Medical School in Budapest for two years. In 1918, when Bela Kun 2 brought Communism to Budapest, she came back home. [Editor’s note: Mr. Lorincz is talking about the 1919 events, when the Hungarian Soviet Republic 3 was proclaimed in Hungary.] Afterwards, she never went to college again and she married my father. He had been courting her ever since the age of four. He had met her while in kindergarten and he had waited until she grew up.

My paternal great-grandparents, the Lorincz family, came from amidst the Szeklers [specific Hungarian region called Szekler land situated south-east of Transylvania]. They were born in the commune of Corund, in the Harghita County. Francisc Rakoczi 4, the governor of Transylvania 5, required all of them to declare themselves either Szekler or Jews. Thus, a part of the community joined the Jews, and the other part stayed with the Szeklers. I believe my great-grandparents were pretty religious people, since they chose to declare themselves Jews. I don’t know how they ended up in Deva. [Editor’s note: In 1868 in Bozodujfalu most of the Sabbatarians 6 converted to Judaism and it’s very likely that Mr. Lorincz refers to this event. Ferenc Rakoczi II was the Prince of Transylvania and Hungary between 1704-1711, thus mentioning his name isn’t appropriate in this context. Moreover during his reigning, he didn’t force people to make such choices.]

My paternal grandfather, Daniel Lorincz, was born in 1870. He lived in Ilia, where he was in the shoemaking business; he was a shoemaker by trade. In 1921 or 1922, he moved to Deva, where he worked as a clerk in a lawyer’s office for the rest of his life. My paternal grandmother, Helen, nee Grun, was born in 1876 and lived in Deva too. She came from the commune of Barastii Iliei, near Hateg, in Hunedoara County. She was a housewife. I remember my grandfather was a thin, tall man. My grandmother was short and thin. The two of them never had their own house, they always paid rent, and this is why they never kept animals. My grandfather wasn’t interested in politics. They were friends with all their neighbors. They lived next to Jews, Hungarians, Romanians and all that. They were on good terms with everybody, and my family was very popular and respected in town. My grandfather suffered from bronchial asthma and died from it. Both my paternal grandparents died in Deva: my grandfather in 1929 and my grandmother in 1951.

My paternal grandparents kept all the holidays. I remember Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and all the other holidays. They celebrated Chanukkah, Purim, Pesach, Shavuot and so on and so forth. I didn’t have any problems with the food, and I don’t have any now: whatever my grandmother gave me, I ate.

My father had two brothers and two sisters: Henrik, Ludovic, Margareta and Ileana. Henrik lived in Budapest and worked as a clerk for the Ministry of Health. Ludovic was a clerk too, and lived in Deva. He was married to Elisabeta Schneider, a German woman from Baia de Cris; the two of them had a son, Tiberiu, who became an engineer, and married Mariana, a clerk. They had twin sons: Valentin and Radu, who are now [in 2003] in their thirties. Margareta was a clerk and lived in Deva, Timisoara and Satu Mare. She died in Deva and didn’t have a family of her own. Ileana married Doctor William Grun, a dentist, and was a housewife. The couple had two sons, Petru and Gheorghe, who became engineers and now live in Deva.

My father, Eugen Lorincz, was born on 7th June 1898, in Ilia, in Hunedoara County. He graduated from Law School in Cluj Napoca, and worked as a lawyer. He did his military service between 1917 and 1918 – I don’t know where and how, but I know he was a soldier in the Romanian army. [Editor’s note: He couldn’t have been a Romanian soldier in Deva unless after 1920, after the Trianon Peace treaty 7, but was rather a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army 8.] He lived in Deva.

My parents got married in 1921, here in Deva. There was a ceremony at the synagogue. They were both beautiful, very beautiful looking people. As far as their clothes are concerned, my parents wore what all the others wore at that time, nothing exceptional about that. They had a good financial situation. My father was a lawyer and was one of the most skillful men in town. As for my uncles, they were rich, there’s no doubt about it.

Growing up

I, Andrei Lorincz, was born on 4th November 1924, in Deva. I had two brothers, Ernest and Pavel, who were both born in Deva too. Ernest was born in 1923, and Pavel in 1926. I was the middle child. I got along well with my brothers.

Ernest graduated from the Decebal High School and worked as a clerk here in Deva. He was never married and didn’t have any children. He was never involved in politics, but he was a great traveler. In 1953, when the International Youth Festival was held in Bucharest, he left for Western Europe dressed as an Arab and got as far as Germany. [Editor’s note: The fourth Youth and Student International Festival took place from 2-14 August 1953. This was the first direct contact since World War II with foreigners, who were the few thousand youth attending the festival.] He went to Frankfurt, then to Hamburg, where he boarded an American ship. The Americans caught him, beat him up and forced him to disembark, so he had to return.

He arrived back home on 7th June 1954, right on time for our father’s birthday. This is the reason why the Securitate 9 seized him that same year and took him to Cluj. They held him there for two weeks and they killed him because he refused to declare that he was an American spy. They had no valid charge against him, but they came up with something. I know nothing about this story, except that, on 1st July 1954, I received a telegram from the Neuropsychiatric Clinic in Cluj; they told me to come pick up my brother’s dead body, as he had died at the clinic, where the Securitate had brought him in a state of coma.

Pavel graduated from the Medical School in 1952, and worked as a physician and university assistant in Targu Mures, at the Clinic for Contagious Diseases, until 1960, when he left for Israel, where he did quite well. He lived in Nazareth, Haifa and Natanya. He was declared physician emeritus of the State of Israel. I visited him twice: the first time I found him living in Nazareth, where he first stayed and worked after he moved to Israel. The second time I saw him, he lived in Natanya. Pavel died of liver cancer in 1984, in Natanya. He was married to Iudita, who had been born in Deva too, and had a daughter, Carmen. She did part of her studies in Targu Mures and part of it in Rome [Italy]. She’s now a maxillofacial surgeon in Rome.

How do I remember Deva? It didn’t look like it looks today, that’s for sure. There were no apartment buildings, not one, but I remember there were large, beautiful houses. There was the Prefecture and the Palace of Justice. When I was a child, between 1930 and 1940, I believe Deva counted about 12,000 inhabitants, out of whom 800-900 were Jewish, i.e. around ten percent. The town had Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, Jews, Gypsies, Bulgarians, Slavs – it had all these ethnic groups, and they all lived together in peace and had no problems with one another. It was a successful mixture, with peace and friendship at every step. There was no inter-ethnic problem.

The Jewish community in Deva was Orthodox. In fact, there were two communities: one was Orthodox, and the other one considered itself even more Orthodox. There were also two synagogues: the prayer house on 23 August Street, where the rabbi and one guard lived, and the greater synagogue, with the houses of the clerks, the secretary and two guards. My father was only a president of the latter community between 1928 and 1948. The former synagogue had its own president, but I don’t remember his name. The prayer house was demolished; I don’t know in what year, but it was definitely after 1945. In total, there were 850-900 community members in Deva. 150 of them were affiliated with the prayer house and the rest with us. The others were more Orthodox than us; our Jews weren’t that narrow-minded. Back then, there were two rabbis in Deva: Iuliu Fischer and Filip Klein. We were shepherded by the former: he was the chief rabbi of the larger community. Filip Klein served at the other synagogue until World War II started. As for the clerks, our community had a secretary and two hakhamim: Friedmann and Stossel. The other community had a hakham named Adler Chune, the father-in-law of Rabbi Huffman from Bucharest. Our hakhamim both came from rabbinic families.

Our community had all sorts of members, from four or five lawyers, about five physicians, intellectuals, teachers and engineers, to craftsmen: shoemakers, tailors, shopkeepers, tradesmen. I can still remember some of them: doctors Ludovic Deutsch, Henric Grunfeld, Ernest Szego; counsels: my father, Miksa Grossman, Paul Kain, Ludovic Berkovits; teachers: Ervin Valmos and Mihai Berkovits, who, I think, taught Math, and was the deputy principal of the Decebal High School for a short while; engineer Ioan Kalman, [the owner of] a glass shop on Unirii Square. Among the richest people in Deva were my uncles, the Seigers, two wealthy butchers, Stossel, a multimillionaire who was in the business of processing skins, Blum, a banker and liquor tradesman, Maler, a construction materials tradesman, and Nandor Gall, who was a banker and owned a mill.

I grew up in a beautiful house. It belonged to my parents and it was large enough to comfortably accommodate my father, my mother and us, the three brothers. The house was located at 1 Lucian Blaga Street. It had five or six rooms and a beautiful courtyard. We had running water. We used wood and terracotta stoves for heating. We didn’t have animals, except for a dog. We always had a service staff of two Ceangai: a cook and a maid. [Editor’s note: Ceangai is a Hungarian-speaking population of Catholic affiliation who moved from the south-east of Transylvania to Moldova 10. But people in Deva, including Mr. Lorincz, called those Szekler families, who moved to Deva from Bukovina 11 at the end of the 19th century incorrectly Ceangai.] They both lived with us and we got along very well with them. We, the children, also had a nanny from Vienna [today Austria] – her name was Teresa. She lived with us for four or five years, as long as we were little, then she went back to Austria. We had books by the thousand: all sorts of books, in German, Hungarian, French, and Romanian. My mother may have been a housewife, but she was an extremely cultivated woman. She spoke French fluently and she also knew German. We must have had about 2,500 books at home.

My parents were very religious, very Orthodox – especially my mother. She observed the kashrut, the Orthodox kashrut, which means that she kept meat separately from dairy products. We used separate dishes for Pesach – they were very beautiful, with a blue edge, and were kept in the pantry. My father went to the synagogue every week, as he was the president of the community. My mother only went on the high holidays. She was always present during the major holidays, but it was rare to find her at the synagogue on Friday evenings or on Saturdays. On Friday evenings, she would light the candles – they were five, one for each member of the family. We had challot on our table – their shape was oblong and they were homemade. My father would slice them and give everybody their share. Friday evening was always special because my father went to the synagogue and took me with him. My brothers didn’t really want to go. On Saturdays, the two of us would go to the synagogue too, but it only felt special on Friday. This is how things were back then! My father didn’t go to the mikveh, only my mother did. The larger community had a mikveh, which was located in the courtyard of the community headquarters – there were several buildings there. My mother went there, at least once a week.

I couldn’t say I had any favorite holidays, but I liked Chanukkah, Purim and Pesach a lot. On Sukkot, we played with nuts: we put two or three nuts in a row and threw at them like they throw at skittles, trying to hit the winning nut and thus win the entire row. We had a great time at holidays.

What I also remember about the holidays is that, once every year, on Simchat Torah, almost the entire community, including the rabbi, was invited to our place – my father was the president of the community for 20 years. There were about 300 guests in the courtyard, I mean, the garden, and there were tables and chairs prepared for everyone. We had a very large garden. The whole house was lively with celebrations. On Simchat Torah, various women came to give us a hand, for my mother couldn’t make preparations for 300 people all by herself. Everything was homemade – cakes, coffee and all that. Only the wine was bought. Men weren’t separated from women – everybody sat where they felt like. They talked about this and that, but never about politics or other business – they only discussed ordinary, casual things. There was eating, and talking, and praying before and after the meals.

My parents weren’t interested in politics. They lived in the center of the town and their relationship with the neighbors wasn’t only good, but extremely good. Our right hand neighbors were Hungarian, and our left hand neighbors were Romanian. To the right, there was the headquarters of the Reformed Community, where the town’s reformed pastor lived. To the left, there lived a notary public named Conda. We used to visit the pastor, who taught us Hungarian, literature, and the history of Austria-Hungary. His name was Alexandru Fazakas. There were also Jews living on our street – five or six families: the pharmacist Nussbaum, Doctor Grunfeld, tradesman Heller, etc.

As for the family friends, it was my mother who had more friends, for my father was busy with his legal practice most of the time; however, he was friends with all the judges, prosecutors and lawyers in town; he was on good terms with all of them. Our house was frequented by judges, lawyers, doctors, and all sort of intellectuals; the place was open for everyone, and we had no problems with anyone. At the community, my mother was a member of the Jewish club WIZO, which helped the destitute. [WIZO: Women's International Zionist Organization; a hundred year old organization with humanitarian purposes aiming at supporting Jewish women all over the world in the field of education, economics, science and culture.] They met at least once a month. At first, the community managed to raise all the necessary funds, but, during the war, we received money from America, from the Joint 12. My parents never had problems of anti-Semitism, except during the time of the Legionaries 13; but even then, there was nothing really serious.

We spent our vacations in Deva. We didn’t see our relatives very often, only occasionally. Our relationships with them weren’t too close; everybody had their own problems. We did see our grandparents very often though. After all, Grandmother Seiger lived right next to us – there was a gate that led to her place in our very courtyard, so we could drop by whenever we wanted, without any restrictions.

When I was little, I went to the kindergarten for three or four years and to the cheder for three or four years too. There was no talmud torah in Deva, but there was this cheder, which I used to attend some 70 years ago. I started going there at the age of four. Courses were held in a room in the synagogue’s premises. Back then we were 10-15 boys. The other community had its own cheder at the prayer house, and they also had 10-15 boys. I enjoyed the cheder. I sat at the table and studied with the other boys. The master was a short man. He wasn’t a local and his name was Isac Rubin. He taught us the Jewish history, and how to read and write in Hebrew. I remember he held a stick in his hand. We didn’t have any special textbooks; we used religious books. Every morning, I would go to the cheder, then, until I was six or seven, to the kindergarten on Aurel Vlaicu Street. At noon, I would go back home.

When I turned seven, I started going to the school on Mihai Eminescu Street. This was my elementary school. I would go to classes, return home, study and do my homework. My favorite subjects were history and geography. I never had any problems with my classmates or my teachers. I had many friends. They came to our place, where we played in the courtyard. Afterwards, everybody minded his or her own business.

I took private piano lessons for about two years, but I quit. We had a very nice Viennese piano at home, but learning to play it didn’t appeal to me. My mother, however, did play the piano; we later sold it. Nevertheless, I did enjoy music, and I still do. I like classical music, opera and operetta. I like Verdi, Strauss, Mozart, Puccini, Bizet. My favorite opera is Verdi’s Traviatta.

I had my bar mitzvah here in Deva, in 1937. For a month, I studied with Mr. Rubi the Torah passage that I was supposed to read. They called me to the Torah and I read the entire passage about Abraham’s return to Canaan, the ‘Leh Leha’ Pericope [Genesis 12:1-17:27]. I didn’t deliver any speech. Then I went home. I had a festive meal with my family and that was it. It was very nice.

During the war

When the war started, in 1939, Iuliu Fischer went to Nairobi, Kenya; from there, he left for London, and then he reached Chicago, USA, where he eventually died. Filip Klein spent the 1940-1944 period here, and, after the war, moved to Targu Mures. From 1947 or so, they were replaced by Rabbi Muller, who was succeeded by his brother from Petrosani, Frederic Muller. The Muller brothers were arrested in 1959, along with my father. Frederic’s brother was killed by the Securitate, while Frederic left for Nazareth, Israel, in 1960. I visited him there, while he was a rabbi. He died in Israel. The father of the Mullers was also a rabbi in Petrosani.

At that time, in the interwar period, the Jewish community in Petrosani was larger than the one in Deva – they had at least 2,000 people. The Jews in Petrosani had come from Maramures, the same time as the miners. When the coalmines on the River Jiu Valley opened, the first miners who came were from Sub-Carpathian Ukraine and from Maramures. The Jews came along with them, and settled in Lupeni, Petrosani, and Vulcan. Few of the Jews were miners. They were craftsmen: tailors, shoemakers, tradesmen, and some of them were even intellectuals. So, mining on the River Jiu Valley brought about the Jews from Maramures. And these Jews came from Poland.

I spent my childhood in a sane political environment. There were never any problems, not even during the Legionary regime. Our town counted 30 Legionaries or so, and all they did was hold meetings. However, on 6th December 1940, they gathered all the Jewish tradesmen and confiscated their stores [because of the Statute of the Romanian Jews 14 of 8th August 1940] – this happened while deputy mayor Nicodim Borza was in office. We didn’t have anti-Semitic incidents in Deva. The anti-Jewish laws [in Romania] 15 however, affected me in a serious way: I first lost my house in 1942, during Antonescu’s regime 16, and then I lost it for the second time to the Communists, in 1952. The house of my grandparents, the Seigers, was also confiscated during Antonescu’s regime; my Lorincz grandparents didn’t have a house of their own. We were kicked out of our place. After we lost the house, we rented a place from a landlord in Deva. They also took away my father’s job – he was disbarred and couldn’t practice law for four years, while Antonescu 17 was in power. We survived from selling the things we still owned: silver, gold, china, crystal, and anything else we had gathered in the 20 years during which my father had been a lawyer.

We lived in Deva during the war, but we also stayed in Arad between 1941 and 1942. During the Holocaust, between 1942 and 1944, I was sent to forced labor for a year and a half. I worked at the construction of the Deva-Brad railroad, in the 107th Railroad Detachment. There were 400 men on the site, and they were all Jews from the surrounding areas. I loaded and unloaded rocks and railroad tracks. I lived in Deva, at Mr. Dragomir Voiosan’s house; we had already lost the house by then, and I went to work every day. My father didn’t get sent to forced labor camps, because he was the president of the community at that time. We didn’t have access to radio or newspapers back then. We didn’t have any relatives who had been deported, and our family stuck together so that we could come through.

After the war

After the war ended, I went to Targu Mures, where I was a student at the Medical School between 1945 and 1951. All I did in college was study. Nothing more. While in Targu Mures, I used to go to the synagogue on Friday evenings and on Saturdays before noon. I got along well with Rabbi Filip Klein. I often visited him, and we talked about various things. When my mother came to Targu Mures to see me, she stayed at his place. Compared to Deva, Targu Mures had more Jews, and they were all Orthodox. Neither in college, nor later, at work, did I have any problems because of my Jewish origin.

My parents stayed in Deva. My father was accepted back in the Bar, but he couldn’t work as a lawyer anymore, because he had already reached the retirement age. So, in 1945, they appointed him as a consultant at the armaments factory in Cugir, in Alba County. My father went from Deva to Cugir only when he was needed to solve some problems. In 1959, the Communists arrested him on the grounds that, during the Holocaust, he had sent the Jews from Deva to the concentration camps of Auschwitz [Poland] and Buchenwald. The truth is that not one single Jew from Deva and the entire county of Hunedoara was sent to the camps. And they accused him, the very president of the Jewish community, of this! One gets the goose bumps on reading the file they made up to trial him. The only deportation had involved five Jews who had been sent to Transnistria 18 because they were Communists. One of them was shot to death there, but the other four came back.

My father died on 1st May 1965, in a clinic in Targu Mures, and my mother died in March 1973, in Ineu. She had been paralyzed for eight years; she had spent her last years lying in bed, just like a plank of wood. I had my parents carried to Deva. They were buried here. I’m used to reciting the Kaddish in their memory; I visit their tombs every year on Yahrzeit.

I did my military service at the Officers’ School in Oradea, between 1951 and 1952. While in college, I did my internship as a regiment’s chief physician. I later became a reserve captain. I worked as a hygiene physician, a state medical inspector, a district chief physician and a regional deputy chief physician.

I first got married in 1960, at the age of 36. At that time, I was working in Petrosani, as a deputy chief physician of the Disease Control Authority, and I met an actress whom I eventually married. Her name was Milena Rizescu; she had graduated from the ‘Ion Luca Caragiale’ Drama Institute in Bucharest, and was the daughter of writer Ioana Postelnicu, the author of ‘Plecarea Vlasinilor’ [‘The Departure of the Vlasini’], which was adapted for the silver screen in 1983. [Editor’s note: The Romanian cycle ‘Plecarea Vlasinilor’ (film adaptation directed by Mircea Dragan, pictures the life of the Transylvanian shepherds in the Sibiu area, the experiences, suffering, determination and fight of the Vlasini. The history of a small shepherd village acquires a power of meaning that’s equivalent to that of a myth.] Milena’s father, Felix Pop, was Jewish. Our marriage lasted one year. I got divorced in 1961 and left for Arad. I haven’t heard of her since our divorce.

I couldn’t find a job in Arad, but since Dr. Raznicu, the chief inspector in Oradea, was a good friend of mine, he got me a job in Ineu. I was a commuter for six months or so [the traveling distance between Arad and Ineu is 62 kilometers]. Then, they appointed me manager and gave me an apartment. When I got the place, I was able to marry the woman who’s still my wife now. The wedding took place on 15th March 1965. My wife, Maria, nee Toduta, was born on 27th January 1933, in Ineu. She’s not Jewish. She worked as an accountant. The two of us observed separate holidays – I celebrated my own and she celebrated her own. We never had any problems because of that.

Our daughter, Gilda Eugenia, was born in Arad, on 6th April 1966. Her mother raised her in the Christian-Orthodox faith, but later, when she went to Israel [in 1986], at the age of 20, things changed. How come she decided to go? In my opinion, this wasn’t a good move, but I suppose she didn’t have a choice. She took the entrance exam at the University in Timisoara, but, although her grades were high enough, she wasn’t admitted; naturally, this was the doing of the Securitate. So the poor girl said there was nothing else she could do here, that she had no future. She signed up for Israel, she left, and she stayed there for seven years. She went to Haifa. She first lived in a student hostel, then with a lady who had made friends with her and let her stay at her place. She graduated from college in Haifa; she got a BA degree in French and English language and literature. She also lived in Natanya. Gilda speaks Hebrew perfectly.

She’s Romanian by her mother, but, after she left the country, she went to Paris, to one of France’s chief rabbis, took a course, and went through all the formalities in order to convert to the Mosaic religion. She became a Jew – she holds a ‘rabbinic certificate’ to prove it, and she has Israeli citizenship. She currently lives in Deva; she returned because she didn’t like it there anymore. She keeps her degree in her pocket and lives at my place – she’s single. For a while, she worked as an assistant at the Ecology Faculty in Deva, her degree is recognized by the Romanian authorities, but now she’s attempting to recover the values that the Communists confiscated from my family and my uncles. I don’t know for how long she plans to stay here.

I didn’t immigrate to Israel because I couldn’t. I had a paralyzed mother, an old mother-in-law who was a Romanian peasant, a Romanian wife, and a daughter aged six or seven. How was I supposed to go to Israel on my own and make enough money to support five people? I couldn’t do it, so I stayed here. Our working conditions were good, we were paid very well, and our pensions are all right. I mean, they’re not great, but my wife and I do receive a monthly total of seven million. I have been a retiree since 1984.

I was a party member for 48 years, but not by conviction – I was forced to. I became a member of Titel Petrescu’s Social Democratic Party in September 1945, and, when the parties united in 1948, I automatically became a member of the Romanian Communist Party. I had no problem with the communism spread by the Romanians. My attitude towards Communism was a passive one. I never did any harm, I never stole anything, and I never killed anyone. I minded my own business, I was a physician, I held the offices that I held, and I did my job well; although my father, my uncle and my brother had been sent to prison by the Securitate, although our houses had been confiscated, the Party kept me for 50 years – 48, to be more precise – because I had the ability to work well. However, when realizing that a county prime-secretary of the Party did nothing but stupid things, I told him what I thought – of course, in a subtle way, because I couldn’t say such things bluntly. Before the Revolution [Mr. Lorincz is talking about the Revolution of 1989] 19, I took part in all the social activities that my office required me to reunions, meetings, organizing medical inspections.

In 1978, I left Ineu and came back to Deva. I bought the apartment I’m living in because Deva was my native town and I wanted to spend my retirement days here. I moved here before my retirement. That same year, 1978, the president of the Jewish Community, Zoltan Farcas, appointed me councilor, without consulting with me. I have been a councilor ever since, but it was only in 2001 that my position became official, following our elections. As far as today’s community life is concerned, I can say I’m doing all that must be done. Our president is Mr. Alexandru Max, who came here in 1984, as a councilor. Until 1987, he was in charge of the social assistance – he unloaded the food supply vehicle, he distributed the food, the aids, the clothes and so on and so forth. In 1987, the former president died, and Zoltan Farcas assumed the vacant office. I come here every Saturday to pray. There are no more than eight of us now. Only President Max and myself can read Hebrew.

In my spare time, like all the retirees, I go walking, I go here and there, and I go shopping to pass my time. I have all sorts of books at home: in Hungarian, in Romanian, in German, in French, in English, and in Hebrew – six languages in total. They cover various fields: novels, historical, religious. I like to read newspapers. I’m a subscriber to ‘Romania Libera,’ ‘Hunedoreanul,’ ‘Cuvantul liber,’ ‘Academia Catavencu,’ and ‘Nyugati Jelen.’

Glossary

Joszefne Marta Feher 
Budapest, Hungary 
Interviewer's name: Dora Sardi
Date of Interview: January, 2002

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

• My family background

My grandfather was Joska Schlesinger. I never saw my grandfather, for he died before I was born. I suppose he lived in Zalaegerszeg. I think they had a pub. 

My grandmother was Malvin Singer. She died during the deportation. She was a very strapping old lady; my father loved her very much. 

Malvina was very religious. She used to wear the sheytl [wig]. And when she was old they had to help her to the synagogue, but she would have never missed a service. She lived with one of her daughters, Pepi, as I remember. Pepi managed a kosher household, just for her sake. 

Grandmother's original house was big, with two flats: a separate flat in the front, as well as in the back. There was a big veranda overgrown with morning glory. One had to climb a few stairs to the veranda. 

Then there was a big kitchen. That's where everything went on. The rooms opened from there. The pub wasn’t there, I think it was somewhere towards the railway. They rented a place there.

They had eleven children. These [were] all from Zalaegerszeg. Everybody Magyarized but my father. [One of them] was Dr. Marton Sandor. He was a doctor. [He had] one child. Uncle Marton died already before the deportation. 

His daughter, Ilike, died as well. There was Jeno. He became Jeno Sandor. He lived in Zalaszentivany with his family. I think they also had a butcher's shop and a pub, if I remember correctly. Then there was Gizi, whose husband was Elemer Herczog. 

They moved to Budapest. Then there was Pepi. Her husband was Naci Guttmann, a cattle-dealer. They had two children. We used to go to Pepi's and then uncle Naci and Pepi played cards. We went there, at let’s say, three o’clock; well, they played until about six o’clock. Then there was Julcsa. 

She lived in Janoshaza with her husband, but she must have been very religious, because grandma liked to go there, to Julcsa's place. There was Mano, he was a landowner in Likospuszta. He had his smallholding near Gyor. 

Then there was auntie Annus. She was a cosmetician. She got married to a vet in Sopron. Then there was Lotti in America.  Then there was Pali. He became Pal Szabo. He was a merchant in Keszthely. 

Then there was Guci, her name was Auguszta, but we called her Guci. She lived in Gyor as well. My father had a twin-sister, Lina. 

My [maternal] grandmother was Hermina Hirschon, wife of Imre Lobl. I never met my grandfather, I think he died before my birth. They were from Csaktornya. We went to Csaktornya once; my father came with us too. 

My grandparents had two children. Melania was my mother. Nandor was her brother. He was the younger. He was managing director in a porcelain shop in Zalaegerszeg. 

He had a boy, Imike. They mostly spoke German in the family, though they spoke Hungarian as well. Melania’s mother tongue was Hungarian, but her German was perfect. And she even spoke Serbian as well. 

Grandmother Hermina lived there with us. There were two rooms [in the flat we rented]; grandmother and I slept in the first room, and my parents in a separate room. Grandmother slept on a divan, while I was on the bed. 

Hermina 1 baked very well. We used to have a big box that was full of cookies. There were lots of preserves too. We had a larder so big, you wouldn't believe.

The late Mihaly Schlezinger was my father. He spent seven years on the Russian battlefield in World War I. He was taken prisoner. Communism was instilled into his heart out there.  

It was such that there was a man who was in the Soviet Union too, and when he came to the lido where my mother worked, my father immediately started to speak with him in Russian. 

My father, as far back as I can remember, worked in a textile shop as a shop assistant. He worked on the Sabbath as well, because at that time an employee wasn’t permitted not to work on the Sabbath. But on Jewish holidays they didn’t have to [because] the boss was Jewish too and they closed the shop on high holidays. Then everybody went to the synagogue. 

My mother worked at the pay-desk at the lido [in summer]. In winter she did needlework at home. When my mother was at the lido I used to splash about in the water. I also played with the boys and rowed and went down to the other mill; we had fun.

• Growing up

I was born in 1924 in Zalaegerszeg. I had no brothers and sisters. I didn’t attend a Jewish elementary school; there was no such school in Zalaegerszeg. 

I even attended the convent school when I was 9 or 10 years old. That was because an acquaintance of ours who lived with us was a teacher there. Then I went to middle school. The middle school lasted until I was 14 years old. 

I think I was 15 or 16 years old when I went to learn sewing – because at that time they didn’t admit Jewish girls to the higher commercial school any more. I think I had three years of apprenticeship. 

Then I went to a dressmaker’s shop. [The boss] was called Mrs. Lovas, she came from Pecs but she got married and moved to Zalaegerszeg. I worked, sewed, at her place. 

We usually went to the dressmaker’s shop at 8 o’clock and we always  had to clean up after our shift. There was a magnet, which we had to use to gather up the pins that had fallen down during the day. 

There were only Neolog families in Zalaegerszeg. Dr. Mozes Junger was the rabbi. There was a nice big synagogue. The synagogue was close to the house. I went to pray every morning with uncle Gergo.   

They were our neighbors; they came to live there when they bought the family house from grandmother Malvin. And his uncle Gergo was very religious. He worked at the post office as an administrator. We were on good terms with them and I always went to the synagogue every Friday and lit a candle. My mother only did so on high holidays. 

Because at that time one had to rent chairs in the gallery, as so many people went to synagogue; that was quite expensive. But my parents got married under the chupah.

I always got new clothes for holidays. There was no such thing as not getting new clothes. New shoes, new hat, a new outfit. There was a Jewish dressmaker and everything was made there for me. 

I used to know the prayers well. I even had an exam with Dr. Mozes Junger, Chief Rabbi, and I was so good that he gave me 10 pengos. My mother couldn’t read Hebrew, but I had to read to her for a half-hour every day. 

There was a religious book written in Hebrew, which was like the prayer book, and I read from that. My mother listened and I was proud. Sometimes she asked me what was I reading and then I tried to translate it but I didn’t understand everything either. 

When I was a child we ate goose and duck. A 10-kilo goose was always ordered for holidays, well in advance. My mother took care of that. She took it to the shochet to have it cut. 

At that time, you know, they used to buy chicken for Shavuot 2. And then my dear grandmother went to the market place and plucked the chickens 3 there in order to have fresh feathers. But sometimes, if I remember correctly, there was pork as well. 

Grandmother Hermina, who lived with us, wasn’t so religious. We didn’t observe the Seder. There wasn't a man in the house who could have led it. Once my father took me to a Seder. 

He had a friend, and they observed the Seder, and then my father took me along. I liked it very much, I knew the Haggadah: I had learned it in school. My father made a spinning top for Hanukah. 

This had Hebrew letters on it according to which we had to give each other certain sums of “money”. We played for nuts, for 8 days at Hanukah. 

I heard about Zionism for the first time at my uncle's. I was spending my summer holiday at my uncle Nandor's place in Marcali, where he had  married and settled down. There was the family of the vet, whose son had left for Israel. 

They said that out there in Israel they would have to fire bricks themselves for the house. After the war it came to my mind to leave for Israel too. When we could sign up, my Christian husband told me that we should go together. 

We went to register but then we never received any notification. But I was scared that the Russians would separate us again. One carries these bad memories over from the deportation.

I had Christian friends as well, but I mostly [mixed] with Jews. There was my girlfriend Vera and her sisters Dora and Zsoka. 

We lived close to each other and used to see each other very often. My mother saw a great deal of their mother. 

They were Neologs too but on high holidays they went to the [synagogue] as well. Neither their mother, nor their father nor Zsoka came back [from the deportation]. I didn’t really have other friends before the war. 

For fun I used to dress up, do 4 myself up, and go walking around in court shoes in the Main Street. I had great success and that was enough for me.

Before the war I was engaged. A Jewish teacher, Simon Spitzer, the son of a rabbi from Tapolca, was my betrothed. He was a soldier there in Zalaegerszeg and asked me to marry him. 

My parents proposed him – I didn’t really want him, but at that time, things used to happen as the parents wished. He couldn’t establish himself as a teacher, and then he came up here to Budapest as an adult re-trainee at a technical school, as a turner, I think. 

He couldn’t come to Zalaegerszeg very often. When he did come, my mother made strudel. And once his parents invited me to Tapolca. There was this charming rabbi, and his wife, Jutka, was even more charming. Well, I went there all done up: Gloves crocheted by my grandmother, hat made in the biggest salon.

They were very impressed; I looked like a dame from the capital. When they entrained him [took him to forced labor] he ran over from the railway to say goodbye to me. But when I got back [from the concentration camp] he had already gotten married. 

I wrote him another letter, and I didn’t receive a reply. And once I received an answer, telling me not to keep on writing, because he was married – his sister wrote that. He couldn’t wait for me. You can imagine it. I met him once more. 

• During the war

In Zalaegerszeg, it was suddenly announced that we had to go to the ghetto on such and such a date. As I said, we heard a lot from those German soldiers, however, that order took us by surprise. 

At first there was the yellow star. I remember I sewed myself an “elegant” star of a very nice canary-yellow material. I even wanted to make something fashionable out of this too. And then suddenly in May 1944 we had to go to the ghetto. 

There were many people there. We got only a kitchen. Everything remained behind in our house. Everything was packed in big boxes, all our dishes, and our beautiful tableware. My grandmother brought me a Singer sewing machine, it was wonderful; well, that remained in the house too. 

And all our belongings remained in the house. My father used to go out of the ghetto to work in a gardener’s establishment. They allowed that. We were allowed for a week to go to the synagogue as well. Of course, I went. 

After that the gendarmes took us away. And my mother already knew… [what would happen]. When the Scarlet Pimpernel was showing at the cinema in Zalaegerszeg my mother and father said we should hang ourselves. 

I told my mother I couldn’t hang myself. I was young, so I couldn't imagine what would happen to us. They took us out to the brick factory. They said that everybody could take along just 2 kilos of “pogacsa” [salted scones], 5. 

I can’t say if there were 65 or 75 people entrained in a wagon. I know that people said that [they put] more [in a wagon] than they usually did with horses. I think this was in June. My uncle died on that train. 

We got out at Auschwitz. At first I didn’t do any sort of work there in Auschwitz. This was the extermination camp, they used to take the weak ones to be gassed, that’s why they didn’t tattoo a number on me. Then they took me to Bergen-Belsen – I went there without my family – we didn’t work there either. 

Then I worked in a supplementary part of the Buchenwald camp; I don’t remember what kind of work I had to do there. They moved us from there to many other places, when the noose was tightening around the Germans’ necks. 

• After the war and later life

Finally I was liberated in Teresienstadt. The Russians came in and they captured the Germans, and we were really liberated. I went into a workshop where there were Jewish boys. And then one of them lifted up a basket and gave me a salted roll. Then just once, I got meat as well. 

I ate it the next day and I became very ill. Then Lili, who was from Zalaegerszeg as well, and with whom I was on good terms in Auschwitz, got some Epsom salts, (I don’t know where from). We put two bricks together and toasted the bread on them. I got better somehow; one can endure many things.

What happened later to these Jewish boys 6, I just don’t know. These Russians gave us pearl barley: A whole kettle-full. We just ate and ate from it, starved as we were. We ran to and from the toilet all night. 

We were lucky not to perish. Well then, there was the medical examination. A Hungarian doctor said to me, “Wouldn’t it be better for you to stay a while, here in the hospital?” “No, no,” I said, “I know that my mother is not alive, but I’m sure my father still is.” I was wrong. 

I remained alone. We got to Keleti Station [Budapest]. There at the Station, they gave plum-dumplings, to all of us who came from the camp. That’s how I got home, or rather to Budapest.

My first husband was a Jew. He was called Imre Neuwald. I met him there in Zalaegerszeg, I don't know why, because I didn’t get anything good from him. His brother put us in touch with each other. 

He said he had a younger brother; “You’ll have such a good life with him that you won’t even have to put your hands in cold water”, he said. Imre lived here in Budapest. It was his brother who lived in Zalaegerszeg. 

But originally they came from Keszthely. Imre was a second-hand dealer. The wedding was in 1946, I think; here [in Budapest] in Nagyfuvaros Street [in the synagogue]. I think we lived together for three and a half years. Then he died of cancer. He was sick almost from the beginning until the end, and I was nursing him, he couldn’t even work. Those were bad times. 

My second husband, Jozsef Feher, wasn’t Jewish. But we lived very happily and loved each other very much. He was born in 1926. He was two years younger than me. He was from Mezotur, but was born in Szent. 

I met him in such a way that he lived where we lived, in lodgings there on the first floor. We stayed on in this house because my husband was a car-lover and there was a garage there. He was an electrician and later a purchasing agent in AFESZ. 

Then he worked at the underground too, as an electrician. After the war I didn’t care much about Jewishness. I didn’t miss it. It was he who made my life complete. By my heart was always Jewish. And remained as such. I didn’t join the party. 

Neither did my husband. I didn’t even discuss politics with my husband. We didn’t care about politics. We were happy. 

My first job after the war was at the Wholesale newsagents. I was a filing clerk there. We were the ones who noted down on the cards that such and such news vendor out there in the provinces needed this much newspaper of this kind, and that much of that kind. 

I worked only about a year and a half there, and then it closed down. Then I went to the food shop in Rozsa Street as a saleswoman. And my husband came there, and you know, in this kind of job men can be very informal with their colleagues. 

My husband heard this  and told me, “Well, you won’t be going there anymore”. He just became jealous. Then I went to the big food shop at Kodaly Circus. I was in the chocolate section. 

After that I worked in the May Day clothing-factory. I sewed on buttons there. Then there was a pause, and after that I went to the Medimpex. And I really liked it there. 

At first I was there as a lift attendant. And then they took me up to the herb section; I worked there as a manager in the herb warehouse. I retired from the Aurora clinic. I was posted there as a medical clerk. But when an assistant was absent, they used to put me on. So I worked in quite busy areas. 

After the war I kept in touch with auntie Annus and her husband, uncle Guszti. The daughter of auntie Annus was deported from Gyorszentivany together with her daughter. 

I couldn’t mention deportation in auntie Annus’ house, because uncle Guszti (he was a military officer, a Gentile,) said: “I couldn’t save auntie Annus’ daughter, I was just happy I could hide Annus.”

My uncle Jeno survived too. His first wife died out there [in the concentration camp]. When he came home, he first went to Zalaegerszeg, then he got married. 

He dealt with horses before the war, and afterwards as well. He bought a horse and ran it in the trotting [the race course in Budapest]. [His horse] did very well [in races]. He had a car, a driver, everything. 

Now fate has arranged things in such a way that since I’ve been alone I feel more and more a Jew. Every second month I get potatoes, onions, two tins of sardines, figs, dates, oranges, a bar of chocolate, flour, sugar, eggs and everything. 

At first, a long time ago, I got warm dishes too, every day. And they brought me kosher food, but it was awful. I quit that. The cold food pack is due to every Jew whose financial situation or circumstances make it necessary.

It’s nice to feel that I am cared for. I watch the Jewish programs on TV, and on the radio, I listen to the programs about this. Since I 've been confined to bed, this has been my only amusement.

• Glossary:

LUBOV ROZENFELD
Ukraine
Kiev
Interviewer: Inna Zlotnik
Date of interview: September 2003

Lubov Mikhailovna Rozenfeld has lived in Israel for four years. Her son Vladimir, his wife Luba and daughter Katia stayed in Kiev, where Lubov was born and lived her live before moving to Israel, and here live Lubov’s childhood friends, and Lubov often travels to Kiev to visit her dear ones. We met with Lubov Mikhailovna in her son Vladimir’s cozy and nicely furnished apartment. A short sporty woman looking young for her years opened the door for me. Only gray streaks in her hair and the look of wisdom in her eyes remind of her age. She has a busy schedule in Kiev: spend time with her granddaughter Katia, visit her friends and visit the graves of her dear ones. Despite her busy schedule Lubov Mikhailovna managed to spend few hours with me. When she was young, she started making notes of her family history from what her grandmother’s sister told her. She willingly shared her memories with us.

I’ve collected information about my family by little bits for over forty years. Fortunately, I talked about it with my long deceased relatives. My great grandfather on my father’s side Mordko Bulkin was born in Zvenigorodka village of Byshev district Kiev province in the 1850s. This was a small village of about 100 houses. Jews constituted about one third of the total population. There was a synagogue and cheder and a shochet in the village. According to the family history he owned a mill and that was how his surname derived from the Russian word ‘bulka’ – ‘a bun’. The village lay in a picturesque area near the wood and Chasov Yar. Mordko built a saw mill near the forest and became a timber manufacturer. His wife Hanna was a housewife. Later many girls in the family were named Anna after this very Hanna. I can hardly remember my father’s relatives, but I heard a lot about them from my second cousin Maria Smirnova, my grandmother sister Yenta’s granddaughter.

They had six children. Their older son Gershl was born in the late 1870s, Sosl was few years younger, Keila was born in the early 1880s, in 1885 my grandmother Gitia was born, in 1886 Risl was born and the youngest Yenta was born in 1889. The family was religious. They celebrated all Jewish holidays and Sabbath, followed kashrut, observed Jewish traditions and went to the synagogue. The local farmers had a very good attitude to Mordko and Hanna. Their neighbors knew that on Saturday and Jewish holidays the Bulkin family were not supposed to do any work according to their faith and brought them milk in pots, sour cream, honey and berries. When Gershl grew old enough, he began to help his father at the mill and saw mill. The daughters grew up to make real beauties and though they didn’t have a rich dowry there were matchmakers coming to seek their hands from as far as Kiev. In the early 1900s all five daughters got married. Their husbands were Jews and all marriages were prearranged by matchmakers, which was customary at the time. The girls followed their husbands to bigger towns.

Shortly after the revolution of 1917 [1] there were many gangs [2] in the area of Zvenigorodka, and a tide of pogroms [3] swept over the area. The Bulkin family were caught in the disaster: my great grandfather Mordko and his son Gershl were killed in the wood by a gang of Ataman Zelyoniy [4]. My great grandfather, Gershl’s wife Ginda and their three children Aron, Raya and Mikhail survived. Aron was at the front during the Great Patriotic War [5], where he was wounded, but he survived. He didn’t have any children. Raya Radutskaya and her husband lived in Kharkov before the war. (My father corresponded with her. All I know about her is that she had two children. After the war none of my father’s letters was answered. She must have perished during the holocaust with her children.

Gershl’s younger son Mikhail married Pasha Khazan, a local Jewish girl. She was a medical nurse. They had no children. Mikhail was at the front during the war and after the war he returned home. I remember him well: he was very tall and had bright blue eyes. After the war he and Pasha lived in the center of Kiev. They were very ill and didn’t have a long life.

My father’s aunt Sosl and her husband Yankel Fastovskiy lived in Yekaterinoslav (present Dnepropetrovsk). They had six children: David, Semyon, Grigoriy, Yelena, Nina and Mania. Sosl failed to evacuate during the great Patriotic War. Germans killed her, her daughter Mania and Mania’s two children (a boy and a girl) and other Jews in Zvenigorodka in 1941. Sosl’s older son David had no children, Semyon and Grigoriy lived in Alma-Ata after the war, they were cultural workers. Semyon had daughter Zhanna and Grigoriy had son Vladimir.

My father’s other aunt Keila married Gershl Khalfin, a Jewish man, and moved to Kiev with her family. They had two sons: Abram and Boris. When the Great Patriotic War began, they both went to the front and Keila and Gershl managed to evacuate. Both sons were in German captivity and later were in the Soviet captivity where they perished. After the war Keila and Gershl lived in a one-storied house in the center of Kiev. Gershl was a butcher till he died and Keila was a housewife. When Gershl died, Keila had nothing to live on. The synagogue found a match for her, a widower with a good pension. Keila died in Kiev in the 1960s.

My grandmother’s sister Risl married Shlyoma Polischuk, a Jewish man. He was a skilled cabinetmaker. They had three daughters: Maria, born in 1910, Peisia was a couple years younger, and Anna, born in the middle 1910s. Only Maria of the three of them was married. She married her cousin brother Solomon Rozenfeld. They had two daughters: Ninel and Svetlana. When the Great Patriotic War began, Risl, Maria, Ninel and Svetlana evacuated to the village of Kokan-kishlak in Uzbekistan. Risl’s husband Shlyoma Polischuk refused to evacuate. He didn’t believe the rumors about atrocities of fascists and he didn’t want to leave their apartment where he had done everything with his own hands. During WWI he was in Austrian captivity, worked for a German family. He found a common language with the head of the family, they drank beer together and he made pieces of furniture for them.

When in 1941 Germans cane to Kiev, Shlyoma wrote his daughter Anna, who was a stenographer in the party town committee and evacuated with the party employees: ‘The first sparrows are here. Come and take me away’. She sent a vehicle for him, but it was too late – there was no entry to Kiev. Shlyoma was seen in 1943, before Kiev was liberated: Germans convoyed him to his shooting; he was beat unmercifully and barefooted. There were rumors that he was in the underground. After the war Risl and Maria with her daughters returned to Kiev. Risl was an energetic person till her old age. She kept the house till she died in 1982 at the age of 91. Ninel, Schwetz after her husband, lives in Germany. Her daughter Olga and granddaughter Yelena have the surname of Chekishin. Svetlana, Volodarskaya after her husband, lives in Kiriat Gat in Israel. She has daughter Tatiana and son Alexandr Volodarskiy. Tatiana daughter’s name is Maria-Stephanie Reznikova. Of all Risl’s daughters Maria lived the longest life: she died in Israel at the age of 92 in 2002.

My grandmother’s sister Yenta was married to Meyer Sandukovskiy, who was a son of a merchant of guild I [6], the owner of a brick factory in Kiev. His surname Sandukovskiy was stamped on bricks. They were an educated and wealthy family. After the revolution of 1917 he worked as an accountant at the factory. They lived in Demeevka in the suburb of Kiev, beyond the Pale of Settlement [7]. They had two daughters: Maria and Anna. Some bandits scared Maria in her childhood: she hit her head and remained bedridden for 19 years. She died before the Great Patriotic War. Anna’s dream was to become a journalist, but her non-proletariat origin didn’t allow her to enter the University [One of communist slogans in the USSR said: ‘Who was a nobody will gain it all’. The USSR was declared to be the country of workers and peasants. Therefore, children of workers and peasants had advantages to enter higher educational institutions. They were to become builders of the new communist society. If a person had worked at a plant for few years he had no problems with entering an educational institution]. She submitted her documents to the Polytechnic College and finished it. Yenta, Meyer and Anna were in evacuation in Uzbekistan. Meyer died of hunger there at the age of 55 in 1942. Anna worked as a forewoman in the construction of a sugar factory in Uzbekistan where she met Anton Smirnov, a Russian construction engineer. They got married at the end of the war and moved to Kaluga. They had two children: Marina, born in 1948, and Yevgeniy, born in 1949. After the war Yenta lived with Anna in Kaluga. She died there in 1961. Anna died in the 1990s.

My grandmother Gitia was the next child in the family after Keila. I don’t remember her, but I her sisters and my mother told me about her. Her sisters believed she was the most beautiful of them. They said she had beautiful black eyes. Grandmother Gitia married Peisia Rozenfeld who wads a baker, in the early 1900s. I don’t know how they met. They lived in Kiev. According to her relatives my grandmother was a cheerful person, though she didn’t have a sweet life.

The Rozenfeld family observed Jewish traditions, went to the synagogue on holidays, celebrated Jewish holidays, and on Friday evenings my grandmother lit candles. They spoke Yiddish at home. My grandmother and grandfather had seven children: my father Mikhail Rozenfeld was the oldest. He was born on 11 February 1905. Two years later his brother Lev was born, but he died from hunger and diseases. The next son Solomon Rozenfeld was born on 25 December 1909. After Solomon Zina was born in the early 1930s. She died in her infantry during famine [8]. In 1912 Anna Rozenfeld was born. My father’s brothers Semyon and Ruvim Rozenfeld came one after another: Semyon must have been born in 1914 and Ruvim - in 1915. All boys went to cheder and then – to the Jewish elementary school.

Shortly after Ruvim’s birth my grandfather Peisia died from typhoid, when he was quite young. Grandmother Gitia was to raise seven children alone. She had to send my father to a children’s home to save her other children and his life, at least, he was given food there. In the children’s home my father learned the profession of a mechanic and supported the family working. He was very talented: besides working as a mechanic he wrote for a radio agency and later worked for the RATAU [Radiotelegraph agency of Ukraine], as a censor in the Department for Literature.

Solomon served in cavalry after he turned 16, later he served in artillery and was a professional military. He married his cousin Maria Polischuk, my grandmother sister Risl’s daughter. They had two daughters: Ninel and Svetlana. Ninel told me that Solomon had a mop of black curly hair, beautiful dark eyes and little moustache in the fashion of the 1940s. He was a swinger and was ambitious.

I don’t remember my father’s sister Anna but I heard that she was cheerful and beautiful. She had dark hair. She was married, but I don’t know who her husband was. They had a son named Pyotr. I don’t know what happened to her husband, but she was miserably poor, and my father actually raised Pyotr.

My father’s brothers Semyon and Ruvim were tall and handsome: Semyon had dark eyes, and Ruvim had blue eyes. In 1934 Semyon went to serve in the soviet Navy and a year later Ruvim joined the Navy. They served in the Pinsk Fleet. Semyon was good at writing and worked for the Navy newspaper during his service. Semyon had a fiancée before the Great Patriotic War, but before they got married the Great Patriotic War began. Ruvim married Fira, a Jewish girl, shortly before the Great Patriotic War in early 1941. They had a daughter, whose name I don’t know. They all perished in 1941 in Babi Yar [9].

I knew my maternal great grandfather Meishe Belov. He was born to a poor family in Skvira Kiev province in the 1850s. He got married at the age of 17, and his wife Dvosia was also very young. They had three children: Buzia (Jewish name Bruha-Reize), born in 1874, my grandmother Bela (Jewish name Beilia-Ryklia), born in 1876, and Pynia (Jewish name Iosif-Pinhes), born in the early 1880s. Meishe owned a mill, inns in Skvira, and had a forest and kept cows. According to the legend my great grandfather had the surname of Belov because he turned gray when he was young.

My great grandmother Dvosia was a cultured woman: she spoke Yiddish and had a good conduct of German and Russian. She died at the age of 33. Meishe Belov remarried. His second wife Lisa was young, beautiful and well-educated. She knew Russian, composed poems and was very intelligent. Meishe and Lisa had daughter Fania (Jewish name Dvoira), born in 1890, but two years later they divorced. Lisa married a handsome young man shortly afterward and they moved to America, when Fania turned 4. Moishe didn’t allow Fania to go with them. Lisa’s son Ezra Lipkin was born later. Lisa never visited her Motherland again. She died in America in 1956.

My great grandfather Meishe remarried two times more. He was officially married 4 times. His last wife’s name was Macy. My mother recalled that her grandfather was imperious, mean, tough and very talented. Meishe played chess well and inspired Macy. His children and grandchildren with this hobby. When WWI began, Macy moved to Palestine and Meishe moved in with his older daughter Buzia in Kiev. My great grandfather died in Kiev at the age of 99. He was hit by a falling door.

Buzia was married to Boris Shklovskiy, who as she used to say ‘came from a poor family, but was handsome and smart’. They lived in the suburbs of Kiev. They had no children. In winter 1919 Boris fell ill with typhoid. At that time there were Denikin troops [10] outraging in Kiev: they broke into the house and beat the sick man with whips. He died 4 days afterward. Buzia inherited love for chess from her father. Even when she was old, she gained prizes in chess contests. On holidays Buzia baked oil sodden strudels with the filling of raisins, nuts and jam. She made incredibly delicious jams: I can still remember the taste of lemon jam with nuts – it was shining from the inside. Buzia remained faithful to Boris all her life: she kept sheets from his deathbed. When dying, she asked to bury her wrapped in her husband’s sheets. Buzia must have been religious, though I didn’t see her observing Jewish traditions. Buzia died in 1961 at the age of 87.

My grandmother Bela Belova married Zus Rozenstein, born in the 1870s. According to Buzia, he was ‘extremely handsome and came from Berdichev’. They lived in Skvira. My grandfather was a sales agent for Zinger sewing machines. They had three children: the oldest Dosia (Jewish name Dvosia) born in 1901, named after grandmother Dvosia; my mother Sophia was the second (Jewish name Esther-Sosl) Rozenstein, born on 14 October 1905, and the youngest son Yuliy (Jewish name Yeilik) born in 1907. Grandfather Zus disappeared in Derbent in 1909 where he was on business trip. Grandmother Bela was a housewife, but she couldn’t get adjusted to the suddenly changing life. Having remained alone with three children she had to ask her father for the money to feed her family. Meishe supported her, but he gave her little. He thought that only Yuliy, the boy, needed education and the girls didn’t need it whatsoever. Meishe was very religious: he prayed with his tallit and tefillin on and went to the synagogue. My mother told me they followed the kashrut strictly, didn’t work on Saturday and Meishe, grandmother Bela and even the children fasted on Yom Kippur. However greedy Meishe was, the family still celebrated holidays.

My mother told me that my grandmother sang beautifully, when she was young, and knew arias from operas by heart. I remember that my grandmother was very reserved, had blue eyes and white silver hair. She had a Japanese-like face with high cheek bones. When doing work about the house she liked to hum songs in Yiddish or Russian. My grandmother died in Kiev in 1960. She was buried in the Jewish sector of the Baikovoye cemetery.

Pynia Belov and his wife and his wife Sarra lived in a small wooden house in the very center of Kiev. Sarra’s father was a rabbi, but she was an atheist: once was stunned by Sarra saying that she didn’t believe in God. I don’t know what Pynia did for a living. He died in 1948. I only remember that he was a great joke teller.

Meishe’s younger daughter Fania Belova had some education. There was a 5% quota [11] and that time, but Fania passed her exams successfully and entered the Law Faculty of the University of St. Vladimir in Kiev. In 1915 she received a diploma with all excellent marks, but… without the right to work as a lawyer. There was also an entry there: faith – Judaism. Fania graduated from the Faculty of Finance and Economics of the university at the Soviet time. She worked as an economist, accountant, knew English well and gave private classes. Fania married Mendel Gurevich, a Jew, whose father was a rabbi. They had no children. After the Great Patriotic War Fania happened to remain alone. I don’t know what happened, but Mendel must have perished. When they returned from the evacuation, Fania and her sister Buzia bought a little house in the suburbs of Kiev and lived together. Fania corresponded with her mother Lisa who had moved to America, but they never saw each other again since the USSR was separated from the rest of the world with an ‘iron curtain’ [12]. Lisa was not allowed an entry visa here and Fania was not allowed to travel to America. Later Fania corresponded in English with her brother Ezra Lipkin. His children Seymour and Eleanor Lipkin were pianists. They came to the USSR on tour. Ezra and his wife also visited the USSR and Fania traveled to Leningrad to see them. She died in Kiev in 1987, in the 97th year of her life.

My mother’s older sister Dosia Rozenstein began to work in her childhood: she went to Kiev to sell newspapers and sunflower oil at the market. After the revolution she finished the medical College in Kiev and became a pediatrician. She married Dmitriy Zaslavskiy, a Jew. In January 1930 Dosia gave birth to a boy whom she named May, perhaps because he was conceived in May. May was handsome and charming, grandmother Bela’s first grandson, much loved by all relatives. Dosia and Dmitriy divorced few years later. Many years later I got to know that Dmitriy was declared ‘an enemy of the people’ [13] and arrested [14] in 1936, but he returned shortly afterward. I don’t know how it happened, but there were miracles happening at the time. Dosia must have given him up. She was a convinced communist and probably believed that he was an ‘enemy of the people’. Dosia was a person of principles. She never accepted anything from her children patients’ parents, but flowers, though some doctors accepted gifts. When the Great Patriotic War began, Dosia accompanied a train with sick children and managed to take them all to the destination point without any losses. During the war she became a mayor of the medical service. After the war Dosia worked in a children’s clinic in Kiev. She was allowed to live in a small room in the clinic with her son May. Dosia had a motto: ‘The cause of all diseases is dirty hands’. At the end of her career she inspected hospitals for compliance with the standards and many people disliked her for her strictness. When I visited Dosia, she always had a decanter of current liqueur, a piece of cake or candy to offer me.

May was very handsome and talented. After finishing Kiev Food Industry College he got a job assignment [15] to Nalchik where he met a Russian girl: English teacher Rimma Senutkina. They got married. Rimma had the face of a doll and a terrible character. May was not happy in his family. They had a son named Alexandr. The boy had a hard life: his mother died of cancer, May remarried and the boy lived with his stepmother, but soon he lost his father. May committed suicide in 1969. He was buried in the Jewish sector of Baikovoye cemetery near grandmother Bela. Dosia lived her old age with her grandson Alexandr, his wife and their children Vera and Alexei. Shortly before she died I had Dosia move in with me: she could hardly move around. She died in 1994, at the age of 94.

My mother’s brother Yuliy Rozenstein whose education was funded by my grandfather Meishe, didn’t want to get a higher education. He was smart even when a child. My mother recalled that there was a little train driving along a narrow gauge railway in Skvira. She and Yuliy sitting on a footboard used to take oil to sell at a market in Kiev. Later he sold cigarettes. Yuliy learned to play chess and became a candidate to master of sports and a field judge of the all-Union category. He earned money in clubs teaching newcomers to play chess. In the early 1930s, Yuliy, as a Party member, was appointed chairman of a Jewish kolkhoz [16] in the Crimea. He said that Jews didn’t want to work on Saturday. They preferred dying from hunger to violating Jewish traditions. Once an exhausted kolkhoz woman came to see Yuliy holding her starved baby. Only his mother Bela was at home. She pulled the mother’s breast – there was no milk. Bela burst into tears and gave the woman some flour without Yuliy’s permission. Somebody reported on this incident and Yuliy was expelled from the Party, but fortunately, there were no other consequences. Yuliy was married to a Jewish woman from this same kolkhoz Fanny Malovitskaya. They had two sons: Otto and Vladimir Rozensteins. They lived in Leningrad. Yuliy was a worker in the shipyard. During the Great Patriotic War he evacuated with his plant that was converted into a tank plant to Cheliabinsk. Fanny and her sons lived somewhere in Sverdlovsk region. Yuliy occasionally visited them: bringing them food and candy. They returned to Leningrad in 1946. Yuliy worked at the plant for many years. He was director of a chess club and sent us articles from the ‘Chess review’ journal where they mentioned him as a veteran of the plant. He celebrated his 80th birthday at the plant. Now he lives in Be’er Sheva in Israel. He is 97 years old. He still plays chess and often wins. Newspapers in Israel also write about him. There was an article ‘I play while I live’ recently published about him. Fanny died in 1998. Yuliy lives with Otto’s family. Vladimir and his family live in Haifa.

My mother Sophia Rozenstein lost her father at the age of four and began to work at an early age selling oil and sunflower seeds in Kiev. During the Civil war my mother lived through several pogroms in Skvira. During pogroms Jewish families found shelter in the judge’s home whose name I don’t remember, regretfully. During one pogrom my mother didn’t want to go to the judge’s home and dragged Yuliy to a frozen swamp where they lay on the ice all night through. The pogrom makers didn’t come to the swamp. Bela and Dosia hid in their neighbor’s home. After the pogrom the family returned to their plundered home, but they all survived. My mother told me that armed villagers were opposing to pogrom makers. At 14 my mother went to work as a courier at the sugar supply office in Kiev. She attended an amateur performers’ club. She told me they studied singing, dancing, dressing and washing there. They staged play and had lots of fun. My mother used to say: ‘Who would have I become if it hadn’t been for the revolution? would have sold things at the market in the sticks’. My mother had a strong voice. She went to study singing at a music school and later – at the College of music and Drama. After finishing this college my mother went to work as chief editor of music radio programs at the radio committee where she met my future father Mikhail Rozenfeld. They registered their marriage at a registry office in 1935. They were atheists and didn’t have a Jewish wedding. My mother didn’t want to change her surname from Rozenstein to Rozenfeld: ‘Why trade bad for worse?’ My father felt hurt…

In 1936 their son Alexandr Rozenfeld was born. My mother was chief editor of music radio programs at the radio committee. She spent a lot of time at work and Alexandr was raised by nanny Frosia Kostyuk, a Ukrainian woman. She loved him very much. Frosia lost her children during famine in 1933, and was very attached to our family. In 1936, when my brother was just a baby, my mother fell victim to repression and didn’t work for a year. Before my mother went on vacation she made a music program. When she was on vacation, Kamenev and Zinoviev [17] were sentenced. In the program in Kiev their names were mentioned. Many editors from various sectors of the issue of this program were exiled to Kolyma and Magadan. My father also lost his job, but to not disturb my mother, he kept pretending to go to work to the RATAU every day, while he actually wandered in the city during a day. Two weeks later my father was restored at work. My mother went to Kiev and managed to have an appointment with Zemliachka, a comrade of Lenin [18]. When she heard that my mother was on vacation and the program had been prepared one month before it was put on the air, she said: ‘Go home, it will be all right’. And this was true: my mother was restored at work and was even paid for the time when she was not at work due to the circumstances.

I was born on 17 December 1938 in Kiev. We lived in Bratskaya Street in Podol [19]: my mother, father, my brother Alexandr, I and Frosia in one room with the windows facing the Dnieper. I remember that we had a tiled stove and my father stoked it with wood. I hadn’t turned three when the Great Patriotic War began. My mother said my father was released from army service as a RATAU employee. My father could evacuate his family, but he was not allowed to take grandmother Gitia with sister Anna with us. My mother wanted to take Petia with us, but Anna said: ‘Whatever happens to me he will share’.

Before the war grandmother Gitia broke her leg, and when Germans came to Kiev, she walked with crutches. Anna, Petia and grandmother Gitia were planning to evacuate, but they failed to do it. On 29 September 1941 Anna, 9-year-old Petia, grandmother Gitia, grandfather Peisia’s sisters Sonia and Pyria Rozenfeld, Ruvim’s wife Fira holding her 8-month-old baby daughter and Semyon’s pregnant daughter-in-law – all of them went to Babi Yar where they were killed along with thousands Jews. Solomon was a professional military and was sent to the front. Solomon’s mother Maria, her mother Risl and daughters Ninel and Svetlana evacuated to Uzbekistan. My father’s younger brothers Semyon and Ruvim were also mobilized. The Pinsk Fleet where they served was defeated at the very start of the war, and the sailors were captured. They were kept in a concentration camp near Kiev. Semyon escaped from the camp, but was captured. Our neighbors saw German convoy taking Semyon and Ruvim to the shooting ground. This is a well-known story in Kiev how 40 sailors of the Pinsk Fleet, beat unmercifully, undressed, barefooted, with their hands tied with barbed wire, were taken across the city to be shot near Babi Yar in 1941.

I have dim memories about our trip across the Ural in a freight train for coal transportation. Frosia told me that I was black with coal and when the train stopped she took me off the train to wash me. The train moved on all of a sudden, and Frosia managed to jump on the footboard of the last railcar with me. The footboard broke all of a sudden, and fortunately, a soldier managed to grab Frosia. During air raids my brother screamed: ‘I don’t want to be killed by a bomb!’ When the train stopped during air raids, we jumped off to hide in the fields. We arrived at Vereschagino (about 2 thsd. km from Kiev) Molotov region. I remember that we lived in a wooden house on the 2nd floor. There was a green meadow near the house. My mother told me that my father worked in a railcar depot for a short time and then he volunteered to the front. My mother was chairman of a kolkhoz. They manufactured clay pots and she brought some home to cook in them. Somebody made us a steel stove with exhaust holes at the bottom. I put sticks in the stove and lit them and could see flames through the holes. My mother’s sister Dosia, May and grandmother Bela lived with us. I remember how May bought wild strawberries from local boys and dropped them incidentally. My brother and I burst into tears. Later Dosia and May moved out and grandmother Bela stayed with us.

My father often wrote mother from the front. He became an intelligence officer. My mother kept his letters through her life. He was looking for his brothers Solomon, Ruvim and Semyon. There was a message that Solomon, an artillery lieutenant colonel, disappeared during the liberation of Kharkov in 1943. Shortly before this happened he wrote: ‘I’ve been offered a job. I see to be the first to come to Kiev’. I guess he went to serve in KGB [20]. In response to his requests for his brothers my father received three death notifications. In two years of the war he lost his family: his mother, three brothers and sister with her son Petia.

Once papa came on leave from the front. I remember this reunion: the gate opened and my brother screaming ‘Papa!’ ran along the path and I followed him. Papa was there with his cap on and holding a black case. He put my brother and me on his lap and there was a tear pouring down his cheek. Near Stalingrad my father was shell-shocked and awarded a medal ‘For the seizure of Stalingrad’. In winter 1944 my mother received a death notification. My father perished near Velikiye Luki in January 1944. He was buried in Malyshkovo village and after the war he was reburied in Stolbovo village in a common grave. My father was kind, caring and loved children. I have a little lock that he made. I lost the key when I was a child, but I’ve found a fitting key. I also have his cuff links and a Swiss onion-shaped watch. It had a golden frame that was removed during famine. My father wore it on a chain. My mother had little hooks welded on it after the war to wear it on her wrist. Now my older son has it.

In early 1944 the radio committee called for my mother from the evacuation. We went back in a freight train. It was cold and we had to burn my brother’s skis. He cried a lot after them. We also sailed a boat along the Volga and I remember my mother trading clothes for food products. She gave me a piece of white brick-shaped bread with a lump of sugar: this was an incredible luxury. Then we took a train again. When we returned to Kiev, it was ruined. Our house in Podol was there, but our neighbor Fania moved in our room. She even didn’t want to return our furniture. My mother received a dwelling from the radio committee in the very center of Kiev in Kreschatitskiy Lane. In the past it housed a brothel: on the 4th floor on both sides of a long dark curved corridor there were 11 square meter rooms. We received two rooms. This was a pre-revolutionary building with high ceilings, but there was no elevator. There was a stove in the room and we carried wood from the basement to the 4th floor. My brother had hernia afterward. Our neighbor Fania finally gave us back 4 cabinets, but she didn’t return our bed and we slept on the floor at the beginning. There were other employees of the radio committee living on our floor: singers, pianists and conductors. There were many tables and a sink in the common kitchen. When in the evening we turned on the light in the kitchen, the cockroaches scattered around in all directions. We cooked on primus stoves [editor’s note: Primus stove -a small portable stove with a container for about 1 liter of kerosene that was pumped into burners], before gas stoves were installed. There were two toilets and one bathroom where there were lines to get in. Life was funny in our communal apartment [21]: at night our neighbor Kolia often chased after his mother-in-law threatening to beat her and she used to run away from him in the corridor screaming. My mother was the only one, who opened the door and pronounced with a well-set voice: ‘Stop this scandal! The children are sleeping!’ Kolia replied in a drunken voice: ‘I am not doing anything to her. She screams on purpose’. Our neighbor Vova usually made a lot of noise in the afternoon teaching his ever changing wives. Singer Galina Sholina living in the room across the door to our room gave me a little doll. This was the first doll in my life. When I grew older, Galina often invited me to the Opera Theater.

My mother sent Alexandr to a Russian school for boys а and I stayed at home with grandmother Bela. My mother was at work a whole day and Alexandr and I ran around in the yard and in the street.

I remember well Victory Day of 9 May 1945. My brother and I, my mother and grandmother were very happy. I ran into the yard: our neighbors hugged and danced and there were fireworks across the skies in the evening. My mother was happy and she cried. She said: ‘I lost this war. I lost my beloved one to it’.

In autumn 1946 I went to the first form of Russian school for girls # 67. It was located on a hill and there were steep stairs leading to it. I was little and thin and our teacher Ksenia Mikhailovna made me sit at the first desk. I didn’t have all excellent marks, and Ksenia Mikhailovna only liked those who had excellent marks. They performed in concerts: danced and played and I didn’t take part in any of these activities, though I could dance or play some roles. So I entertained myself as much as I could picking red, blue and green pens during breaks from other children’s desks. When another class began, the children yelled: ‘Lubka! Where is my pen? Give me my pen!’ I began to give them their pens and mixed them up and everybody had fun. I ran around at school like a crazy girl. I was active, cheerful and spoke fast. In the 3rd form I became a pioneer, but I didn’t care about anything at school. My real life was in the street. The boys of our yard made a headquarters in the basement of our building to fight with the neighboring yard. I was the only girl allowed to be in the headquarters. We had a password and were armed with toy guns, slingshots and sticks. There were the following boys in the headquarters: the sons of conductor Taraschenko from the radio committee – Sasha, Zhenia, Kolia; there was another boy Garik, who made the wiring for a bulb in the basement. There was a huge hill with ruins of houses on it near our building. We climbed as high as we could and wrote on the ruins: Garik, Sasha, Luba. Late in the evening my mother came home from work and shouted in her loud voice: ‘Lu-u-ba’. I ran back home and got a good telling off for coming home late and for not having done my homework. In winter I rushed along the street on my skates so fast that not every boy could skate as fast. I liked spending my summer vacations in pioneer camps. After the 1st year at school I went to the town pioneer camp where I made friends with Man’ka Fishbein. We were in the same class and sat at the same desk, but never took notice of one another. Man’ka lived nearby in a deep basement. Her mother had three children: Izia, Yasha and Man’ka. Their mother raised them alone. She worked as a cleaning woman. They were miserably poor. Her name was Yeva Fishbein and she was a very nice woman: she allowed us to leave our school bags in their home when we were missing classes. I often stayed half a day in Man’ka’s basement. My mother was trying to help Yeva and gave her some dresses. Yeva gave me potatoes with pickled cucumbers. It was a feast in their home, when they had herring for dinner. Man’ka’s brother Izia was short, but he was very strong. He lifted weights. At concerts at school my mother arranged for actors from the radio to sing and dance for free and Izia lifted weights. Man’ka’s mother died young. When Man’ka’s wedding was arranged, when she was 18 she had two children. In he late 1960s she was among those who were the first to move to America. When Man’ka’s daughter said at school that she was leaving even her best friend spit her in the face. We were raised so that in our eyes this was a betrayal. It was a tragedy and I was trying to stop Man’ka giving her stories by Korolenko [22] to read, but Man’ka said that their grandfather was doing well there and he was waiting for them and they just had to go.

In the late 1940s struggle against cosmopolitism [23] began. My mother was incriminated liaison with her relatives abroad [24]. The thing was that my mother’s stepsister Fania, whose mother had lived in the USA since the beginning of the century, returned to Kiev from evacuation and had no place to live. Before she and Buzia bought their house, Lisa sent her letters to us. In 1952 my mother was fired and expelled from the party, though her husband had perished at the front and she had two dependent children and an old mother to support. My mother couldn’t find a job till her friends helped her to get a job of a typist in a shop of invalids. Fania felt guilty and brought buns for me and my brother (she worked at a bakery and it was strange that she managed to keep her job). My mother was in a terrible condition, she used to walk in the cemetery… On 5 March 1953 Stalin died and some time later my mother restored her membership in the party and was restored at work. She became a sound producer, though. When I heard on the radio that Stalin died, I ran outside and along the street. I was very glad that I didn’t have to go to school. I tried to make myself cry, but it didn’t work. My mother believed Stalin sincerely, I think. It never occurred to her that Stalin had anything to do with repression and that he presented terrible threat. There were my father’s letters from the front, from which I understood that he and mama believed in the revolution and communism sincerely, believed in some truth, but lived in fear in those years.

At home my mother and grandmother spoke Russian to my brother and me, but grandmother and mother spoke Yiddish to one another. I understood Yiddish a little, but I knew curse words particularly well. We didn’t observe Jewish traditions, celebrate Jewish holidays or follow kashrut in our family. My mother was an atheist and had a responsible job, and religion was persecuted [25]. My grandmother remembered the dates of all Jewish holidays. She baked triangle pies with poppy seeds till she managed. She tried to tell my brother and me about Jewish holidays, but we were pioneers and Komsomol members [26] and took little notice of her. On Chanukkah my grandmother gave us some small change saying: ‘Chanukkah gelt’. She didn’t eat pork, but we could fry something on pork fat lying to her that it was not pork. My mother’s relatives didn’t observe Jewish traditions, though they didn’t quite eat pork.

I was ugly, when a child, and had satisfactory marks at school and suffered from the complex of inferiority. May played a big role in it. ‘If at least you studied well, we would ignore your ugliness’ – this is how he put it in words. I was good at English. Fania, who earned some money by teaching English, said she never had a better pupil. However, at school I mispronounced English words to spite the teacher. I also ran away from the guys who wanted to meet me. I didn’t believe them and didn’t believe anybody who said something good about me. I liked physical culture lessons, but I had a heart problems and the doctor didn’t allow me to run. When my classmates begged her, she allowed me to run the tack of 100 m, but I ran 400 and won. I was number run in running 400 meters. I liked jumping and jumped 120 cm up being 140 cm tall. My spiritual life started at the age of 16: I had a diary and began to go to the opera. I also began to read a lot: mainly classical books. I set a goal, a minimum program – to become a kindergarten teacher and at maximum – a writer.

There were many Jewish children in my class, but I didn’t face any anti-Semitism. I faced it in the 10th form, when they refused to admit me to preparatory course in the Pedagogical College. At school Man’ka and I got the profession of copy makers, but I couldn’t find work after finishing school. My mother’s acquaintance composer Zherbin, who was also a construction engineer, helped me to get a job in design institute ‘Ukrgiproshakht’ making designs of mines. I worked as a copy maker and then was employed by a correction department where we proofread documents and numbered pages. My colleagues treated me well. I went to a parachute club and jumped with a parachute twice, though doctors didn’t allow it. When working as a corrector I went to the preparatory course to talk about admission, but they replied: ‘Well, if you were a mechanic’. I said: ‘Is a mechanic closer to the profession of pedagog than a corrector?’ I turned away and left.

I didn’t like the town where I was born. Whether because I don’t like towns, I like villages, or because of some relationships between people? I went to Yaroslavl (over 1 thsd. km from Kiev), in Russia, passed exams and entered the Philological Faculty of the Pedagogical College. I never faced any anti-Semitism in Yaroslavl. I studied by correspondence and worked in the museum-mansion of Nekrasov [Nekrasov, Nikolay Alexandrovich, 1821– 1878. Great Russian poet, founder of critical realism] in Karabikha and lived in the museum. Я I read lectures for hours there. People came and went… I liked my studies. I liked to pass my exams before term, rent a boat and go rowing on the Volga. My teacher of the Russian language and literature Verkovsky, when I wrote a paper about Nekrasov’s poetry in the Russian music, said: ‘This needs to be published. How you wrote this work! It has to be published’, but it never happened. I liked to travel by train on New Year since always on New Year and other holidays I felt some emptiness, therefore on New Year I went to Yaroslavl to take my winter exams and in summer I went there to take summer exams and liked staying there. I like Yaroslavl for its hospitality, for the Volga, for the white kremlin, for the first awakening of my feeling and my complex of inferiority. I fell in love there, and I am still empowered by this bitter, but full feeling. This person was worthy of my love, but he was indebted. He said: ‘If only we had met two months before, things might have been different, but now I am indebted and I am marrying the woman I owe to’. He got married and I remembered him for many years…

After finishing the college in 1965 I worked as a scientific employee in the museum mansion of Nekrasov in Karabikha. My colleagues treated me wonderfully. In winter I skied and skated. I also attended an art studio. I am an amateur artist and sometimes I make nice things. To work in the museum I needed a residential registration [27], but my mother didn’t allow me to lose my residential registration in Kiev. My brother Alexandr worked on his job assignment in Irkutsk after finishing a technical school. He told me a lot about winters in Irkutsk. I like winter. I didn’t want to live in Kiev and went to Irkutsk (over 5000 km from Kiev). At first I stayed at my acquaintance son’s apartment and later I rented an apartment. I went to work as a laborer at a construction site and I never regretted it: they employed me, even though I had no residential registration. I didn’t want to work by my profession. I had my tonsils taken out and couldn’t talk much. Spring in Irkutsk was very beautiful. The Angara was green and it made a great impression on me. However, there was my mother in Kiev. My brother had got married by then. Grandmother Bela died in 1960. I had to go back.

In Kiev I again couldn’t get a job for a long time. Then finally, I managed to get a job of a music employee in a kindergarten. I got married at the age of 28. I wouldn’t say it was for love. My husband Vasiliy Matvienko, a Ukrainian man, was my student. I worked as a tutor in a vocational school: there were about 100 boys and adults under my tutorship. He came to school after the army and was a little younger than me. He helped me a lot: he gave orders to other guys and I felt comfortable with his input. In the evening my students accompanied me home: it was dangerous to go alone. At first there were 6 guys, then four, then two and then there was only Vasiliy left, and finally I got married … my mother didn’t mind. We registered our marriage in a registry office. There were no celebrations. We bought a cake and had tea in the kitchen with my mother in the evening. We lived in our room in Kreschatitskiy Lane. Vasiliy learned the profession of a mechanic at school and later became a mechanic of the 6th category. He played the accordion well and I helped him to enter a music school. He finished it and often played at weddings or other celebrations. He was very talented, kind and loved me.

Vasiliy was born in Peregudki village Borispol district near Kiev. His father Nikolay Matvienko was a terrible anti-Semite, but not his mother and Vasiliy. His father could never dream that his son would marry a Jewish woman. During the Great Patriotic War his father was a mechanic fixing cars. Vasiliy’s father had a tough temper and was despotic at home, but he accepted me and liked me despite my Jewish identity. Vasiliy’s mother, a kind and reserved woman, put up with him her whole life. They had three children: Vasiliy, Leonid (he died) and Olga, who lives in Odessa now.

On 24 July 1967 our older son was born. My brother already named his son Mikhail after our father. I talked Vasiliy into naming our son Vladimir. I love my cousin brother Vladimir Rozenstein and wanted to name my son after him. Our younger son was born on 26 August 1970. I named him Mikhail after my father. I’ve never been religious, but it happened so that my older son was born on St. Vladimir Day by the Christian calendar and I named him Vladimir, and Mikhail was born on the day of St. Michael and I named him Mikhail. I had to leave Vasiliy, hen my younger son was 2. We were different, and besides, he drank and was terribly jealous.

In 1972 my mother received a three-bedroom apartment, and my sons and I moved in there. Authorities gave apartments to families of those who perished during the Great Patriotic War. My mother used to say: ‘They gave me an apartment for my husband’s head’. I was divorced with Vasiliy and made all necessary arrangements for him to get another apartment. He remarried and had another son – Nikolay, who is a little retarded, but his father drank. Nikolay lives in Kiev, works as a loader and earns all right.

Vasiliy does not keep in touch with my sons. Vladimir doesn’t like him. Vasiliy didn’t acknowledge him either since he has blue eyes while both Vasiliy and I have hazel eyes. I used to say: ‘Your mother and father have fair eyes, so he may have taken after them, and besides, what does Vladimir have to do with it?’ Vasiliy lives with his mother who is old.

My husband never supported me or the children. We lived from one payday to another, but we didn’t do that bad. The children had clothes and sufficient food. In summer they went to pioneer camps. I didn’t dream about a car, new furniture or a vacation. We could only afford vitally important things.

My sons are very different like day and night. Vladimir didn’t like school: I sent him to a music school to study playing the violin. He studied 5 years and quit. Then he learned to play the clarinet for 3 years. His teacher said he produced excellent sound, but he quit. Now he plays every now and then whatever is at hand. After finishing the 8th form he entered the technical school for treatment of metal with cutting. There was a nice director there. When Vladimir wanted to give it up he said: ‘O’, quit, if you want to, but look here, there is Zhurba, who only gets poor marks. He will finish this school and become director of a plant. You will come to see him and he will say: ‘This is not a day for visitors’. He called to his ambitions, and finally, my son finished the school. He is very talented: he draws well, but he never displays his works. He makes sculptures, and he is very artistic. When he mimics somebody it’s very funny, but he takes no advantage of his talents. All he wants is to be like everybody else. Vladimir is married. His wife Lubov Kotova is Russian. She is a manager in a private company. In 1992 their daughter Katia was born. Vladimir works for a private company now. He repairs apartments. He is logistic specialist and master there: he is very handy. He can do tiling and woodwork. He loves Katia dearly. She is 11 and she has temper. Vladimir doesn’t want to go to Israel or Germany. He considered Germany: my cousin sister Ninel and her daughter Olga are there. They are friends. They offered him a job of a driver, but he says: ‘Shall I clean somebody’s shoes in the toilet at my 35 years of age? I won’t go’. He used to have anti-Semitic demonstrations, though he got baptized recently. He was having a hard time then: things were wrong at work. But shortly after baptistery he found a job: he was giving a drive to a woman and she gave him her business card. He has worked for her since then and he likes his job. Vladimir is now patient to both faiths. He remembers his Jewish relatives. He recently went to the cemetery with me. He helped me to clean the graves.

My younger son Mikhail is very different: he is lively and active. I taught my sons to ski and skate. Vladimir preferred to sit on a bench, but Mikhail enjoyed skating. He is also talented. He also learned to play the violin. His teacher said: ‘He is a born musician’. He is an improviser by nature; it’s hard for him to play by notes. He can also play the piano. He says: ‘any conservatory musicians cannot play a piece without notes, but I can’. After the 8th form Mikhail finished a pedagogical school, he loves children. Then he finished the Faculty of Sound engineers of the Kiev Theatrical College. After the college he worked at a TV studio: he came home one, two o’clock in the morning from work and at 8am he went back to work. He finally quit this job and went to work as a scenery engineer at the Drama and Comedy Theater. Later he became a consultant for the Yamaha keyboard instruments. Mikhail got baptized when he was an adult. Mikhail is inclined to religion. I remain an atheist. Those who have shot children shot my hypothetical faith in God. If God is powerful and merciful, he shouldn’t allow this. Somebody wise said: ‘believers have no questions, they just believe, but atheists get no answers’. I’ve got no answers to my questions. There is no excuse to murder of children – children cannot be guilty.

When in the middle 1980s perestroika [28] began I felt positive about it. I’ve always been angry about this ban on traveling abroad: at least to visit and come back. I couldn’t understand that people had no choice. A person must have the right to speak his mind. I believe in the revealed facts of truth of our history, but I think this is not a whole truth and however much they write about it, it will never be enough. Even my mother who believed in the revolution and infallibility of Stalin and the party, had doubts in her old age. Once talking to her former colleague she said: ‘As it happens we did it all wrong’.

My brother Alexandr lives in Ashkelon with his wife Raya and son Mikhail. His son is 39, but he is single like my younger son. He works with a computer. It’s easier for him to work with a computer than people. He is a withdrawn person.

My mother had a stroke and poor sight. She used to say: ‘What kind of life is this? I cannot read. Take me to the cemetery’. I replied: ‘They don’t accept the living. You can watch TV here and what can they offer you there?’ And she said archly: ‘Who knows?’ My mother died on 2 June 1997. We buried her in the Jewish sector of the Baikovoye cemetery near grandmother Bela, Dosia and May.

I worked as a tutor in the children’s department of the railroad hospital for many years. There were 80 children under my tutorship. I arranged morning concerts for them, played the piano and the children performed. When my mother passed away I went to work for a private company since my salary wasn’t enough to even pay my apartment fee. I’ve written essays, my thoughts and considerations. I’ve never shown them to anyone, but I believed that one day there will be readers. My younger son visited Israel and liked it there. He decided to move there. I decided to go with him: we have a good understanding of each other and we are very close. In 1998 Mikhail finished a college and moved to Israel. In late 1999 I joined him there and I do not regret it. When I was leaving it was written in huge letters in front of my house: ‘Don’t sell Ukraine to zhydy!’

I left my notes with my friend Lera Rudenko. I arrived in Israel on 30 August 1999, and in December Lera sent me my notes published in the Samizdat as a birthday gift. Then I sent my notes to Kherson and this was my first book ‘Polyphony of memory’. My son and I published my 2nd book ‘Gust’ 0 poems of 1968–2003 in Israel. My 3rd book ‘No brakes’ and the 4th one ‘Stage’ were also published in Israel. The 5th book ‘Just a shadow’ is collection of poems. Now I am preparing for publication a children’s book for Katia. I brought the manuscripts of my books ‘Stage’ and ‘Polyphony of memory’ to the Ministry of Absorption in Israel. They were sent to Jerusalem where a commission of creative workers qualified me as a special master and awarded me the qualification of a writer. I received checks for the publication of my book ‘Stage’. This is my family chronicle on my father and mother’s side. My younger son Mikhail says that he will continue this chronicle.

Now we live in Ashkelon. Mikhail is doing well in Israel. He has learned the language. I had no problems with studying Hebrew. I can speak and write in it. There are groups of Yiddish studies. I also study there. There are many of our immigrants in Israel – they call us Russians.

Mikhail supports me a lot: he proofreads my books before publication. I also work as a typesetter maker of the books. He takes a model to Tel Aviv to a printing shop of my Moroccan acquaintances. They publish the books and Mikhail takes them to my customers. Mikhail worked in Jerusalem as a salesman in a shop of Yamaha instruments, and as a consultant for keyboard instruments. He witnessed 9 terrorist attacks near his company in Jaffa. He left this job and recently he found a job in Tel Aviv. He works as a sound engineer at a TV studio working with talented children. My son loves children and can work as a teacher, but he says: ‘Not before I turn 40, I am still young’. He is single. There is going to be a shop of musical instruments opened in Ashkelon. I hope Mikhail will get a job there. He has got a driving license, but he has no car yet. Mikhail is very sociable. He speaks good Ivrit. He has inclined to Judaism and identifies himself as a Jew. For example, he says: ‘Why don’t we attach a mezuzah to the door? What if somebody wants to bless our apartment and we have no mezuzah? Sometimes he says: ‘I want to feel myself a Jew’. He had a tallit on and had a tefillin tied to his hand. He celebrates Jewish holidays. It’s only natural in Israel: these are days off. My son doesn’t go to the synagogue, but he is a believer while I’ve remained an atheist.

I’ve taught children from the CIS countries and I am head of a literature club. Our children are more inquisitive than Israel children: they are used to studying. They miss much in their studies in Israel, but their children are happier. They run and play in the yard, even bigger children and this looks funny. Our children are more sportive: they are more active and insistent and put up with tough demands of their couches. Our children play football and compete in wrestling and when they are successful, they are granted citizenship and all rights.

I communicate with writers Leonid Finkel, Afina Gitina, poetess Alla Aisensharf and artist Kileinik in Ashkelon. Alla Aisensharf is my good friend though we are very different. I am fond of roller skating and swimming. I like receiving letters. I correspond with Lera Rudenko, my childhood friend, call my former classmate Lusia Korol. My cousin brothers Otto and Vladimir write me. Otto lives in Be’er Sheva and Vladimir lives in Haifa. Ninel and her daughter Olga are in Germany, we also keep in touch. Almost all of my relatives have left Kiev. I miss Vladimir, Katia and my friends in Kiev, but I do not regret moving to Israel.
Glossary:

[1] Russian Revolution of 1917: Revolution in which the tsarist regime was overthrown in the Russian Empire and, under Lenin, was replaced by the Bolshevik rule. The two phases of the Revolution were: February Revolution, which came about due to food and fuel shortages during World War I, and during which the tsar abdicated and a provisional government took over. The second phase took place in the form of a coup led by Lenin in October/November (October Revolution) and saw the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.
[2] Gangs: During the Russian Civil War there were all kinds of gangs in the Ukraine. Their members came from all the classes of former Russia, but most of them were peasants. Their leaders used political slogans to dress their criminal acts. These gangs were anti-Soviet and anti-Semitic. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children.
[3] Pogroms in Ukraine: In the 1920s there were many anti-Semitic gangs in Ukraine. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children.
[4] Greens: members of the gang headed by Ataman Zeleniy (his nickname means ‘green’ in Russian).
[5] 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.
[6] Guild I: In tsarist Russia merchants belonged to Guild I, II or III. Merchants of Guild I were allowed to trade with foreign merchants, while the others were allowed to trade only within Russia.

[7] Jewish Pale of Settlement: Certain provinces in the Russian Empire were designated for permanent Jewish residence and the Jewish population was only allowed to live in these areas. The Pale was first established by a decree by Catherine II in 1791. The regulation was in force until the Russian Revolution of 1917, although the limits of the Pale were modified several times. The Pale stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, and 94% of the total Jewish population of Russia, almost 5 million people, lived there. The overwhelming majority of the Jews lived in the towns and shtetls of the Pale. Certain privileged groups of Jews, such as certain merchants, university graduates and craftsmen working in certain branches, were granted to live outside the borders of the Pale of Settlement permanently.
[8] Famine in Ukraine: In 1920 a deliberate famine was introduced in the Ukraine causing the death of millions of people. It was arranged in order to suppress those protesting peasants who did not want to join the collective farms. There was another dreadful deliberate famine in 1930-1934 in the Ukraine. The authorities took away the last food products from the peasants. People were dying in the streets, whole villages became deserted. The authorities arranged this specifically to suppress the rebellious peasants who did not want to accept Soviet power and join collective farms.
[9] Babi Yar: Babi Yar is the site of the first mass shooting of Jews that was carried out openly by fascists. On 29th and 30th September 1941 33,771 Jews were shot there by a special SS unit and Ukrainian militia men. During the Nazi occupation of Kiev between 1941 and 1943 over a 100,000 people were killed in Babi Yar, most of whom were Jewish. The Germans tried in vain to efface the traces of the mass grave in August 1943 and the Soviet public learnt about mass murder after World War II.
[10] Denikin, Anton Ivanovich (1872-1947): White Army general. During the Russian Civil War he fought against the Red Army in the South of Ukraine.
[11] Five percent quota: In tsarist Russia the number of Jews in higher educational institutions could not exceed 5% of the total number of students.
[12] Iron Curtain: A term popularized by Sir Winston Churchill in a speech in 1946. He used it to designate the Soviet Union’s consolidation of its grip over Eastern Europe. The phrase denoted the separation of East and West during the Cold War, which placed the totalitarian states of the Soviet bloc behind an ‘Iron Curtain’. The fall of the Iron Curtain corresponds to the period of perestroika in the former Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany, and the democratization of Eastern Europe beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
[13] Enemy of the people: Soviet official term; euphemism used for real or assumed political opposition.
[14] 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.

[15] 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.

[16] Jewish collective farms: Such farms were established in the Ukraine in the 1930s during the period of collectivization.

[17] Zinoviev-Kamenev triumvirate: After Lenin’s death in 1924 communist leaders Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin formed a ruling triumvirate and excluded Trotsky from the Party. In 1925 Stalin, in an effort to consolidate his own power, turned against Zinoviev and Kamenev, who then joined Trotsky’s opposition. Both Zinoviev and Kamenev were expelled from the Party in 1927. They recanted, and were readmitted, but had little influence. In 1936 Zinoviev and Kamenev, along with 13 old Bolsheviks were tried for treason in the first big public purge trial. They confessed and were executed.

[18] Lenin (1870-1924): Pseudonym of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, the Russian Communist leader. A profound student of Marxism, and a revolutionary in the 1890s. He became the leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Social Democratic Party, whom he led to power in the coup d’état of 25th October 1917. Lenin became head of the Soviet state and retained this post until his death.

[19] Podol: The lower section of Kiev. It has always been viewed as the Jewish region of Kiev. In tsarist Russia Jews were only allowed to live in Podol, which was the poorest part of the city. Before World War II 90% of the Jews of Kiev lived there.
[20] The KGB or Committee for State Security was the main Soviet external security and intelligence agency, as well as the main secret police agency from 1954 to 1991.
[21] Communal apartment: The Soviet power wanted to improve housing conditions by requisitioning ‘excess’ living space of wealthy families after the Revolution of 1917. Apartments were shared by several families with each family occupying one room and sharing the kitchen, toilet and bathroom with other tenants. Because of the chronic shortage of dwelling space in towns communal or shared apartments continued to exist for decades. Despite state programs for the construction of more houses and the liquidation of communal apartments, which began in the 1960s, shared apartments still exist today.
[22] Korolenko, Vladimir (1853-1921): Russian writer and publicist, honorary member of the Petersburg and Russian Academies. His stories and novels are full of democratic and humane ideas; he criticized the revolutionary terror that seized the country after 1917.
[23] Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’: The campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’, i.e. Jews, was initiated in articles in the central organs of the Communist Party in 1949. The campaign was directed primarily at the Jewish intelligentsia and it was the first public attack on Soviet Jews as Jews. ‘Cosmopolitans’ writers were accused of hating the Russian people, of supporting Zionism, etc. Many Yiddish writers as well as the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested in November 1948 on charges that they maintained ties with Zionism and with American ‘imperialism’. They were executed secretly in 1952. The anti-Semitic Doctors’ Plot was launched in January 1953. A wave of anti-Semitism spread through the USSR. Jews were removed from their positions, and rumors of an imminent mass deportation of Jews to the eastern part of the USSR began to spread. Stalin’s death in March 1953 put an end to the campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’.
[24] Keep in touch with relatives abroad: The authorities could arrest an individual corresponding with his/her relatives abroad and charge him/her with espionage, send them to concentration camp or even sentence them to death.
[25] Struggle against religion: The 1930s was a time of anti-religion struggle in the USSR. In those years it was not safe to go to synagogue or to church. Places of worship, statues of saints, etc. were removed; rabbis, Orthodox and Roman Catholic priests disappeared behind KGB walls.
[26] Komsomol: Communist youth political organization created in 1918. The task of the Komsomol was to spread of the ideas of communism and involve the worker and peasant youth in building the Soviet Union. The Komsomol also aimed at giving a communist upbringing by involving the worker youth in the political struggle, supplemented by theoretical education. The Komsomol was more popular than the Communist Party because with its aim of education people could accept uninitiated young proletarians, whereas party members had to have at least a minimal political qualification.
[27] Residence permit: The Soviet authorities restricted freedom of travel within the USSR through the residence permit and kept everybody’s whereabouts under control. Every individual in the USSR needed residential registration; this was a stamp in the passport giving the permanent address of the individual. It was impossible to find a job, or even to travel within the country, without such a stamp. In order to register at somebody else’s apartment one had to be a close relative and if each resident of the apartment had at least 8 square meters to themselves.
[28] Perestroika (Russian for restructuring): Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s, associated with the name of Soviet politician Mikhail Gorbachev. The term designated the attempts to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized, market-oriented economy. Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratize the Communist Party organization. By 1991, perestroika was declining and was soon eclipsed by the dissolution of the USSR.