Travel

Busia Makalets
Kishinev
Moldova
Interviewer: Nathalia Fomina
Date of interview: May 2004

Busia Litmanovna Makalets is a loud expansive lady. Despite being 85 years of age she is full of energy and coquetry. When we met, she wore trousers and a dark sweater. She has silver gray hair, which reflected the dark color of her sweater, and a long fair shawl emphasized the elegance of her slim figure. Busia Litmanovna has extraordinary eyes: one blue and one green. They look enormous behind her glasses. She lives in a two-bedroom apartment in a Khrushchevka 1 house, though it’s furnished in such a way that the apartment looks spacious and cozy. The room where we had our conversation has soft beige wallpaper, there is a piano near the window, a table in the middle of the room, a few chairs, and a TV set in the corner. There is a cupboard and a bookcase by the wall. There are family pictures behind the glass. Busia Litmanovna tells me about her life with warmth and humor. She sings Jewish songs with perfect Yiddish intonation beautifully.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

My parents’ families lived in Poland, in the town of Vladimirets [Lutsk district, Volyn province; according to the 1987 census there were 2074 residents, 1024 of them were Jews]. In 1918, after World War I, Vladimirets was annexed to Poland. I came from Bessarabia 2 to visit Vladimirets for the first time before I turned six years old. We visited my maternal great-grandmother Cipora, whose surname I don’t remember. She was 105 years old. She couldn’t see anything due to her old age. She was sitting on the bed in a dark room with her feet down, and there were chickens running around on the ground floor. When I approached her, she hugged me and stroked my hair repeating, ‘Basia-Bunele, Basia-Bunele.’ I was called Busia at home and had never heard my Jewish name of Basia-Bunia at home before, and it seemed to me that Grandmother Cipora was teasing me. I felt hurt and burst into tears. Grandmother Cipora must have lived with one of her children and they must have been poor, judging by their house and earth-floors.

My maternal grandfather, David Tetelbaum, died before I was born. He was a cattle dealer. My grandfather must have died in the 1900s, since my brother David, born in 1910, was named after him. We lived in the house of my grandmother Golda-Leya Tetelbaum for almost ten years, but I have very dim memories of her. Of course my grandmother was very religious and observed all the Jewish traditions like all Jews in Vladimirets. I remember, when my older sister Tania sent a card with a photo of a woman wearing a swimming suit, my grandmother got very angry seeing this picture. She decided this was Tania and really told my mother off, saying that Tania was a frivolous woman. My grandmother had an ordinary house. I remember that when we moved in there from Bessarabia, my father modified the stove in the Bessarabian manner, fixing it with a metal rim on the edges.

I don’t know how many children Grandmother Golda had. My mother’s sister Tauba lived in Vladimirets. She had a store where she sold beer, I guess. She and my mother’s younger sister Zelda were killed in the ghetto [in Vladimirets] during the war. This is all I can remember about her.

I remember Zelda well. She was a bright person. Zelda and her husband Yakov Bass, a pharmacist, lived in Rafalovka, a Jewish town near Vladimirets. Besides selling medications, the pharmacist also recommended treatment and was a popular figure in the town. Yakov was a very intelligent person. Zelda liked singing. She took part in amateur concerts and traveled with her group to Vladimirets, and then there were posters saying, ‘Concert with Zelda Bass’ in the town. These concerts were usually arranged in somebody’s big shed and then all residents of Vladimirets attended them. There was no other entertainment in the town.

From what I remember, Zelda had three children: the sons Nathan and David and a daughter, Rivka. When the war began  3, Zelda and her children were kept in the ghetto in Vladimirets. As for Yakov, the locals convinced the Germans that they needed him, and the Germans left him alone. He came to Vladimirets to talk with his relatives, and the family decided that one of them had to stay free. I don’t quite remember what happened next, but somehow Yakov joined a partisan unit and his children David and Rivka and Nathan’s fiancée Fenia were with him there. From what I’ve been told, I remember that when they were escaping from the ghetto, Fenia kept a piece of matzah against her heart as a talisman that was supposed to save them.

Aunt Zelda and her older son Nathan were killed in the ghetto. Later Yakov married his deceased son’s fiancée and moved to Italy and from there – to Eretz Israel, where he published a book about his adventures during the war and anti-Semitism in the partisan unit. He also enclosed Zelda’s last letter in this book, I translated it from Yiddish: ‘Our dearest, we shall not lose our faith in God till the last minute. I kiss you, our darlings, be strong. Whatever happens, may the Lord help you. Zelda’, and a few words that Nathan wrote: ‘Greetings, Papa, David, Rivka, Fenia. We die proud. Be happy. Nathan’.

My mother, Esther Tetelbaum, was born in Vladimirets in 1882. My mother was very beautiful. That is, I think so now, looking at her photograph, but as a child I didn’t give it a thought. My mother must have been educated at home. She spoke fluent Yiddish, knew all the Jewish traditions and was a wonderful housewife. She was crazy about keeping the house ideally clean. My mother didn’t tell me how she met my father, but I think they married for love: their families were neighbors in Vladimirets.

I can't say what my paternal grandfather, Gersh Volok, did for a living. I met him, when he was very old and lived with his son’s family. He was a handsome Jew: with his beard, payes, wearing a black kitel. My grandfather’s appearance struck me. While living in Bolgrad, before we moved to Vladimirets, I didn’t meet such expressed Jews, and later I read about them in Sholem Aleichem 4 books. We kept my grandfather’s portrait for a long time at home and I’m so sorry it got lost. My paternal grandmother died so long ago. I don’t even remember her name. There was an old woman living with my grandfather, but she wasn’t my father’s mother.

I loved my grandfather dearly. I came to see my grandfather on Yom Kippur, before the Kol Nidre prayer, a known prayer before the Day of Atonement, and my grandfather laid his hands on my head and blessed me. After my father died, I heard and learned the song that I always associate with him: ‘Erev Yom Kippur, erev Kol Nidre, kind mayn zayt genetsht – before Yom Kippur, before Kol Nidre, may my child be blessed. Zayne bayde hande, zayne tzittern … – His both hands, his trembling…’

My grandfather died, when I was about 15 years of age. This happened in 1934. We came to his funeral from Bolgrad. I felt like crying, but I held back my tears for the fear that the boys I knew would think I pretended. My grandfather was buried in accordance with the ritual, of course. I remember that he was wrapped in a takhrikhim and there was a cover on him. There was no coffin and he was carried on a stretcher. I don’t remember how we sat shivah.

Of all of Gershl’s children I only remember my father’s brother, who lived with my grandfather. He was a Hasid 5 and was fanatically religious. I don’t remember his name. He had a beautiful daughter and a handsome son, who studied in the yeshivah. We had too little in common and didn’t communicate closely. They perished in the ghetto during the war.

My father, Litman Volok, was born in Vladimirets, in the Russian Empire in 1878. He finished a yeshivah and taught Hebrew and traditions. He spoke fluent Russian. My parents got married in the early 1900s. My father was in the tsarist army for four years during World War I, but I don’t know whether he took part in combat action. He returned home in 1918. At that time my parents lived in Cimislia in Bessarabia. By that time my parents had five children. My oldest brother Zelik was born in 1903 in Vladimirets, my second brother Boruch-Nathan was born in Cimislia in 1905, my older sister Tuba, whom we called Tania, was born in 1907, and the next two brothers Mikhail and David were born one after another [in 1909 and 1910, respectively].

Growing up

I was born in Cimislia in 1919. Even before I was born my parents decided on giving me the name of one of my paternal ancestors: Basia-Bunia. However, my father didn’t like this idea. When he went to the synagogue bringing vodka and honey cake, as was customary with Jews, he gave me the name of Busia. Our family moved to Bolgrad, when I was about a year old. My father taught Hebrew in a Jewish school called Tarbut 6 in Bessarabia. We, the children, spoke Hebrew at home. My mother understood Hebrew, but spoke Yiddish with us. I remember one summer my brothers Mikhail and David were arguing in Hebrew about which of them was going to pick a watermelon in the cellar. We had a blue box where my parents dropped money for the fund of Israel, this contribution was called Keren-Kayemet 7, which means that my parents were Zionists. My father loved Mama dearly and I remember my oldest brothers saying. ‘Papa is in love with Mama.’ I was three years old, when my brother Zelik went to the chalutzim camp, and then moved to Palestine in 1922 where he changed his name to Aviezer.

When I was about five years old, my 19-year-old brother Boruch-Nathan drowned in the river. I can still remember this horrible day in all details. It was Thursday, and on Thursday there was a brass orchestra playing on the boulevard where we lived. People went for a walk on the boulevard. Before going out I cried, asking Mama to let me wear a new marquisette dress, but my mother said that since there was no holiday there was no reason for me to wear the dress. I ran out and my tears dried out, when I heard the music. All of a sudden a bunch of boys surrounded me. They were shouting, ‘Your brother has drowned! Your brother has drowned!’ I didn’t understand what they meant and ran home. Mama was sitting in the yard having tea, holding a lump of sugar in her mouth. She asked me, ‘What’s up?’ and I replied, ‘The boys say that Boruch-Nathan had drowned.’

There were two exits from our yard: one to the boulevard and the other one to Magazinnaya Street leading to the river. When I said this, there was a roar of voices from the side of the river: ‘Uh-uh…’ that I could never forget. Mama fainted…  Then my sister Tania’s friend Esther took me to her place. I remember sitting on a windowsill in her house, crying. The dogs were barking. When my older brother living in Palestine heard that our brother had drowned, he changed his surname to Achinathan. ‘Achi’ is ‘my brother’ in Hebrew. Achinathan means ‘my brother Nathan.’ His name became Aviezer Achinathan. We corresponded with him before the war. He wrote that he worked in road construction and took part in the Haganah [defense organization].

That same year Tania finished a gymnasium in Bolgrad and moved to Aviezer in Palestine. My parents and I went to see our relatives in Vladimirets in Poland. Vladimirets belongs to Ukraine now, it is located near Sarny in Rovno region. The relatives started telling my parents, ‘Why live in a foreign land in Bessarabia, come move to Vladimirets.’ My parents left me with Grandmother and went to Bolgrad to pack our belongings and pick up Mikhail and David. So we moved to Vladimirets and stayed with Grandmother Golda-Leya.

Vladimirets was a typical Jewish town. For me it is the Kasrilovka of Sholem Aleichem [Kasrilovka is a fictitious name of a Jewish town in the works of Sholem Aleichem. Busia means to say that Jews in Vladimirets were as archaic as Jews in the tsarist Russia.] The population of Vladimirets was Polish, Russian and Jewish. The main street in Vladimirets was in the lowlands, and narrow streets started on both sides of it with houses on the slopes. Housewives threw buckets of waste water right into the streets. There were whitewashed houses with tiled roofs in the town. There were dirt roads with wooden walkways. There were two synagogues downtown and I remember that there was no peace between them. One synagogue stood for one rabbi and another one for a different one. There were even fights like there are in our parliament now.

My grandfather Gersh Volok’s house was on a hill, across the street from our house, and the synagogue was down the street. One winter day I watched my grandfather and an acquaintance of his sitting on the snow to slide down the street. Grandfather Gersh rarely visited us. My brothers didn’t wear hats, and when Grandfather Gersh came by, my brothers were running around turning everything upside down looking for their hats in panic. When my father asked Grandfather why he came to see us so rarely, my grandfather replied, ‘Why would I come by? When I do come, they start looking for their hats and there’s a lot of fuss. It’s no good.’

My father owned a private cheder in Vladimirets, where he taught Hebrew, the Tannakh and everything there was to teach. My father also prepared boys for their bar mitzvah. According to Jewish rules boys become men at the age of 13, when they wear tefillin and read a section from the Torah at the synagogue. My father didn’t go to the synagogue every day, but he fasted on Yom Kippur, went to the synagogue on holidays and strictly observed traditions. I remember his words: ‘Traditions have kept us as a nation. Traditions are most important.’

I went to school in Vladimirets. I attended a Polish school in the morning and after lunch I attended my father’s classes in Hebrew. I picked up Polish soon and I knew Hebrew since I was born. I remember that my Polish school allowed me a day off on Saturday. Basically, the Poles were rather anti-Semitic, but I didn’t feel it. We didn’t have the Polish citizenship and my brothers Mikhail and David served in the Romanian army since Bessarabians were Romanian citizens. Later they studied in the Teacher’s Training College in Rovno. In Vladimirets I joined the Zionist organization for young people, Hashomer Hatzair 8. We were dreaming of communism in Israel. So go to Israel and build communism there! Besides my preoccupation with Zionist ideas, I went out with boys and liked singing Jewish songs. I learned all Jewish songs I know in Vladimirets.

Our home was a Jewish home. My mother kept a kosher home and we strictly observed Sabbath. My mother cooked on Friday for Saturday. On Sabbath Mama lit candles and prayed over them.

We celebrated Pesach according to all the rules. There was a general clean-up before the holiday. Then my mother or father – I am not sure – swept out the chametz with a chicken feather. The whole family got together at the table on seder: Grandmother Golda-Leya, my mother and father, my brothers Mikhail and David and I. My father conducted the seder. I, being the youngest in the family, got up and said: ‘Abah ehal otha arba kashot? Hakasha harishona: mah nishtanah halaylah hazeh, mikol halaylot? In Hebrew: Papa, I will ask you four questions. Question one: Why is this night different from all other nights?’ My father reclined on a cushion and there was a piece of matzah hidden underneath. We were to find this matzah secretly, and the one who found it received a gift. I remember one present I got: a big ball with red dots. Why I remember this is because my brothers lost it, when playing with it. There were candles burning, and we were all waiting for Eliah the Mashiyah, Eliah Hanavi, to come in. I waited for him so much in my childhood, but of course, I always fell asleep!

On Rosh Hashanah apples and honey were served. It was always cold in Vladimirets on Sukkot for some reason, and though we installed a sukkah in the yard, we didn’t have meals in it. The climate in Poland was colder than in Bessarabia.

I remember my father giving me Chanukkah gelt on Chanukkah. I knew a song: Chanukkah, Chanukkah, a yomtev a shayner, a lustiger und a fraylicher. Nicht noch azoyner… Which means: ‘Chanukkah, Oh Chanukkah, a fine holiday, a happy and a joyful one. There is no such another one’…  We played with the whipping top. Our chanukkiyah was different from what they have now: it had oil lights that were small round vessels with special Chanukkah oil and wicks in them. My mother added another light each night.

I put on my mother’s coat, a mask and glued on some sort of a beard on Purim and went to give performances in the houses with other children. People gave us some change and we contributed to the fund of Keren Kayemet.

In 1930 my sister Tania visited Vladimirets from Palestine. She was very beautiful and wore different clothes from what women in Vladimirets wore: they had an open neck and short sleeves. She had an unhappy love affair in Palestine: her fiancé moved to America and my sister came to Vladimirets. She didn’t take any interest in young people from Vladimirets, for a whole year she grieved after her young man. However, she took an interest in the Jewish life in Vladimirets.

On some holiday a rebbe from Rovno visited Vladimirets. This was a great event: people got together at the synagogue and brought food with them: I think it was cholent. The rebe gave out this food with his hands, and people grabbed it from him to receive his blessing. One day Tania also went to the synagogue. My father, a respectable Jew in the town, told us later, ‘Everything grew dark in my eyes! All of a sudden I saw my daughter wearing a sleeveless dress standing almost beside the rebbe’. Tania got so absorbed and eager to miss no details that she had quite forgotten that women weren’t supposed to be with men at the synagogue and had to have their arms covered down to their elbows.

A year later Tania moved to France, where her friends from Bolgrad studied: Esther Fishman and Fira Yagolnizer. They had corresponded. In Paris she entered the Chemical Faculty of the University, where she communicated with French Communists and met her future husband. It was also an interesting story. Her friend Esther fell in love with Paul-Christian Megrain, but didn’t dare to tell him about her feelings. My sister went to tell him the story. This matchmaking ended in Christian’s proposal to Tania. She became his wife around 1932. Tania didn’t tell our parents that her husband was French for quite a while. She only called him Paul in her letters, and our parents thought he was a French Jew. We were a patriarchal family, and my parents didn’t approve of this marriage, of course. 

At some point of time my parents felt rather uncomfortable with their material situation in Poland – this coincided with Golda-Leya’s death – and decided to go back to Bolgrad in Bessarabia. My parents and I moved to Bolgrad in 1932, I think. We rented an apartment from Kuchiniaev, who was probably a Bulgarian. There were many Bulgarians in Bolgrad. There was a Christian church in the center of the town on the boulevard and there was a town garden nearby. Arecurrent theme of my childhood: people strolled on the boulevard here as well, there was a stage and an orchestra playing on it on Thursday. There were many stores owned by Jews. I remember the owner of the fabric store named Gesermann. My father went to teach in the Tarbut in Bolgrad.

I didn’t know a word in Russian or Romanian. The first word that I learned in Romanian was viata – ‘life.’ I was full of life and shouted: ‘Viata!’ and threw myself into the snow till I fell ill with pleurisy. All doctors in Bolgrad were taking care of me: I was Mademoiselle Volok, Mr. Volok’s daughter, who was a teacher. They didn’t charge me for respect for my father. I began to read popular books to pick up Romanian. This was a collection of books published in Romania. There were Stephan Zweig and Somerset Maugham in this collection.

I continued to study in a secondary school in Bolgrad since I didn’t know Romanian to go to a gymnasium. Of course, the boys and girls of my age were excited about my coming to Bolgrad: a very tall girl that can sing well and has an unusual biography. I made many friends and got two lifetime friends: Sara Shlimovich and Nesia Fridman. There was no Hashomer Hatzair in Bolgrad, but there were two other organizations: Gordonia, named after Judah Gordon [Gordon, Judah Leib (1830-1892) Russian poet, essayist, and novelist, considered the leading poet of the Haskalah, the 18th and 19th-century movement for enlightenment among Central and Eastern European Jews. His use of Biblical and post-Biblical Hebrew resulted in a new and influential style of Hebrew-language poetry. His line ‘Be a Jew in your tent and a man when leaving it’ became a motto of Jewish enlighteners of the time], and the extreme right organization Betar – the organization of revisionists 9 of Jabotinsky 10. We believed Betar members to be Jewish Fascists, and I joined the Gordonia. To be frank, I didn’t quite understand all the ideological details. For me, the most important thing was a club where I could sing. Singing was my passion. I remember rowing with my brothers and my close friends Sara and Nesia and I was singing on this night with a full moon and there was a caravan of boats following us – people were listening to me singing.

My father guessed about my creative aspirations. He understood me and I enjoyed spending time with him, while my mother was a common Jewish woman. She took care of the household and always wanted me to become a good housewife. When she was cleaning and took all the pillows outside, I would take a book lying on top of the pillows and started reading. Can you imagine my mother’s response to this? I also liked standing before an open window singing. My mother could interrupt me: ‘Busia, go wash the dishes!’ This got on my nerves and I thought she didn’t understand me. I feel so sorry, when I think about it now.

Or another episode: I am cleaning a window at my mother’s request, doing her a big favor, when my friends go by. They said: ‘Busia, Arlazorov was killed!’ [Arlazorov, Chaim Victor (1899-1933):  one of the leaders of the Zionist workers’ movement, member of the Board of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency since 1931. In 1933 he was actively involved in the organization of mass aliyah of Jews from Nazi Germany. In June 1933 he was killed during a walk in Tel Aviv. Many members of the workers’ movement believed their political opponents, the followers of Jabotinsky to be guilty of the murder of Arlazorov, though the latter denied this bluntly.] Arlazorov was killed! And revisionists and Betar members were suspected. Of course, I gave up cleaning the window and rushed to the organization. I don’t know why they suspected the revisionists. In the evening, and I remember this episode in all details, we, the Gordonists, stood by an open window of the locale – this was how this club of revisionists was called – and heard their leader say, ‘Our friend Arlazorov’… And when we heard this ‘Our friend Arlazorov,’ we threw as many stones into the window, as we could find.

I finished my school and was to decide about my future studies. My father heard about the teachers’ training workshop in Chernovtsy [today Ukraine] where they taught Hebrew. I went to Chernovtsy and entered this teachers’ training workshop. I rented a room from a Jewish family: a widow and her two sons. I made friends with Kubi, the younger one. Kubi’s family was not religious. They were leading a more secular way of life than our family. Anyway, I felt quite comfortable staying with them. Kubi helped me to study German and I started reading in German. I don’t remember any anti-Semitism in Chernovtsy at that time, but it also needs to be mentioned that I was fond of Zionist ideas and socialized with Jews for the most part. I even knew a few underground Communists who had been in Doftan, the main political jail in Bucharest. There was one Gypsy in our organization. I knew about the following Romanian Fascists organizations: Iron Guard 11, Cuzists 12. When I was in Chernovtsy, the Iron Guard in Bucharest was defeated, and there were rumors about dead Iron Guard members in the streets of Kishinev [Chisinau in Moldovan]. My favorite subject in the workshop was music taught by a professor, a former teacher of Josef Schmidt, a famous singer in Romania. When the professor was introducing his students to an official inspecting the workshop, he said about me: ‘As for this girl, she will earn her living with her voice.’ 

There were many cases of tuberculosis in Bolgrad and my parents were very concerned about my condition after I had pleurisy. They took a loan from a Jewish bank to buy me a trip to the Piatra Neamt Mountains. When Tania was visiting us from Paris in 1935, I was to go to Brasov. Tania changed her plan to spend her vacation with her friends and took me to Brasov [today Romania]. I enjoyed the trip with my favorite sister. However, I was an eccentric and spoiled girl, a bad one, frankly speaking, and my Romanian was rather poor. We rented a room from a Romanian family, and almost at once I started a romance with Uce, a young Romanian guy. Tania was staying in the apartment and I went out with Uce. I could hardly understand what he was telling me, but I felt like telling him something sweet. I remembered the word ‘bula’ and said it, though I didn’t remember the meaning. When Uce heard me saying this word, we turned home right away and he said a rather dry ‘good bye.’ I was upset and couldn’t fall asleep for a long time, till my sister asked: ‘What is it?’ When she heard what happened she almost fell from her bed. She was fluent in Romanian. Bula was a ‘bull’ in Romanian and we laughed and laughed in our beds.

In 1940 the Soviets ‘liberated’ Moldavia [Moldova in Moldovan] 13 However, they truly freed us from the Fascists. Private stores in Bolgrad were closed and wealthier people were exiled. They closed the Tarbut and my father lost his job. However, he knew Russian and they sent him to teach Russian in a village. Submitting my certificate from the workshop I entered the Kishinev teachers’ training college to study by correspondence.

During the war

When the war began in 1941, we already knew how Germans treated Jews. We listened to the radio, and besides, I remembered Hitler’s speeches at the time when Bessarabia belonged to Romania. My older brother Mikhail was mobilized to the labor army 14, David and I evacuated, like most young people did. Our parents refused to go with us. ‘Who cares about old people? – my father said. – But you need to go’. We went to Odessa via Akkerman [today Belgorod-Dniestrovskiy]. I had never seen the sea before, and when we got off the boat, I decided to wash my feet. It never occurred to me that the depth there was a few meters and if David hadn’t stopped me, somebody would have had to rescue me. We stayed in the railway station garden for two weeks. Then a Jewish woman from Odessa gave us shelter for a few days. I only remember that her name was Bunia. I also remember Bunia stating rather authoritatively: ‘Stalin? But he is a Jew.’

Odessa was encircled and David went to the evacuation agency every day, trying to obtain a direction for evacuation. We were accommodated in the university hostel. There were bombings in July. Every morning we bought bread in a nearby store, but one morning this store was pulled down. Then my brother obtained permission for us to evacuate. We were to be taken to the harbor by military trucks. David and I boarded different trucks. On our way to the harbor another air raid began. We scattered around and I lost my brother. I spent that night in a house and in the morning I went to the harbor. Our ship happened to have left for Novorossiysk that night, but David was waiting for me at the harbor. We boarded another boat and got to Novorossiysk successfully.

From Novorossiysk we took a train to Kazakhstan, Balkhash. From there David went to the labor army. Having my documents about finishing the workshop and one year of the teachers’ training college I went to the town education department and they sent me to teach German in a secondary school. I worked there for six months. I kept thinking about my parents: we heard on the radio about German atrocities against Jews. There were first gray streaks in my hair at that time. I could not forgive myself for letting Mama and Papa stay.

In 1942 my friends Sara and Nesia found me. They were in Buguruslan where our teachers’ training college evacuated. I went to Buguruslan with them. On the way there my belongings were stolen. I lost all of my winter clothes. My friends shared their clothes with me. I can’t remember what kind of a coat I had, but we had one pair of valenki boots [Russian winter boots made of felt] for the three of us and we took turns wearing them. We rented an apartment and Sara’s sister Lyuba was also with us.

One day our landlady sent a messenger to the college to tell me that my brother was waiting for me. I rushed home. What happened was that the labor army dismissed all former Romanian citizens since Romania was an ally of the Germans. David had no clothes under his winter jacket. Sara, Nesia and I collected clothes for him in our college. David found a job in our college – he studied in the Teachers’ Training College in Rovno, when we lived in Poland. David and Sara’s future husband Yakov rented a room. We spent our time in college together. We didn’t face any anti-Semitism in evacuation, but I remember one episode that seemed funny to me. Once Sara and I were walking home from college and some local boys shouted at Sara: ‘Sarochka! Sarochka!’ [the main characters in Russian anti-Semitic jokes were Abram and Sara]. I asked Sara: ‘How come they know your name?’ It never occurred to me that they were teasing her.

When Kishinev was liberated in 1944, we went there with our Teachers’ Training College. On the first days of my stay there I bumped into our neighbor from Bolgrad, who told me that Mama and Papa were shot in 1941. I was a fifth-year student and we lived in a hostel. We often ran to the market to buy some food. In fall we liked ‘most’ – fresh grape juice. They made young wine from it and farmers were selling it in barrels.

After the war

One day my friend Lora Schlein and I bumped into Petre Scherban, her acquaintance. He knew that Lora had a high soprano and I had a contralto. He said that the Republican Radio Committee was organizing the ‘Moldova’ choir. Lora and I went for the audition. I sang a Moldovan song; singing a Jewish song was out of the question considering the times. I got a job and entered the Vocal Department in the Conservatory. My teacher was Professor Dolev, who taught Ognivtsev, a Soviet singer, soloist of the Bolshoy Theater. I noticed a young man in the choir. He was wearing a military uniform and sang in the tenor group. I asked my friend Liya Barladian, ‘Who is this guy whose eyes are burning like the eternal fire?’ and she replied, ‘He is a very gifted boy, very gifted! He studies at the Composer’s Department of the Conservatory’. Well, this was my future husband Yevgeniy Makalets.

Yevgeniy was born in Comrat in 1921 and was the only child of his parents. Later his family moved to Kishinev. His father Ivan Makalets, a Moldovan, was a chanter in a church choir. His mother Anna Makalets, Russian, was a housewife. Yevgeniy finished a gymnasium in Kishinev. and was recruited to the Romanian army, when World War II began in 1939. He was a teterist [civilian]. The Bessarabians had to decide whether they were going to the front or wanted to be released from military service. Yevgeniy thought all night through and decided against going to the front. When Germany attacked the USSR, he was in evacuation in Central Asia and later served in the Soviet army. In 1945 he entered the Composers’ Department of the Conservatory in Kishinev and also worked in our choir. 

When I met Yevgeniy, I was renting a small room with a window in the ceiling. That was when I read a book about artists entitled ‘The attic of dreams.’ I often felt ill and sent notes to the choir: ‘I’m not feeling well and won’t come to the rehearsal.’ Yevgeniy came to see me. He stole boiled beans from his mother to bring them to me. We were happy. One night he said, ‘I’m leaving earlier tonight. It’s my mother’s birthday.’ When he left, I felt sad. I boiled some water to wash my hair, when all of a sudden I heard: ‘Attention! – this was quite in his manner – the order of the commander is to make your appearance at a birthday!’ I hurriedly put on my only fancy blouse from an American parcel – I received it in the Radio Committee, and we went to visit his mother. She lived in a one-bedroom apartment in the semi-basement of the house. Yevgeniy’s father had died. Her friends were sitting at the table. And she introduced me loudly: ‘Meet my son’s wife!’ And her friends screamed: ‘Zhenechka!’ [affectionate of Yevgeniy] Jee, how horrible!

Shortly afterward we registered our marriage and my landlady allowed Yevgeniy to move into ‘the attic of dreams.’ I quit the conservatory and went to work as a music editor in the Radio Committee. Yevgeniy became a choir master of the ‘Moldova’ choir. After finishing the conservatory he became its artistic director. In the first years of our family life we changed apartments. We lived in a small kitchen. There was a door, but no windows. There were a few planks on the floor and the rest of it was ground. We also stayed with my mother-in-law for some time. We slept on a wooden couch in the kitchen. My mother-in-law gave us pillows. We were very poor. When my mother-in-law died, we rented a one-bedroom apartment where we had a sofa.

In 1949 our daughter was born. I named her Tatiana after my sister. I already knew that Tania was gone. Shortly after the war – I don’t know for sure, when – her husband Christian Megrain visited Kishinev; he was an activist of the Communist party of France and was allowed to travel to the USSR. He told me about the wartime. When Paris was occupied in 1941, the Gestapo came for them one night. Christian and Tania grabbed their little daughter Monique and jumped out of the window. They were hiding in apartments of their Communist comrades for some time before they got to the unoccupied part of France. Tania died of a heart attack in 1942, when her daughter Monique was seven years old. She was buried there, but I don’t remember in which town. I have a photo of her grave. Some time later Christian married a Polish Jewish woman. Her name was Frania. She was also a Communist and both of them arrived in the USSR. Frania knew Russian and was an interpreter for us. They became very close to my family and me, my brothers Mikhail and David, who also lived in Kishinev. I also went to Moscow visiting Christian and Frania, who often traveled to Moscow.

During the period of the Doctors’ Plot 15 in 1953 I worked at the music editing office. I was to schedule the pianists, violinists and opera singers’ concerts on the radio… My family name was Makalets, and only very few people knew I was a Jew. One of these days the leading singer in our opera theater came to the editing office – I’d rather not mention his name. He said, ‘Have you heard, Busia Litmanovna, that they will fire all Jewish employees from the Radio committee. Now they’ll see!’ He was rather stunned, when he heard that I was a Jew. Fortunately, his words didn’t come true. I kept my job. During the Soviet regime, people working for radio, TV, newspapers were always related to ideology and policy thereof. When my husband became an artistic director of the choir, he had to join the Party. He became a candidate to the Party, when some rascal reported on him that he was a former Romanian officer, though he had only been a soldier, and that his father was a priest, though he just managed the choir. A party meeting expelled him from candidateship to the Party. He submitted a letter of resignation from the Radio committee. However, the times changed and he resumed his work.

Though the Khrushchev 16 and Brezhnev 17 periods were significantly different from the Stalin period, I remember, when Rostropovich [Rostropovich, Mstislav Leopoldovich (1927): one of the greatest cellists in the world of the 20th century] and Vishnevskaya [Vishnevskaya, Galina Pavlovna (1926): singer (soprano), soloist of the Bolshoy Theater (1952-1974), moved abroad in 1974] gave Solzhenitsyn 18 shelter at their dacha before he was sent into exile, they were immediately enrolled on the list of those, whose names couldn’t be mentioned on the air. We received such lists regularly. At one time mentioning Dunayevskiy [Isaac Dunayevskiy (1900-1955): a popular Soviet composer, Jew] wasn’t allowed due to some occurrence with his son. I remember, when Kiril Kondrashyn moved abroad, his name was forbidden, though most opera performances of the Bolshoy Theater were taped, when he conducted the orchestra. And there were many such cases. [Kondrashyn, Kirill Petrovich (1914-1981):  conductor, Professor of Moscow conservatory. In 1943-1956 – conductor in the Bolshoy Theater, in 1960-1975 – chief conductor of the orchestra of the Moscow philharmonic. In 1978 he moved to the Netherlands. Since 1984 an international contest of young conductors named after Kondrashyn has taken place in Amsterdam.]

I liked my job as music editor. I liked working in the record library, listening and selecting recordings of music pieces to include them in radio concerts. I also made montages of opera performances and had over 200 of them. Before a performance there was to be a story about the composer, the author of the performance, and I selected an actor to read these stories. For ten years I conducted programs about Moldovan music on the radio. Every Friday the Union of composers of Moldova had auditions of new music pieces and I always got invitations there. I spoke to many Moldovan composers. Vasiliy Zagorskiy, who was chairman of the ‘Union of Composers of Moldavia,’ was my friend. He’s passed away, and I miss talking to him, sharing my thoughts. I also knew Tamara Cheban, a popular Moldovan singer. We met in a studio, when the Moldova choir performed on the radio: Tamara was a soloist. When her part was over, she turned her face to the choir, making funny faces and we were not to laugh since it had to be quiet in the studio. Tamara was smart and cheerful. She was the only Moldovan Prima Donna and was known all over the Soviet Union. When she was awarded the title of People’s Artist, she quit the Radio committee and went to work in the philharmonic.

In the early 1960s we finally received our first two-bedroom apartment with all comforts [running water, toilet]. The Radio committee built a house for its employees. I remember that that year my daughter Tania and I went to a resort in Truskavets in Lvov region [today Ukraine)] for patients with liver problems. I had liver problems and the local water ‘Naftusia’ was good for me. My husband stayed at home waiting for an apartment. When we returned, he met us at the railway station and took us to the new apartment without saying a word about it. My older brother Aviezer visited us in this apartment.

We didn’t correspond after the war 19, but when Israel was established in 1948, and the USSR acknowledged it officially, there were visitors coming from there. From them I heard that Aviezer was doing well. He had a wife and two daughters: Dahlia and Esther. He was a co-owner of a small cinema theater in Tel Aviv. I didn’t mention at work that I had a brother in Israel and a niece in France, fearing to lose my job in the Radio committee. I was also concerned about my husband’s position and was reluctant to invite Aviezer. In the early 1960s our close acquaintance arrived and asked me in my husband’s presence: ‘Can Aviezer come to visit?’ I was confused, my husband hit his fist on the table: ‘Why! Of course, he must!’ In summer 1963 my brother was to arrive in Odessa on a boat. I secretly told my boss that my brother was visiting me from Israel and he let me go and meet him. My brothers Mikhail and David went with me. We were standing on the pier. It was crowded with people meeting their relatives and I was confused, trying to find my brother, when I heard: ‘Busele!’ My brother recognized me from photographs. 

We came to Kishinev, and I tried to keep quiet about his arrival. There were employees of the radio committee living in the house. My brother Aviezer was surprised: ‘Sister, why do we talk so quietly?’ I also told him then, ‘Don’t you dare to go to the synagogue!’ Israelis used to go to the synagogue, telling people about the synagogue. Aviezer promised me to keep silent. Once he came from the synagogue and told me that there was a meeting with a group of Israelis arranged by the town authorities. They were telling them about the wonderful reconstruction of Kishinev. ‘And here I couldn’t hold it longer and said ‘Do come to Jerusalem, if you want to see a miracle, look at all the construction there!’ I almost fell from my chair – this was how he kept his word! Once he was helping me with dishwashing and said, ‘Sister, I am not a composer like your husband, or a music editor like you. But my apartment is more beautiful than yours, if you’ll excuse me.’ When my brothers and I went to take him to Odessa, he wanted to buy souvenirs before leaving for Israel and was surprised to see no smiles on the vendors’ faces. ‘Sister, aren’t they interested in selling things?’ When we were sitting in the harbor I felt like boasting of something – I was a Soviet person, wasn’t I? I pointed at the dressed up Odessites: ‘Look how well they are dressed.’ ‘Sister, but you have a poor life!’ 

My husband and I were of different nationalities, but it never caused any conflicts. We were a close family. Yevgeniy was a nice person: intelligent, kind, very natural and easy-going. You know, the more educated a person is, the easier it is to communicate with him. We got along well, though I was far more expansive. Our work drew us closer together, and I was his first critic. Once, his choir singers came to invite me to a jubilee of their choir saying: ‘But you are our first critic.’

Our daughter grew up in a wonderful warm atmosphere of love. Tatiana was a ‘home child.’ She didn’t go to kindergarten or any pioneer camps 20. When Tatiana was little, we had a housemaid who lived with us, did the cooking and cleaning. Her name was Vera, she came from a village. I often came to work and they weren’t at home. I remember once I found them near the cemetery: Vera had a date with a soldier, and the soldier was holding Tania. When we moved to the new apartment, my neighbor, who worked as a cleaning lady in the radio committee, helped me to clean my apartment. I did the cooking myself after work and often stayed in the kitchen till late. I was a good housewife and liked inviting guests.

My brothers Mikhail and David and their families lived in Kishinev. They were accountants: Mikhail worked in the housing agency and David worked in a canteen. David and his wife Olga and Mikhail and Charna and we got together on birthdays and Soviet holidays. My friends Sara and Nesia were also with us. When we got together, I sang Jewish songs. My husband loved listening to me and played the piano for me. He also recorded my singing. I still have these recordings and also, recordings of my husband’s music and his songs with the lyrics written by Moldovan authors. 

We were not wealthy – I was no good at saving money, but in summer we went to resorts on the Black Sea, in Gagry. For this I always had to borrow money from my acquaintances or my brother David. We rented a room and lay in the sun and bathed in the sea. I was always so concerned that my husband was a year and a half younger than me. When we were in Gagry, I overheard his conversation with our landlady. I went up the stairs to the house and they were still downstairs. She asked him, ‘How old are you?’ And he added two years, I heard. He came into the house and I asked him, ‘Listen, what nonsense did you tell her?’ He embraced me and said, ‘But you are such a fool ‘…  I went to recreation homes in Yessentuki and Truskavets. After my husband died, I went to Yalta in the Crimea with my daughter.

Tatiana was a nice and quiet girl. She went to a Russian school. There was no anti-Semitism there. She had Russian, Moldovan and Jewish friends – it made no difference. Sara’s daughter Taya was her best friend. They grew up together like sisters. Tatiana fell ill in the tenth grade of school. There was an X-ray to be submitted to college with all other documents, and hers showed a dark patch in her lungs. The doctors suspected tuberculosis of her lungs. My husband and I were horrified. It’s hard to tell what we lived through. Our acquaintances helped us to arrange for Tatiana to stay in the tuberculosis hospital for a check up. When we were to go there to get to know the results, I was sitting in my editing office exhausted and asked my husband to go there alone. When he left, I couldn’t do any work. He returned. He had a habit of jokingly commanding in a military manner. He commanded: Attention! This was so different from how I felt that I recalled a Yiddish saying: ‘A goy will be a goy’, when he smiled: ‘Tomorrow our daughter is going home!’ ‘How come she’s coming home?!’ – ‘This was a shadow of her plait!’ Tatiana had gorgeous thick hair like I did when I was young. Tatiana wore it in two plaits. She forgot about one plait, when the X-ray was done.

Tatiana didn’t think of becoming a doctor after finishing school. She was terribly afraid of blood. When I was preparing a chicken in the kitchen, she ran away to the farthest room. Due to this incident with a wrong diagnosis Tatiana missed her entrance exams to college and went to work as an attendant in the surgery in a hospital. In the course of this year Tatiana decided to become a doctor. We hired teachers to prepare her for the entrance exams. She went to take exams to the Pediatric College in Leningrad, the only Pediatric College in the country. Tatiana passed her exams. She and a friend of hers rented a room. She studied very well. The Soviet regime did much harm and I have my claims to it, but there were positive things as well. For example, free higher education. Tatiana finished the college and got a job assignment 21 to Berezniki in Perm region [today Russia]. She worked in the ambulance for three years. Then she returned to Kishinev and went to work in that same hospital where she worked as an attendant.

I wasn’t assimilated, but I didn’t try to move to Israel either. We are not so active: my husband, Tatiana or myself. However, Israel is a dear word for me: the Promised Land – these are not mere words for me. I remember how we listened to the BBC during the Six-Day-War 22. Tatiana, who was a student, used to say, ‘Mama, you keep quiet!’ Because I was subjective. My husband said: We won’t give Jerusalem to them [Arabs]!’ My brother Mikhail moved to Israel in the 1970s. I remember how his son Grigoriy went to Moscow to obtain a permit for departure and even asked Sakharov 23 for help. I remember that we didn’t go to the railway station to see Mikhail and his family off since we were afraid. My brother understood it. He knew it might cause problems at work. In the 1980s Grigoriy married an American Jewish woman and they moved to Philadelphia in the USA.

In 1972 my dear friend Sara died. Nesia and I looked after her in the hospital in her last days. Before she died, Sara said to her husband Yakov and Nesia, who was single: ‘Stay together’ and Nesia and Yakov got married four yeas later. Later they moved to Israel. 

My husband and I lived together for 33 years. He died from his third heart attack in 1979. I was a pensioner [in the Soviet Union the pension age was 55], but I still worked. I worked for the radio for 30 years. My boss was the wife of Petru Zadnipru [1927-1976], a Moldovan poet. She was a terrible anti-Semite. She didn’t promote me to senior editor, though de facto I was a senior editor. When she became a widow, she used to come to me at work. I am not a rancorous person. We became friends and even used to have a drink together. I joked: ‘Besides being a zhydovka, [abusive term for Jewish women], I became a drunkard.’

Tatiana didn’t get married for a long time. She grew up in this kind of family and had high standards. She refused all her admirers. Once she went to do an inspection in a district hospital where she met her future husband Vladimir Kasymov. He fell in love with her and waited for her consent for eight years. I liked him a lot and wanted Tatiana to marry him. She gave her consent in 1990. In 1991 her son was born and she named him Yevgeniy after her father. After their son was born they went to the registry office to register their marriage. I was waiting outside with Zhenechka [affectionate for Yevgeniy] in his pram. When they registered their marriage, Vladimir asked the master of ceremony, ‘Would you like to see our son?’ and she replied, ‘I would”. She came to look at the baby.

Tatiana and Vladimir rented an apartment before they moved into Sara Shlimovich’s daughter Taya’s apartment, after she moved to Israel with her family. Taya left her apartment and everything in it to Tatiana. My brother Mikhail and relatives in Israel partially compensated Taya for this apartment. My brothers always tried to help, whenever they could. David died in 1999 in Kishinev, and Mikhail died in Philadelphia in 2002.

During perestroika 24 Christian and Frania visited Kishinev and made me a surprise, bringing my niece Monique with them. I told Monique about her mother and Monique got attached to me and Tatiana. I also love her dearly. She visited us three times. Monique studies Russian to be able to talk to us. When I talk with her on the phone, I really get exhausted. Unfortunately, I lost contact with Aviezer’s daughters and grandchildren. They don’t know Russian or Yiddish, and I almost forgot Hebrew and it’s hard to communicate.

I knew little about the revival of Jewish life in Kishinev in the 1990s. I didn’t even know about Hesed 25. However, they found me and put me on the lists of Hesed. I became an active member of the community, particularly since I knew Hebrew and can sing Jewish songs. I attend the warm house where I told my aunt Zelda’s story and sang Jewish songs. However, lately I’ve felt ill twice due to the spasm of vessels. I don’t leave home alone. A few times a month they send a car to take me to the warm house. I pay for the apartment and utility fees from my pension. I refused the food packages since it is hard for me to cook. I am 85 years old. Hesed delivers dinners for me at home twice a week. I have these trousers and slippers from Hesed. My posh quilt blanket is also from Hesed. I mean to say my well-being is Hesed.

My grandson Yevgeniy knows that on his mother’s side he is a Jew. He studies in a Moldovan school by the German system of Waldorf. [The aim of Waldorf schooling is to educate the whole child, “head, heart and hands.”] He is a talented boy. He knows Moldovan and German. He’s been in a Jewish camp twice. I asked him, ‘How are the Jewish children? – and he replied, ‘Grandma, there are many Jewish boys like me there.’

Glossary

Polina Leibovich
Kishinev
Moldova
Interviewer: Nathalia Fomina
Date of interview: March 2004

Polina Leibovich is a short young-looking lady, with dark hair with hardly any gray streaks. She has smooth skin with a slightly pink complexion. She speaks looking at her counterpart intently. One can observe a strong and independent character and a great sense of dignity behind her pleasant and gentle manners. During our conversation, Polina asked for a break every now and then. She has hypertension and suffers from frequent headaches. Being 79 years old, Polina still shows interest in people and the taste of life: during intervals she willingly talked about literature, theater and modern cinema. She lives in a two-bedroom apartment with all comforts on the first floor of an apartment building in the quiet Rykhanovka district in the center of Kishinev. Polina leases a smaller room to two students of Kishinev University - she likes having young company. Polina’s room is clean and spacious. There is a couch covered with a plaid, a big cabinet with a cupboard and a bookcase by the wall, a low table and two armchairs by the window in her room. She willingly agreed to tell us the story of her life and her family, though she mentioned at the very beginning that she wasn’t going to talk about the Holocaust. However, at the end of our discussion she told us a few episodes from this tragic period of her life. She wanted to mention the people who helped her to survive. We sat at the big dinner table during our conversation having tea with candy which has been Polina’s weakness since childhood.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

When I was born, my parents were old people, so they told me about my grandparents. My maternal grandfather, Gersh Iris, came from Kishinev in Bessarabia 1. My grandfather was a soldier in Nikolai’s army 2. He served in the tsarist army for 25 years. I don’t know whether he was a cantonist 3, but he never quit his Judaic faith. According to my mother, my grandfather had a business and provided well for his family. My grandmother, Cipora, was a housewife like all Jewish women at that time. I only know four of my grandparents’ children, including my mother.

My mother’s older brother, Samuel Iris, was an actor. I don’t know what town he lived in, but he worked in the popular Jewish drama troupe of Fischzon touring across Ukraine. Uncle Samuel moved to South America before I was born where he wrote plays in Yiddish for the Jewish theater. I don’t know whether he had a family or when he died.

My mother’s second brother, Yakov, was also born in Kishinev. When the Romanians occupied Kishinev in 1918, he moved to Paris, France, with his family. I can’t remember what he did for a living. I think he was a businessman and he must have been successful. His family was very wealthy. Yakov had three sons, my cousin brothers. One of them was called Shymon. He was an engineer, and then there was Avraam, another son, who was an artist. I don’t know the name of the third son or his occupation. One of the brothers had a son, born in France. His name was Lucien and at home he was called Loulou. Loulou was a very beautiful child and once he won the 18th place at a beauty contest. My mother told me about it, and the family was very proud of him. Loulou graduated from the Medical Department of the University. He worked as a doctor, and he still lives in Paris. I correspond with him. I have a good conduct of French, and this correspondence is no problem for me.

My mother’s youngest sister, Rachil, completed the gymnasium in Kishinev during the rule of Nicolas II 4. Rachil had a fiancé whose name was Lampert. He moved to America in the 1910s and settled down in New York. She followed him there and they got married. Rachil’s husband had a network of textile stores. Aunt Rachil was a housewife. Her daughter was born in the late 1920s. She was named after my grandmother - Cipora. Later, her name changed to Zora. Zora was an actress. She could play the piano very well. Aunt Rachil kept in touch with our family before and after the war [Great Patriotic War] 5. Aunt Rachil and her husband lived a long and happy life. She died in 1968 at the age of 88. Her husband died a few years earlier. Zora is about seventy now. She lives in New York. She studied French to be able to correspond with me.

My mother, Shyfra Sohis [nee Iris], was born in Kishinev in 1877. She was short, had a nice physique, big blue eyes and dark hair. She was extremely kind and gentle. My mother was the oldest child in the family and the family couldn’t afford to pay for her complete education. That’s why my mother finished four years in the gymnasium and got married at the age of 16.

My paternal grandfather, Rahmiel Sohis, came from Latvia where his family resided in a small Jewish town. My grandfather was a rabbi, a teacher, as my father used to say, and all the Jews of the town went to ask for his advice. My grandfather died young. I don’t know when the family moved to Kishinev, but my father was born in Kishinev in 1869. All I know about my paternal grandmother is that her name was Shyfra just like my mother’s. She was a housewife. I faintly remember my father’s sister, Sarah, who also lived in Kishinev with her family. In my early childhood I met her and her children. I know that they survived the war, but I don’t know what happened to them then, perhaps, they moved abroad.

My father, Yakov Sohis, was born in 1869. My grandfather insisted that my father finished a yeshivah. He was very well educated in Judaism. He knew the Talmud and Tannakh and was interested in the Jewish philosophy. In his youth he worked with my maternal grandfather, Gersh Iris. That was when my father met my mother. They liked each other and got married in 1893. The bride was 16 and the bridegroom was 24 years old. Of course they had a traditional wedding under the chuppah. After she got married my mother wore a wig that Jewish women were required to wear. In the only photograph of this period she wears a wig, but later she quit wearing a wig. After the wedding my parents settled down with Grandpa Gersh. After my grandpa died, my parents opened a dairy store that became the start of my father’s business. I know very little about my parents’ life before my brother Shymon was born, though this is quite a long period of time. My brother Shymon was born on 17th March 1918, when my mother was 42 years old. I was born six years later, on 2nd April 1924. I was named Cipora after my grandmother.

At that time my father owned a store of men’s clothes on Aleksandrovskaya Street. I know little about his business, though I know that my father made charity contributions to the Jewish community like all other wealthy Jews. We had a big house in the wealthy Jewish neighborhood, Irinopolskaya Street. There were three, three-bedroom wing annexes in the yard. They also belonged to my father and he rented them out. There was the mansion of Perelmuter, a wealthy Jew in Kishinev, near our house. The lawyer, Levenstein, and his family lived near him. They were educated and respectable people, and our family had good neighborly relations with them. There was a wealthy Romanian or Moldovan family living in another mansion, but we didn’t know them. There were five rooms, a kitchen and back rooms in our house. My parents had a bedroom and Shymy – that was how we called my brother at home – and I had our own rooms, there was also a big living room and a dining room. We had ancient furniture of red wood, velvet curtains and crystal chandeliers. There was a piano in the living room, but I didn’t study music. Unfortunately, I have no ear for music, though I love and understand it.

I remember that my parents loved each other dearly. My father was a big tall man with a small beard and moustache. When he would introduce my mother to somebody, he would say, ‘You see this small woman. Oh, she is worth a fortune!’ There was a warm atmosphere at home; they had such a beautiful life together. I never heard one swear-word at home. My mother was so smart, kind and gentle. She always wore a hat to go out, dressed like a dame, and wore her golden jewelry. I remember that she had a nice silver purse – it looked like silver net. My father was very witty. He was a big humorist and could make people laugh. I never saw him sad. He was always full of energy and optimism. He wasn’t fanatically religious; there was even some frivolity in his character, but he prayed every day. He never started anything without praying first. He started every morning with a prayer with his tallit and tefillin on. My father always had a yarmulka on at home. My mother also taught me to pray in Hebrew, I can still remember it: ‘Shema Yisrael Adonai eloheinu Adonai ehad…’ ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One’… this is what I think it means. I had a small siddur in my childhood. I still have a siddur, though I don’t think I am a fanatic believer.

My mother was a housewife and we had a housemaid to help my mother do the cleaning and some housekeeping while my mother cooked herself. She made delicious Jewish food: gefilte fish was number one, of course. Jews like gefilte fish. She also made chicken broth, yeisek flesh – sweet and sour meat stew. My mother made delicious pancakes from stretch dough. It stretched like parchment paper – very thin. She filled them with cottage cheese adding fried onions – very delicious. Our family also liked pte [petcha] – hardly anybody would know the word. It was cooked from calf legs bought at the market. It was cut to smaller pieces, cold water was added and it was cooked for seven to eight hours like holodets [holodets: a cold meat dish, usually made of boiled bones with little meat on them, the meat is mixed with the bouillon and cooled, after which it becomes jelly-like because of the high percentage of gelatin in it]. Two hours before the end of cooking, onions, carrots, garlic and spices were added, and then vinegar or lemon juice. It was served hot, but I never ate it for I didn’t like it unlike the rest of the family. I liked Moldovan mamaliga [boiled corn flour] that my father cooked. This was the only dish my mother allowed him to cook. When the family felt like having mamaliga, my father made it. It goes without saying that my family followed the kashrut.

Besides a housemaid, there was my nanny living in the house with us. She was a Russian woman, rather old. I don’t remember her name; I just called her ‘nanny’. My mother said that the first thing my nanny did, when she came to live with us in the house and heard that my name was Cipora, she said, ‘What kind of name is that? I will call her Polina, that’s it!’ So, it was her initiative that everybody in the family began calling me Polina and now everybody calls me so. Only in my documents I am Cipora. The nanny was very good and was devoted to our family. She was like a member of our family, but she was quite a drunkard, as they say. Often a policeman took me back home from a stroll for she would be lying on the pavement drunk while I would quietly play beside her, when they found me. My mother was terrified by this situation saying each time, ‘This was the last time. It’s impossible to go on like this’, but my nanny didn’t have a place to go to, and my mother was so kind that she tolerated her. She lived her life with us. She loved me and loved our family. At the age of three or four, I was sent to the kindergarten and not to a Frebelichka [Froebel Institute] 6.

My mother was involved in charity activities along with other Jewish women in the community. They were called patroness dames. There were two marble plaques with the names of these dames on the wall of the choral synagogue, and on one plaque there was the name of Shyfra Sohis. My mother sacrificed herself for the sake of others. She was ill having calcula in her gall bladder. She had attacks of acute pain at times, but as soon as she felt better she got up and hurried to the lower side of town where poor Jews lived. She distributed special coupons to poor Jews and they would go to the Jewish community to receive food products.

My father used to say, ‘You really have no love for yourself. You’ve just suffered from pain. We were fussing around you not knowing what to do, then you are up and on the run again.’ This is the way my mother was. Besides, poor people always came to our house. My mother appointed the time for them to come. She gave them wood or food. She gently told me, ‘You go open the shed and leave him alone there. Let him take as much as he needs.’ We were a hospitable family. I try to follow this tradition in the memory of my mother. There was also a children’s home named after Babich in the community. Babich was probably a founder and chief contributor to the house. My mother also worked there. She couldn’t stay quietly at home. She just had to go out and help people.

Our family observed Jewish traditions like all other Jewish families. We strictly observed Sabbath. My mother baked challah in a special oven. I also had one recently, but I gave it away. My mother cooked cholent, chicken broth and fish for Sabbath. She left the food on a special grate with lamps above it to keep the food hot. On Friday evening my mother lit two candles in silver candle stands. My father always had the company of a poor Jewish man, when he came home from the synagogue for Sabbath. This was a rule. Before a meal my father always recited a prayer in Hebrew, and my mother translated it for me. On the afternoon of Sabbath we always sang songs called zmires. We did no work on Sabbath; we didn’t even turn on the lights. My father had many religious books, and every week he read me an article from the Torah which is habitual for Jewish families. I could listen to him for hours. I remember that Shymy also sat with us. My father read in Hebrew, also called loshen koidesh [‘holy language’ in Yiddish], and of course, interpreted each word to us.

Growing up

Pesach was the main and my favorite holiday. Shymy and I got presents for sure. I usually got a pair of patent leather shoes for Pesach. There were preparations for the holiday. In fall my mother started making goose fat: she had a special board and utensils to melt the fat. This fat was kept in a special jug in the attic where fancy crockery for Pesach was kept. Before Pesach the house was cleaned thoroughly. I remember that my mother thoroughly cleaned the kitchen utensils that she had no replacement for. All chametz was removed from the house. My mother also distributed coupons to the poor for them to receive food products for the holiday. My mother took the crockery from the attic after the house was cleaned up. It was beautiful crockery of thin china. There were silver wine glasses and silver tableware. The table was always covered with a beautiful white tablecloth.

At the end of the day, before seder, everything had to be ready. Undoubtedly there was fish, meat, matzah pudding and haroset – ground apples with wine and nuts to symbolize the clay that Jews worked with, when they were slaves. There were candles lit in silvery candle stands on the table and the seder began. We always had quests on seder. My father and brother conducted the seder: this was a tradition. My father told us about Moses who led our people from Egypt. My brother, Shymy, asked the four questions – fir kashes. He would ask, ‘Why are we sitting on this night? My mother or I didn’t say anything, but I knew the fir kashes by heart. I’m not sure, but it seems we also sang zmires on Pesach. My parents and whoever was our guest had their glasses filled with wine. The children also had a little in their glasses. Each adult was supposed to drink four glasses, but I don’t remember for sure whether they did.

I had a little thick glass with a little handle called a koise. There was a big copper glass for Elijah the Prophet on the table. It was polished and shining as if it was made of gold and there was the candle light reflecting in it. The glass was filled with wine. My father used to say, ‘Look carefully. Elijah will come at midnight and open the door.’ We left the door open for him to come in. Seder began early in the evening, but ended very late. Gradually, the scene became blurry in my eyes: the candlelight and the shining glass for Elijah. I always fell asleep and never knew whether he came or not. And I never saw him.

Rosh Hashanah was a wonderful holiday. I loved it. It is the Jewish New Year. My parents went to the Choral Synagogue. My mother took me with her and we sat on the upper tier with the other women. Before we started going to the Choral Synagogue we went to another synagogue which I don’t remember. There was a festive meal on Rosh Hashanah with apples and honey, a round-shaped challah loaf and broth with mendelakh – little pieces of dough fried in oil.

On Judgment Day [Yom Kippur] my parents fasted and so did I. I fasted at least till two o’clock. I started fasting at about the age of 14. My father came from the synagogue in the evening and had a shot of vodka with bronfn and lekakh. Bronfn is vodka and lekakh is honey cake. Eggs were frothed to make lekakh. Then the family sat down to dinner. I remember that on Yom Kippur my mother served broth with little dumplings filled with meat. They are called pelmeni in Russian.

I liked Simchat Torah very much. My father used to hold me and go for a walk, when I was small. I always waited for Simchat Torah with a special feeling. We, children, walked with little red flags and red lollypops on sticks. I remember the Torah being carried out and we kissed it stretching our little arms. I remember this well. How wonderful those years were!

On Sukkot we made a sukkah in the yard from special planks that were kept in the attic. On top, the sukkah was covered with straw or reeds – I don’t remember for sure. We got together with our Jewish neighbors for celebrations and had meals in the sukkah all week long. Sukkot is celebrated in fall. When it was cold, we wrapped ourselves in warmer clothes, but still had meals in the sukkah.

On Chanukkah my father gave me Chanukkah gelt. I don’t remember what I did with it – bought sweets, I guess. I also remember merry dreidel whipping tops. We had a big silver chanukkiyah on the window. Every day another candle was lit in it.

On Purim my mother made hamantashen for our family and for poor families. She visited them before Purim taking baskets full of presents to them a week before Purim. My parents were rather old and we didn’t have noisy celebrations at home, but there were jokes, and children visiting and we had fancy dress costumes on.

I was a stubborn girl and wanted my wishes to come true. It was hard for my mother to handle me and she often said, ‘I will send you to school’. I was six, when my mother had enough of my unbearable character and sent me to school. It was a Romanian elementary school one house away from our house. The teaching was in Romanian at the school. My parents didn’t know Romanian. We spoke Yiddish or Russian at home, so I had to learn Romanian. I don’t remember having any problems in this regard. I did well at school, but I was probably a hoyden. I remember an incident, when I was in the fourth grade. There were only girls in my class. I demonstrated my adroitness to them running on the desks, when a teacher walked into the classroom. She asked, ‘What is this? Stretch out your hand!’ Hitting pupils on their hands with a ruler was a common punishment.

I was very independent and spoiled – hitting me on my hand? No way! I jumped off the desk, grabbed my bag and I even remember the words I said, ‘Draku suei schcoala sa!’ [God damn this school!], and went home proudly. At home I said I wasn’t going to that school again. A week passed and then the teacher came to our home. I remember her last name – Pekush – she was Czech, it seems. She came in and asked, ‘What’s happened?’ My mother replied, ‘I don’t know, she doesn’t want to go to school, but she wouldn’t say why.’ I was there in the room. I guess they found the right words to convince me to go back to school. That’s what I was like.

I adored my brother Shymy. He was six years older than me and I was jealous that Mother bought him whatever he wanted. Shymy was a little boy, when our parents bought him a big toy car with pedals that he drove in the yard. At 13 Shymy had his bar mitzvah. I remember many guests and they all brought him presents. When I was at school, he already studied in the lyceum and was popular with other students in Kishinev. He was good at basketball and volleyball; he was the captain of these teams in the Jewish sports community Maccabi 7. When on holidays Maccabi teams took part in parades, my brother always marched in the first rows.

Shymy was very handsome. He was tall and slim and had a special bearing – royal and sportive. I always went to watch his teams playing and I always sat as close as I could, though Shymy asked me to sit further behind fearing that the ball might hit me. I always cheered for his team and wanted everybody to know that I was his sister. I was jealous when Shymy went on dates in the evening and asked him to take me with him. Sometimes he took me with him. Shymy taught me to dance tango – this dance was popular at the time. Tango became the only dance I can dance. He was also a member of Betar 8, I remember that Betar members were ardent Zionists and so was Shymy.

After graduating from elementary school, I went to the French Jeanne D’Arc gymnasium. It was a private gymnasium, the most prestigious and the most expensive in town. There was competition to enter the Dadiani and Regina Maria gymnasiums, but not to our gymnasium. They charged a lot and admitted all who could afford to send their children to study there. We had French teachers, Monsieur Clemant, the language teacher, Madame Pobelle, and Madame Pizolit. They were intelligent and educated people knowing the etiquette. We had summer and winter uniforms. The winter uniform was a black gown with a white collar and the school emblem on it, dark blue coats and hats with small rims, decorated with a ribbon from the same fabric. In summer we wore skirts and white blouses.

During the war

When the fascists came to power in Romania, we began to wear a plain uniform of a military kind. On holidays the flag of the gymnasium was raised in the yard. The biggest national holiday in Romania was Zece May, on 10th May 9, ‘Unire principatelor’ – Union of all principalities. At the start of each academic year there was also a flag raised by the honored gymnasium students. I remember I was authorized to raise the flag – I was tall and slim. I’ve never been a girl of fashion. I like plain clothes. All gymnasium students wanted to be kind to me knowing what kind of a brother I had. They walked with me during the intervals. Shymy’s girlfriend, Gusia Necler, was my special friend. She was about two years older than me.

My favorite subjects in the gymnasium were botany and natural sciences. I liked flora and animals, but the French language was number one. I could read in French for days, and I liked reading aloud to hear myself. Our teachers told us that we had to read aloud to hear ourselves to master the pronunciation. I could read books in French and this helped me to enrich my vocabulary. I always looked up new words in the dictionary. I didn’t do that well in math, and in senior grades my parents even hired a private teacher for me. In Kishinev it was quite common to hire the gymnasium graduates or senior students to give private classes, so I had one. They were mostly Jews since it was more difficult for Jews to find jobs in Kishinev, and they gave private classes.

There was no anti-Semitism in the gymnasium. My closest and best friend was Mania Feider, a Jewish girl. Her father was a commercial agent, and her mother was a housewife. They were wealthy, but they didn’t own a house. They rented an apartment. We spent all our free time together. I visited Mania and she visited me at home. We trusted each other with our secrets and read books together. Mania and I liked knitting and embroidery. Mania perished in the Kishinev Ghetto 10 during the war.

The Kishinev of my childhood and youth wasn’t so big. Its population was less than one hundred thousand. [Polina is wrong here, according to the all-Russian census in 1897 Kishinev had 108,483 residents, 50,237 of who were Jews.] There was an upper and a lower town. The lower town was a poor and dirty neighborhood. The upper town was a fashionable place, particularly Sadovaya, Nikolayevskaya and Aleksandrovskaya Streets. There were posh stores on Aleksandrovskaya Street. One of the biggest stores was the Barbalat garment store. Perhaps, Barbalat was the name of the owner. Its owners shipped their goods from France and other European countries. I remember that they also sold some clothes from my father’s store. There was also a shoe store, I don’t remember the name. These stores were for wealthy people.

There were also small stores. Most of them belonged to Jewish owners, but there were also Russian-owned stores. I can’t say now whether they were open on Saturdays, but I can say for sure that if they were, there weren’t Jewish shop assistants working in this case. There were also street vendors. One of them was a Greek vendor who sold ice-cream in waffle cones. It was delicious ice cream far better than what they offer nowadays. In winter this Greek man sold khalvitsa, an extremely delicious oriental sweet toffee. The children liked it a lot. My mother didn’t allow me to eat khalvitsa outside. Imagine me eating khalvitsa in the street! This would have been bad manners. There were numerous confectioneries in the town selling cakes, hot chocolate, delicious nut khalva. There was an expensive Zamfiresku cafe on the central street. Businessmen or enamored couples met there in the afternoon.

There were horse-drawn cabs and trams running along Nicolayeskaya and Harlampievskaya Streets. Before the Soviet regime [1940] they were almost empty and hooting: Dong! Dong! During the Soviet power they were overcrowded and hooted the same. During the Romanian regime a tram ticket cost 30 bans. When my mother gave me money to take a tram I saved it to go to the cinema. A ticket to a movie cost 18 Leu, it was expensive. Since I didn’t want to ask my parents for the money to the cinema, I tried to save. One paid for an entrance ticket to a movie and could stay in the cinema as long as they wished. In Kishinev there were a few cinema theaters: Odeon on Mikhailovskaya Street, and Coliseum on Alexandrovskaya Street. I remember silent movies, when there was a pianist playing. I remember the stars of silent movies: Rudolf Valentino, Mary Pickford.

Kishinev residents used to walk along Aleksandrovskaya Street near the Triumphalnaya Arc. Mothers and nannies took little children for walks on the boulevard. Young people went for walks in the town park where there was a monument of Stefan the Great [The ruler of the Moldova principality in 1457 - 1504, who conducted the policy of centralization]. I liked going to this park to sit on a bench with a book and then I secretly watched the enamored couples. There was a central library on Alexandrovskaya Street near a big bank with two stone lions at the entrance where my mother and I used to borrow books.

There was an Agricultural College and a Religious Faculty in Kishinev and most Jews left Bessarabia to study abroad. Those who wanted to study medicine went to Italy. Graduates from Italian medical institutions were regarded as good doctors in Kishinev. My brother Shymy went to the University of Bucharest after finishing the lyceum in 1936. He never finished it due to persecution and abuse of Jews that started in Romania. Shymy was proud and independent. He had a fight with the Cuzists 11 once and then he had to leave Bucharest for the fear of his life. He came home and said, ‘I won’t study there any longer. I’ll go to Palestine. Palestine is my Motherland and I’ll move there anyway.’

In 1938, when he was twenty, he moved to Palestine with other halutzim [halutz is a pioneer in Hebrew – participant of the Jewish settlement Erez Yisrael from the late 19th to the early 20th century]. There were 300 of them on the Greek boat ‘Aspir.’ They paid the captain and he took them on board in a Mediterranean post. The boat arrived in the harbor of Haifa, but the passengers weren’t allowed to get off board. Palestine was under the British mandate and the Brits didn’t accept Jews. They were at sea for three months with hardly any food or water before they managed to get off-board. From there they were sent to a quarantine camp.

We didn’t hear from Shymy for a long time and were very concerned. My mother and I even went to a fortune teller. She said, ‘Your son will work and will have a very good life.’ We believed her and looked forward till we could see each other again, but this wasn’t to be. World War II, fascism, began. When in 1940 there was the Annexation of Bessarabia to the Soviet Union 12, my father was ruined. The store and houses were taken away from us. My father had to go to the police station many times and each time he said ‘good bye’ thinking that it was for good. I don’t know why we weren’t sent away with other wealthy people that the Soviet power was deporting from Bessarabia in 1941. This was a terrible time!

There were other families living in the house, one family in each room, this was a real communal apartment 13. We stayed to live in the living room. One NKVD 14 officer, who came to search the house wanted to occupy the living room, but this time my mother was firm. ‘Pick your hat, you aren’t staying here! The three of us are enough for this room.’ And he left. The gymnasiums were converted to schools and had numbers [see school #] 15. Most of them became Russian schools, and there were few Moldovan ones. By that time I had finished six grades in the gymnasium and went to the ninth grade of the Russian railroad school #1. Though my Russian was poor I picked it up quickly since we sometimes spoke Russian at home. I was doing all right at school.

Our family didn’t have anything to live on. We leased a corner in our living room to a man from Russia. So there were four of us sharing the room: my mother, my father, I and this man. He was a Soviet official staying with us temporarily waiting for his wife and son. He was a decent and honest man and paid us his rental fee for the corner. My parents also took work to do at home like sewing buttons on clothes. Probably, one of my father’s former suppliers helped my father to get this job. My father was 73 and my mother was 64 years old. What could they do? I couldn’t wait till my summer vacations when I hoped to find a job to help my parents, but then the war began on 22nd June 1941. Germany attacked the USSR.

We didn’t evacuate. My mother was very conservative. She didn’t want to leave the place. I yelled, ‘Mama, come on… Papa, you see, everybody is leaving!’ My mother said, ‘Can’t you remember our life during the Romanian regime? Where would we go?’ Of course, we knew about the fascists and how they treated Jews, but it was probably my parents’ age that they didn’t care, but they should have thought about me. Well, whatever the reasons, we happened to stay. When the Germans and Romanians occupied Kishinev, an officer of the German army, a Czech man, settled down with us. He talked with my parents. He was a good man. He used to say, ‘Go away, they will kill you!’ An old Jewish man, my father’s acquaintance, who knew German, interpreted for us. He sent his son away and he, his wife and his old grandmother stayed home.

My parents should have done the same; they just didn’t understand that they had to do it! Later, I met my father’s acquaintance in the camp in Golta. [Following the Antonescu-ordered slaughter of the Jews of Odessa and Bessarabia, the Romanian occupation authorities deported the survivors to camps in the Golta district: 54,000 to the Bogdanovka camp, 18,000 to the Akhmetchetka camp, and 8,000 to the Domanevka camp. In Bogdanovka all the Jews were shot, with the Romanian gendarmerie, the Ukrainian police, and Sonderkommando R, made up of Volksdeutsche, taking part. In January and February 1942, 12,000 Jews were murdered in the other two camps. A total of 185,000 Jews were murdered by Romanian and German army units]. He was alone and he said, ‘Polia [affectionate of Polina], I am all alone, and they will kill me one of these days’.

Before Bessarabia was annexed to the USSR, Romanian troops trained near Kishinev, and some high-rank Romanian officer stayed in our apartment. When the German and Romanian troops came to Kishinev in 1941, he came to see us and left a sign on the door that there was a Romanian officer staying there. It helped us to escape from searches for some time. However, in fall we were sent to the ghetto in Kishinev, and in January 1942 all inmates of the ghetto were taken across the Dnestr to Odessa region. My father was very ill, and I managed to get a place in a train car for him. This was the last time I saw him. My father was killed near the village of Yasinovo in Odessa region. My mother was with me. She couldn’t walk and we dragged her holding her by her arms. On the way they began to kill exhausted people. I survived by some miracle and ran out of this crowd. I didn’t care whether I would go alone or with the crowd and I escaped. It was a frosty night. It started snowing and there was wind. I didn’t see anything.

I knocked on the door of the first hut on my way. An old man’s voice said, ‘Go away, they will kill me because of you.’ I went to the cowshed. Though I was afraid of cows, I stayed there a whole night shivering from the cold. The old man saw me in the corner when he came to feed the cows in the morning. He asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ I couldn’t talk, when the Romanians were shooting at the people I screamed so loud that I tore my chords. I somehow explained who I was and he said, ‘You know, since you are here, come on in.’ They were an old Ukrainian couple. They burned my clothes as there were lice in them. Then they washed me. She rinsed my head with alkaline water; there was no soap. There were lice on each hair on my head and she was sitting brushing my hair to remove them. A complete stranger that she was! Then she gave me her dress and let me sit on the stove bench to warm up. I stayed there for two weeks before I restored my voice by having hot milk and honey.

The old man was the secretary of the village council of the kolkhoz 16, and he wanted to help me, but what could he do! He said there was Yuschiha Belinskaya, a lonely old woman living in a farm near the village of Bobrik: ‘You go there and tell her I sent you, but before you go to Bobrik to see Batko, also secretary of the village council, tell him that I’ve asked him to issue you a document with a stamp that you are baptized and that you are from the Odessa children’s home.’ The old man told me about the children’s home and how to get there for me to give correct answers in case they asked. Batko did everything as the old man requested and issued me a forged certificate, but he warned me to only show it to common people, not to any officials. So I headed to the farm of Yuschiha Belinskaya. She showed my document to her neighbors and allowed me to stay in her house. I stayed there till spring. In spring the old woman’s cousin brother, Vasia Belyi, came to stay in her house. He wanted the house considering her being old. He worked for the Germans and I grasped at once that he would even kill me himself or report on me to the Germans. I left Yuschiha.

I was captured in Bobrik. There were other Jews that they captured in the district. We were locked in a shed on the outskirts of the village. I was sure they were going to burn us. Women were sobbing and screaming, but it didn’t happen. Our guards were two red-head soldiers wearing German uniforms and they probably weren’t fascists. They let the men free as soon as night fell. Then they began to let the women free in small groups. By the morning there was an old woman and I left, and they said, ‘Go where you want.’ This old woman and I went to the village of Lubashovka. Where were we to go? We had no idea, and we got to the gendarmerie. I don’t know what happened to the old woman, but I was taken for interrogation. A Romanian man interrogated me. There was an interpreter. I told my story and didn’t mention that I understood Romanian. He asked me who I was and I said that I was a soldier. He said, ‘Soldier? I will show you what kind of soldier I am. Puk, puk, puk – shi es gata [You’re done - in Romanian].’

I stood quietly pretending I didn’t understand. Then the interpreter took me to the shop where Jews from Lubashevka were working. I began to work in this shop and also told them that I was Russian and came from the Odessa children’s home. Once, a local Jewish man approached me, ‘You know I’ll help you. There is a woman whose children live in this house. She brought us food. I will talk to her. Maybe she will take you with her.’ This woman’s name was Nina Tsvetochnitsa. She went to the gendarmerie and said, ‘Why are you keeping her here? I know her well, she was in the children’s home with my children. Let her come with me.’ There, what great people I met. I stayed with her for some time. She also starved.

Then I ran away from Lubashevka and went to Golta. This happened in early 1944. In spring, when the Soviet troops were approaching, the Romanians had other things to think about than us. A local girl approached me and said, ‘We are Baptists and we want to take a Jewish girl with us.’ She told me to follow her. I stayed with them till the Soviet troops came. After the liberation I went to work in the village of Gandrabury, Ananiev district, Odessa region. It was a big village and there was a ten-year school where I worked as elementary school teacher. I was eager to go back to Kishinev, though nobody waited for me there, but somehow I believed that there was a good life there and people were dressed nicely like before the war and I was ashamed of the shabby clothes I had. Then I thought ‘be what may’ and went to Kishinev on summer vacations. I went to the university and ascribed myself to the Faculty of Moldovan language and literature. I needed a certificate to obtain a letter of invitation to go back to Kishinev. I obtained a letter, went back to Gandrabury, went to Ananiev, and submitted this certificate to the district prosecutor, which enabled me to return to Kishinev. This was the only possible way during Stalin’s regime.

Shortly afterward, when I recovered from the horrors I went through, I wrote to Aunt Rachil in America. I told her about my mother and father’s death, asked her whether she had any information about Shymy since he was the only close person I had. I had a good memory and remembered two addresses of my aunt in New York: Ardel Street and Pickman Street. I sent the letter having little hope it would reach her, but a few months later I received her response. My aunt wrote to me that Shymy was alive, and sent me his photograph where he wore a military uniform. She wrote to him about me and our parents. Then I received a long letter from my brother. It made a long journey before I got it. He wrote about his life in Palestine. He worked a lot. He delivered milk to customers, washed cars in a garage and picked any job and studied simultaneously. Aunt Rachil sent him money and he graduated from the University of Jerusalem and became an engineer. During World War II, Shymy volunteered to the British army to fight against Nazis. He was an officer and had a higher education. He had awards. My brother was a brave man. In Palestine Shymy changed his surname from Sohis to Sofar.

I learned about his life from Aunt Rachil. Occasionally I received letters from him. During the Soviet times it wasn’t safe to keep in touch with relatives abroad 17. When Shymy’s dream came true and the Jewish state was established, Shymy took part in the war for independence in 1948, when the armies of five Arab states attacked Israel. Shymy got married before Israel was established. His wife, Pnina, arrived in Palestine from Poland with her parents at the age of eight. She got a medical education and worked as a cosmetologist. Later, she quit her job and became a housewife. They have no children. Shymy became a professional military. He participated in the Six-Day-War 18 in 1967, and in the War on Judgment Day in 1973 [see Yom Kippur War] 19. He took part in four wars. They live in Rishon Le Ziyon.

I corresponded with Aunt Rachil. She sent me parcels and tried to help me as much as she could. In the first letter my aunt wrote, ‘Maybe you’ll come to America?’ I couldn’t explain that this was impossible considering the Soviet regime. Then she wrote, ‘You must have good friends and can’t leave them.’ It never occurred to her that nobody would let me out of the country and that I might have been arrested if I tried.

I have dim memories about the first months of my stay in Kishinev, this was 1946 already. I was looking for a place to live, and an old woman, Russian or Moldovan, offered me a place to stay. She had a dark dirty room that looked like a shed. I slept on an old box. It’s scary to recall this life. I was admitted to the extramural department of the French language at Kishinev University. Since I didn’t have a certificate of secondary education, I was supposed to finish the tenth grade via correspondence. After completing my first year at university I went to study in a Moldovan evening school. I also went to work. I got a job as an assistant accountant at the buttery. There I met my future husband, Boris Leibovich. He was chief of the raw material department at the buttery. Boris was nine years older than me. He was a nice looking man with somewhat old-fashioned manners that were unusual for me. Boris came from a village.

Boris introduced me to his parents. I was very worried, when I first went to see them. I was ashamed of my more than modest clothing. I had just one pair of stockings. Once I fell on my way from the school in the evening and there was a big hole on one stocking. I was good at sewing and darning, and made a knee-big darn on the stocking. I pulled my skirt down to hide the darn, but Boris’ mother saw it anyway. Later she confessed that thanks to this darn I made a very good impression on her. ‘I knew at once that you’ll make a good housewife,’ she said.

My husband’s parents came from the village of Kriuleni. His father, Yakov Leibovich, was a grain dealer. They also had a small store where his mother, Esther Leibovich, was the owner. Boris was her fist child. She gave birth to him when she was twenty. They were wealthy people, but when the Soviet power came they were dispossessed of their property. During the war they evacuated to the town of Frunze [today Bishkek] in Kyrgyzia [today Kyrgyzstan]. They kept their belongings and brought their Moldovan carpets back home. There were seven children in the family: three daughters and four sons. They all got secondary education and were very smart. Their mother never forced them to do things.

After the war

When they returned from the evacuation they did what they liked to build their own life. My husband’s sister, Anna Barash [nee Leibovich], and her family lived in Pinsk. Mark, the middle brother, also lived there. He was a shop assistant in a textile store. The rest of the family lived in Kishinev. Grigoriy was the only one who graduated from a technical school. He worked as an engineer. Alexandr, the youngest brother, worked as an electrician in the theater. He was married to a Russian woman. The girls married wealthy Jewish men. Mara’s husband’s name was Fima [Yefim] Kiselyov, and Clara’s husband was Senia Berg. Anna and Clara and their families live in Israel, and Mara, the youngest, lives in America. The brothers of my husband are dead already.

My husband, Boris Leibovich, was the oldest of all the children. He was born in Kriuleni in 1915. After graduating from secondary school he helped his father. During the war Boris wasn’t mobilized to the army having short sight of minus 19. He couldn’t see without glasses. He was a very gentle and educated man, though his education was different from mine since I grew up in a more intelligent family. I always enjoyed visiting people with him. He could eat beautifully and beautifully courted me. He called me ‘kind child’ in Yiddish.

When Boris proposed to me, I talked to Bertha Yakovlevna, the aunt of my friend, Zina Veisman. Zina lived with her aunt. Bertha Yakovlevna treated me like her own daughter and even loved me more than Zina. I always asked for her advice. I liked visiting them. They were poor, but Bertha managed to make their home very cozy. She always put starched embroidered place napkins on the table and managed to set the table with such chic that even miserable food looked appetizing and it reminded me of my home and my mother. So, I went to ask for her opinion. Boris was nine years older than me, and I wasn’t sure if I loved him. On the other hand, I was alone, had no home, and he was a decent man and he loved me. Bertha told me at once, ‘Polina, he will make a wonderful husband; he is so tender with you. You are sure to love him.’ She told me a lot and I sort of received a motherly blessing from her.

We got married in 1947. We invited 40 guests to the wedding. We were poor and couldn’t afford a big dinner. Therefore, we only served desserts. My husband’s cousin sisters made a ‘napoleon’ cake, strudels with apples and cookies. I didn’t even have a white gown. Boris’ younger sister, Mara, gave me her white dress for the wedding. My mother-in-law made me a short veil from old laces. We had a Jewish wedding. Boris and I fasted on this day according to the rule. The ceremony was conducted by Epelbaum, a former assistant of Rabbi Cirelson, a well-known and respected man in Kishinev. Cirelson perished on the first days of the war, when a bomb hit his residence.

There was a chuppah in Boris parents’ apartment. I remember us walking inside the chuppah. Then we sipped from a wine glass and broke it. Epelbaum issued a ketubbah, marriage contract, and two witnesses signed it. I kept it for a long time, but now I can’t remember where I put it. Then we were invited to dinner. My husband and I had strong chicken broth. The rest of the guests had wine and desserts. There wasn’t much joy. The guests were my husband’s age and older, most of them being his colleagues, they didn’t feel like entertaining. They danced a little. My husband’s relatives did their best, but I cried a lot thinking about my parents and Shymy, as there were no guests from my side at the wedding. This was a sad day for me. I don’t think I danced.

After the wedding we lived with my husband’s parents. They had a three-bedroom apartment in a big one-storied building on Stefan Velikiy Street. There were 19 other apartments in the house. Boris’ sister, Clara, and her husband lived in one room, Boris’ parents lived in another, and we got the third room. The rooms were spacious with 3.5 meter high ceilings and tiled patterned stoves. Our room was the biggest and the most beautiful. The walls were whitewashed and decorated with a color pattern. However, it was almost empty, there wasn’t even a table. There was only a wide couch covered with a Moldovan carpet where my husband and I slept. His mother gave us a blanket and bed sheets. Mara also slept on a sofa in this room before she got married and moved out. Later, we made a back door to the yard and built an annex corridor and a kitchen. It was nice and my son still tells me, ‘Mother, do you remember how nice it was in our apartment on Stefan Velikiy Street?’

My husband’s family was patriarchal. They treated me well. We got together to celebrate holidays and birthdays, but we knew little about one another. I didn’t quite understand this; in my family it was different. They were tight-lipped and weren’t open with one another. I had the warmest relations with my mother-in-law. I even called her mama. She was so kind to me. I can’t find words to say how warm and gentle she was. She was also reserved and tight-lipped, but it always seemed to me that she wasn’t quite happy. I heard from other people that during the evacuation my mother-in-law didn’t talk to my father-in-law for a long time for some reason. I didn’t know any details, but I believe she must have been hurt. My mother-in-law wasn’t so religious, though her husband bought her a seat at the synagogue where she went on Jewish holidays. She didn’t do any work on Sabbath, of course. Like in my parents’ family, they didn’t work on Saturday. I didn’t do any housework on Saturday, but I had to work at school, of course.

After the war there was one synagogue in Kishinev, but neither my husband nor I went there. It was overcrowded on holidays, the building was too small. I stayed outside a little occasionally. We celebrated Jewish holidays. On Pesach we always had matzah, but nobody could conduct the seder. We bought matzah at the synagogue, but in the first years, when it wasn’t so good there, I made matzah at home. It wasn’t kosher since I made it on the same table that I used for everyday cooking, but the main thing was to have matzah on Pesach. I always fasted on Yom Kippur. It was necessary for me. I only stopped fasting recently due to my health condition. On Chanukkah all children in our family were given Chanukkah gelt. My son has grown up, but he still remembers how his father and uncles gave him Chanukkah gelt.

My son was born on 22nd March 1949. This was a great event and a gift on my birthday since I was born on 2nd April. My husband took us home from the maternity hospital on the eve of my birthday and we rode home on a two-wheeled cart since there were hardly any cars in Kishinev then. I held my son, who was wrapped, strongly. On the way my husband told me ceremoniously, ‘You know, I’ve bought a table for your birthday.’ It was an expensive gift at the time. According to the Jewish customs, the mother names her first baby and I named my son Yakov after my father. My husband’s father also was Yakov. He died one year before at the age of 60.

My mother-in-law helped me a lot in the first months after my son was born. She helped me to wash the baby and change diapers. She often took Yasha [affectionate for Yakov] to her room so that I could have a nap. I stayed away from work for three years looking after the baby, but I continued my studies in the evening school. My husband looked after our son and I rushed to school. I didn’t send our son to kindergarten as there weren’t many of them and it was next to impossible to get a child there. Besides, I didn’t feel like leaving my only son in the care of other people. I felt happy to be his mother. When asked what day is the most memorable for me, I always reply, ‘My son’s birth.’

Yasha was a strong boy. Once or twice he had children’s sicknesses. When he turned four, I was already working at the school. I graduated from university, obtained a diploma in French and became a Moldovan teacher at a secondary school. I rushed home from work. Yasha was waiting for me on the porch. He could wait for me for hours. Seeing me at a distance he ran to me stretching his arms. It felt so good to hold him, so warm and dear he was. Yasha went to the school where I worked not far from where we lived. Frankly speaking, I wanted to have him close. He did well at school. He liked literature and humanities. My life was filled with household care, I liked my work and took little interest in politics, but the policy broke into people’s lives.

When in 1952 the notorious Doctors’ Plot 20 began, my friend Zina’s uncle Veisman was arrested. He was far over sixty and they sentenced him to exile in the North. Zina told me they discovered a photograph where he was with a doctor from Moscow who had been arrested. His wife, Bertha Yakovlevna, whom I loved, lived alone. Once I met her at the market. She said she had no information about her husband. Though my husband and I didn’t have much at the time I took all the money I had in my pocket and gave it to her. I wanted to help her at least as much as I could. Anyway, I didn’t do any shopping on that day. Later she moved to her son who was also a doctor; he lived somewhere near Moscow. She left a book by Gorky 21 with Zina for me. She wrote on the title sheet, ‘To smart and kindhearted Polina from Bertha Veisman.’ Her husband perished in exile. The Doctors’ Plot was closed after Stalin’s [1953] death, but so many innocent people suffered. I didn’t care about Stalin’s death. I always remembered what Stalin did to my parents before the war. I remember the mourning meetings at school, many people were crying.

My husband and I had a harmonious life. We never raised our voices to one another. This was like it was in his family and in the family of my parents. If he hurt me unintentionally, I would cry all day long, but never showed any signs to him, when he came home from work. I did what I was supposed to do pretending that nothing had happened. He washed himself after work and I set the table. I believe this was a right approach to marital life. Boris’ sister, Clara, and her husband sometimes had rows that we could hear and Clara always pointed out to her husband how exemplary our relations were.

Boris worked as chief of the raw material department at the buttery all the time. At that time everybody tried to take advantage of the position he had at work, but my husband was different. He wanted to have a quiet life. We didn’t want anything more than we had. When delivering the raw stuff to the buttery, kolkhoz representatives tried to cheat by lying on their trucks to increase the weight by 60-80 kilograms. The receivers of shipments shut their eyes to this receiving their share, but my husband was an honest man and knew his business. He even made an innovative proposal installing a special looking glass on the scales to see whether there was somebody on a truck. His colleagues said, ‘I won’t have it and nobody else will.’

We went on vacations together. Our favorite place was Odessa. Each year we took a train to Odessa. We used to rent a room near the sea, somewhere like Chernomorka [a village at the seashore near Odessa], or the 16th station of the Bolshoi Fontan [resort area in Odessa], and often in Arkadia [Arkadia is a well-known Odessa beach, a recreation place]. We spent most of the time by the sea. Boris could swim well and he taught our son and they swam far into the sea and I would sit on the shore worrying. In the evening we had walks and went to the Opera Theater. I liked and still like Odessa. We returned to Kishinev with a sun-tan and felt well rested. At times my husband got free vacations at work and went alone since I didn’t get a chance. I did renovations at home and I enjoyed painting, buying a rug or a shelf, made new curtains and then sat on the sofa enjoying the results of my work.

Boris loved theater and we never missed the first nights in Kishinev theaters. In Kishinev there was a Russian Theater and the Moldovan Opera and Ballet Theater that later split [1957] to two theaters: a drama and opera, and a ballet theater. My husband and I were good at Russian and Moldovan. We liked opera. In summer, theaters from other towns of the USSR came on tour to Kishinev. We often went to the cinema after work, while our son was in his grandma’s care. My husband took no interest in politics. He always thought about work, anyway. He didn’t join the Communist Party and was skeptical about the Soviet regime after it dispossessed his parents of their property. However, we subscribed to newspapers and magazines. My husband preferred ‘Izvestiya’ 22, that wasn’t so biased as ‘Pravda’ [Truth, the main paper of the Communist Party of the USSR]. I subscribed to a few professional magazines. One was ‘Foreign language at school.’ In 1961 we received a new two-bedroom apartment. This is where I live now. We earned well and had a good life, but we only lived together for 15 years.

My husband died in 1962, at 47, from cancer of the pancreas. We buried him in the Jewish cemetery. My mother-in-law invited a rabbi to recite the Kiddush. She sat shivah, but I had only three days off from work and then I had to go back to work, though I wore mourning clothing. I was 38 years old. I never remarried. My son was 13 and I raised him myself. My son and my job were essential to me. Yasha finished school in 1966. I wished he became a doctor, but in Kishinev, due to the state anti-Semitism, it was difficult for Jews to enter the Medical College. He went to Tyumen in Russia, where they have oil fields. He entered the Tyumen Medical College. However, he studied there for one year and then said he couldn’t be a doctor. He couldn’t stand blood and couldn’t work in the dissection room.

At that time a Higher Engineering Military School opened in Tyumen. Yasha entered it. This was what he had dreamed of since childhood. He only went to the Medical College for my sake. After finishing school he was offered to choose his future job between Khabarovsk, Moscow and central Asia at the mandatory job assignment 23 session. However, a Jewish military could make no career in Moscow, and Central Asia was too different. So he went to Khabarovsk. He didn’t return to Kishinev, but he visited me every year.

After my son’s departure work became number one in my life. I worked in two schools teaching French in daytime school #7 and Moldovan twice a week in the evening school. I got along well with my students in the evening school. They regarded me as their friend. They shared their problems with me. In our school there was a Moldovan boy. His name was Boldishor. He tried to enter the fifth grade several times, but failed, and he was already 16 or 17 years old. I bumped into him at the entrance to the school before the beginning of an academic year and he complained that they didn’t allow him to go to school again. I felt sorry for him and talked to the school director. I asked the director to let him come to my class where I was a class tutor. He appreciated this so much and tried hard to study better and managed to finish the tenth grade.

A few years later I met him at the market on the eve of New Year. He ran to me from a distance shouting, ‘Polina!’ I turned my head and saw Boldishor. I asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ He asked me what I was doing there and I told him that I was looking for a calf leg for holodets. He said, ‘Stay here, I’ll get one for you.’ It was hard to buy a calf leg before the New Year, but he brought me one. Then he took my bags and accompanied me home. I asked him on the way, ‘How are you doing? I know nothing about you.’ He replied, ‘I’m doing well. I sell meat here at the market. I’m married, we have a child and I’ve bought good furniture.’ He spoke Moldovan, but then he switched to Russian: ‘I’m living to my pleasure!’

There was another incident. One of my students, he was 28 or over, fell in love with a young teacher, but she rejected him. Then he came to talk to me and spoke for a while about his love. ‘Polina, only you can help me. Talk to her, please!’ One winter evening he came by and we went to this girl. There was no transportation and there was ice on the ground, but I walked beside the man across the town. What else could I do, when he showed so much trust in me! I don’t remember the name of the girl, but she happened to be a smart girl. My student was rather plain, but kind. She listened to me and we talked for quite a while and the ill-starred guy waited for me outside. My mission was successful. After this discussion I saw them together several times. Perhaps, they worked it out. And there were numerous times like this. My students liked me and I liked them. My former student, Dasha, she is 60, bumped into me once and we found out that we lived in the same district. Since then she’s come by to see me almost every evening.

I also liked working in the daytime school teaching French. I taught them like I had been taught in the gymnasium: ‘Read aloud as much as you can, listen to yourself to master the correct pronunciation.’ When the deputy director visited my lesson, she approached me after the lesson and said, ‘I don’t know French, but seeing that your children raise their hands and answer, you are at the right place.’ Since then she often visited my classes and invited young teachers to learn from me. I liked knitting and watching TV after work, or I read. I also went to the theater and cinema with my friends like I had done with my husband before.

My son got married at the age of 29 in 1978. He was serving in Belogorsk Amur region. He married Valentina Madiarkina, a Russian girl from Belogorsk. Valentina graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Pedagogical College, but she had such a thin voice that she couldn’t work at a school. She went to work as chief of the Soyuzpechat office, and later she had an administrative job in the district educational department. I didn’t mind her being Russian, no! As soon as I received my son’s letter with a complete description, as they say, I wrote them a whole page of a greeting telegram. I didn’t care about the nationality of my daughter-in-law, but I cared about what kind of person she was. Some time later they visited me. Valentina was worth all the nice words that I wrote in my telegram. She deserved to be my son’s wife. I love her dearly. In 1979 my grandson Andrei was born, and in 1986, my granddaughter Olga. Andrei followed into his father’s footsteps. He graduated from a higher engineering military school in Cheliabinsk and now he is a captain of the Russian army. Olga is a student of the Faculty of Foreign Languages in the Pedagogical College in Blagoveschensk.

In 1979 I turned 55, and I had my documents processed for a pension, but I continued working at the school. However, I had problems with my blood pressure and it was difficult to work as a teacher. I went to work as a deputy director for extracurricular activities at the district house of pioneers. This was easy work and I used to joke, ‘How come I didn’t know about this house of pioneers before?’ I worked there for eleven years. In 1985 my mother-in-law died. She lived as long as 88 years of age and had a sound mind. We buried her in the Jewish cemetery beside my husband.

In 1990 I visited Shymy in Israel. It’s impossible to describe how we met, 52 years after we parted. I can’t find words for it. I can only say that we sat in a restaurant in Rishon Le Ziyon, when they played the tango. Shymy turned to me and said, ‘You will dance, you remember, Poli.’ All I could dance was the tango, which he had taught me when I was just a girl. And we danced. Shymy showed me around Jerusalem and Israel. I admire this country. It’s a pity that the current immigrants hardly resemble the halutzim, with whom my brother arrived in Palestine. In 1995 Shymy visited Kishinev. I was happy, but there was also sadness in my brother’s meeting with the town of his youth. We couldn’t even go to the graves of our parents; there are no graves. Shymy calls me every week. He is 86 and he doesn’t look like himself. He and Pnina are very thin, they don’t eat, damn it.

When Gorbachev 24 came to power, I had an impression that things would change and life would improve. He changed the world undoubtedly, but I can’t say that our lives have improved, probably, it’s even vice versa. Intellects have become miserably poor and they are respectable people, for example, doctors and teachers. I know pensioners who can only afford milk. Once I came to the store to buy food for my cat Murka for four Leus. There was one of these rich men standing beside me and he wanted to pay for me, but I felt hurt, ‘No, no, I can afford to pay for this. Don’t do it.’ I wouldn’t have accepted his offer even if I didn’t have anything to pay with. I like giving, not taking.

However, perestroika 25 changed the Jewish life in Kishinev, Jews sort of woke up. At first the Sochnut 26 came up. I wasn’t fully informed to describe this process completely, but I remember that young people took a big part in it. They arranged Sabbath celebrations, sang Jewish songs and opened a club for young people. When in the early 1990s in Kishinev they began to enroll children into a Jewish school, I went to the director of this school and told him I wanted to work for them. I was eager to work with Jewish children. He offered me to teach Moldovan. They didn’t study French, they studied English. I was also involved in the enrollment of the children. It was a secular school, but they also studied Jewish traditions and Hebrew. I worked in this school for about four years. Then the school moved to another building in a distant district of the town and I had to quit. I was 72 already and it was hard for me to commute so far, though we had a school bus to take us to school.

However, I couldn’t sit at home and so I went to teach Moldovan in specialized English school #53, near my house. Then there was a conference arranged by either Joint 27, or Sochnut where I met the directress of a Jewish kindergarten. Her children performed a concert for the participants of the conference. She offered me to work for them. When the academic year began I thought, ‘I teach Moldovan at school #53, and the Jewish kindergarten isn’t far from the school, so why not work there, too?’ And I made a decision to teach two hours in the afternoon in the kindergarten, but at the age of 73 I had a hypertension stroke and I had to quit the school and the kindergarten. Later, when I felt better, I went back to the kindergarten and I don’t regret it.

I never imagined how interesting it would be to work in the kindergarten. I point at one child calling him a ‘teacher.’ He sits beside me and begins to ask questions. Other children raise their hands to answer. Then everybody who wants it acts as a teacher. I made this method my practice in the kindergarten recently, though I used it often at school. I didn’t think it would work in the kindergarten, but this was a preparatory group, where they could manage it all right. It’s becoming hard to work. In the middle of the year I tell Svetlana Mikhailovna that I won’t work next year, but she laughs, ‘You say each year that this is the end of it.’ She is a wonderful person.

Our Hesed 28 Jehuda helps me and other Jews a lot. They are doing a great job since there are many needy pensioners. I also go to the warm house. It’s great that we can talk and support each other telling what we remember about Jewish traditions. Some of us study the traditions fundamentally reading modern literature on this subject. We also have common memories of our childhood years in Kishinev, about studying in the gymnasiums. Sometimes young people from the Gilel organization visit the warm house. They have so much energy of the youth. They tell us about the Jewish culture and sing songs. However, it was different in my childhood. There was no propaganda of Judaism as there is nowadays. Jews just observed their traditions, and this was their way of life. They couldn’t live otherwise. Now they sort of open the gates for us: some accept it and others don’t. I’ve felt ill lately. My strengths are deserting me. Human life is so short to manage it all. My son and my daughter-in-law invite me to join and live with them. They are concerned about my health, but I don’t feel like leaving Kishinev, everything is so familiar here.

Glossary:

Stela Astrukova
Sofia 
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Svetlana Avdala
Date of interview: March 2006

I do not know this woman, I see her now for the first time.

At first glance – very well-preserved, with delicate and even childlike features. We sit down and we start. In the beginning everything she says seems innocent, especially the parts about her childhood. A discreet smile appears on her lips when she goes back to her memories.

We have been working for three hours already – no signs of tiredness on her part. We start the Holocaust topic. Her face goes pale, her lips purse slightly, but her speech is as rhythmical as before. The facts follow each other like chopped wood.

Her thoughts are clear and focused, without decoration or lyrical deviation. After two more hours she is as unemotional as in the beginning. My respect for that woman is growing every single minute. I get quieter and quieter. I am thinking, 'Do her difficulties ever come to an end?'

As if I am watching some kind of a movie. I remember such movies from my childhood about heroic events from our newest history. Another type of films appeared after that – the so-called action movies.

There is shooting again, chases, torture, but everything seems like a game, they lack heroism, lack ideals, which...'...which...,' I add in the end of the conversation, 'overshadow the rational mind.''But without those ideals, we would not have sacrificed our lives,' she insists.'But do we have to sacrifice our lives? Isn't it more important for a man to be alive in order to keep on the path of life he has chosen?',

I ask.This is a dialogue between the generations or probably a clash of characters, I do not know, but all the people from that generation seem different from us. They were exposed to some other inner light and another type of meaning. Some people would say that they look 'old-fashioned' now, but I think that nowadays 'old-fashioned' is a nice word.

They speak slowly, with some kind of dignity, as if standing on a podium and talking to the masses. Ready to serve in the name of...Our generation doubts heroic actions, as well as everything else. We believe only in the things we can touch, achieve or use, but what kind of people are we? Lonely, headphones on our ears, staring into the screens, playing virtual action games.

• My family background
• Growing up
• During the war
• After the war
• Glossary

My family background

We came with the big group Sephardi Jews from Spain in the end of the 15th - 16th century 1 2. My paternal and maternal ancestors settled directly into Sofia. I do not know anything about their material state. But I remember my grandparents.

My paternal grandfather's name was Yako Azarya Levi. He lived with us. That was the custom those days, the parents of the eldest son lived with his family. My father had a brother, whose name was Azarya Levi, but he died during World War I on the Dobrudzha Front 3.

I remember my grandfather very well. I can clearly picture him in my mind even now. I was around 12-13 years old when he died. He had a beard and mustache like the old Jews.

He dressed very neatly. Every Saturday he went to the synagogue with the tallit and the book. When he returned, my grandmother would be waiting for him with the mastika 4 and some eggs. During the week he went to work. He had primary education.

He had graduated a Jewish school and had a small shop for paints and ironware, in which he worked. He went to work in the morning and came back for lunch because all shops had a compulsory lunch break from one to three. So, he would come home, have lunch and have an hour's nap. Then he got up, my grandmother made him some coffee and he went back to work. When my grandfather died in 1936, my father took care of the shop.

My paternal grandmother and my mother got on very well. Everything at home was in order and they both were kind women. The men went to work, my grandmother cooked and helped with the housework and my mother washed the clothes and looked after the children. Later, when we built the new house, in which we all moved, my mother also worked as a seamstress from home in order to help repay the loan which we took to build the house.

I did not speak much with my grandfather because he was more aloof. I spoke mostly with my grandmother Niema. I remember her long hair reaching down to her feet, which never went gray. My grandmother was not educated. She taught me to knit, to sew, to clean the big pots.

Before she married my grandfather, she had been a housemaid. When our family gathered for dinner, my grandmother would cook and clean the dishes. There were no washing detergents at that time. The dishes were made of copper and tin-plated inside. She washed them with soap and sand until they shone.

We had a tap in the yard and behind the tap - a cherry tree. My grandmother would kneel in the yard, washing and my mother would scold her that she would injure her back in this way. My grandmother also taught me the religious canons, because my parents were atheists.

My grandmother's hair was really gorgeous. She would untie the braids and comb her hair with ivory combs. She often called me to comb her and I loved that. She put gas and water in a small dish [effective remedy to protect against lice]. When she got up in the mornings, she untied the braids and combed her hair.

Sometimes she had only one braid, but most often – two. On holidays, she wrapped them around her head. She also combed her hair when we went to have a bath. Every Friday my grandmother, my mother and I would go to the City Bath situated at the river on Slivnitsa Blvd and Pirotska Str. When it was cold, we bathed in a wooden tub in the kitchen at home. Then she would call for me to wash her back.

Probably my grandmother was a very beautiful woman for my grandfather to marry her without a dowry. [The typical Jewish dowry – ashugar, included the smallest details from the everyday life of a Jewish family.] I do not know much, but I know that my grandmother remained an orphan very young and married without a dowry, which was very rare at the time.

I also remember my maternal grandmother. Her name was Yafa Sabat Beni (1880-1953) I remember her very well, because I often visited her. She lived on 35 Sredna Gora Str. in a house built by my grandfather Mois Sabat Beni (1878 – 1908), which was later extended by my uncles when they got rich. I remember that it was a solid three-story house – every brother had his story.

My grandmother was not very tall, and a bit overweight, but very energetic. I remember her with gray hair done in a bun. She was always dressed in black because she was left a widow at 28 years of age. She kept the mourning clothes until her death. She loved reading. She would read fairy tales in French and translate them to me.

My grandmother was a housewife all her life and looked after her children but she was a very educated woman for her times. I do not know the origin or the material well-being of her parents, but most probably they were well-off, educated and progressive [i.e. intelligent] people, because they sent my grandmother to study at a French school, which was quite a progressive decision at the time.

But when she got 13-14 years old, they decided to marry her. My grandmother told me that while she was playing ball on the street one day, her parents called her in to introduce her to her parents-in-law and her future husband – Mois Sabat Beni (1878 – 1908), who was a little bit older than her, probably 2 years.

So, he was around 15-16 years old. She left school. She was in the sixth or seventh grade. They did not have children the first years of their marriage, because they themselves were still children. Then she started giving birth to one child every year – five in all. At 28 years of age she remained a widow, because my grandfather died of hernia in hospital.

Their eldest son is Leon (1897 – 1953). In 1898 my mother Matilda (1898 - 1964) was born, next was Meshulam (1899 – 1970), Zhak (1900 – 1980) and last was Vizurka (1902 – 1975).

After my grandfather died, my mother remained an orphan at ten years of age. She graduated the third primary grade and my grandmother to make ends meet sent the two eldest children to work. My mother started work in a carpet factory for Persian carpets on Pirotska Str. owned by a Bulgarian, whose name I do not know.

Leon became a shop assistant somewhere. My mother was a small child and had very tiny fingers. She was given the task to tie the knots of the carpets. In order to reach the upper part of the carpet, she had to use a chair mounted on a desk. One day Maria Luiza 5, the mother of King Boris III 6 went there to see how carpets were woven.

When she saw my mother, she started asking questions about her. When she was told that my mother had lost her father and has four more siblings, she decided to help the family by making a charity. She asked my mother about her name, but when she realized that my mother was a Jew, she turned her back on her and refused to do help her in any way.

My mother worked there for some time and then she went to some Bulgarian tailoring atelier and learned the craft there. Then she started sewing in the houses of the rich people in the town. My mother was very beautiful and had a lean figure. The son of the owner of one of the houses, in which she sewed, fell in love with her and they engaged.

He was a Jew from a very rich family and she was very poor, but he was sick of tuberculosis and his parents could not protest his choice. The engagement lasted nine months. He gave her as a gift a very beautiful small polished chest, made like a jewel, with small drawers and doors and incrustations. He left the engagement ring in one of the drawers.

Later my father did not want to see that chest, but my mother preserved it. The fiance died of tuberculosis when my mother was 18 years old. I do not know his name. He was rarely spoken of at home, because my father was jealous of him. My mother told me the story of their love when I found the chest she was keeping.

When he died, my mother could not overcome her grief for a long time. In the course of time she managed to earn enough money to live better, because the rich people paid her well. Her brother Leon was also successful and earned enough money to enroll in a trade high school.

During his studies my mother also helped him financially together with their other brother Meshulam, who also started working. When Leon graduated, he became an accountant and he and my mother started supporting Meshulam who also wanted to graduate the same school.

Only the youngest son Zhak did not want to study. He became a goldsmith and was sent to France to learn the craft. When my mother became 24 years old, she met my father through her brother Leon. My father had returned from Paris and his first decision was to call my mother's brother Leon to see him. My father and my mother liked each other very much. My father was also handsome. They fell in love and married without any dowry on my mother's part.

My father Morduhay Yako Levi (1896 – 1972) graduated high school and was mobilized as an infantryman at the front. A year after that he was captured during an attack. He said that it was the most horrible massacre that had taken place during World War I 7.

The soldiers ran with the bayonets forward and butchered each other. The battle happened somewhere in France, but I do not know where. My father was lightly injured and sent to a camp in Marseilles where he stayed until the end of the war from 1915 until 1918.

He learned there to do electrical engineering work and the French language, which he had studied in high school. When he left the camp, he remained to work in France, at first in Marseilles, then in Paris. He worked as an electrical engineer. He also made some big improvement on the mechanism of the electrical bulbs.

And since he knew no laws and he was not a very practical man – he was very honest and guileless – he took the originals to some electrical company to adopt them. They took his unpatented designs and they started using them without paying him anything. He was very disappointed with them. When he came back to Bulgaria, he brought his designs, but the bulbs had already been introduced. He decided to return to Bulgaria and marry a Bulgarian Jew.

After the marriage my parents left for Paris, because my father liked life there. They spent there 2-3 years, tried to make a living. They lived in an attic flat. My mother worked as a seamstress and my father as an electrical engineer, but they did not have regular incomes. When I was about to be born, they decided to return to Bulgaria.

A month after my birth, I was born on 24th March, on the 25th April the bombing of the St Nedelya Church took place 8. Arrests started, people became anxious. My father's parents who had lost their elder son in the war on the Dobrudzha Front insisted that the young family leave Bulgaria.

They also saw that my father had broader views not typical for the Bulgarian style of life. He was raised with the ideas of the French revolution, he saw no differences between the people – black or white, Jewish or Germans. He did not denounce the marriages between Bulgarians and Jews. He accepted people's mistakes lightly, not with the fanaticism present at the times.

My parents left for Palestine. They traveled by steamboat. I was one month old. Leon, my mother's elder brother, welcomed them there. He had been living there with his wife Simha for two years. She worked as a midwife and I do not remember what he did. My cousin Yafa was born in Palestine.

My uncle and aunt remained a little longer in Palestine but eventually returned, I do not know why, probably because of the harsh climate. My parents, however, did not manage to settle. My mother did not work, because she looked after me and my father could not find work as an engineer, because there was no construction at the time.

They lived in a wooden shed and slept on the floor. My mother said that one night she heard me moaning and got up to check on me. She saw that a snake – a boa – had wrapped itself around me and was suffocating me. She panicked and woke up my father.

A short while after that I got a very severe eye infection, probably because of the dirt and the miserable conditions. They returned to Bulgaria and lived in a small brick house together with my grandparents on Morava Str., present-day 75 Zheko Dimitrov Str.

• Growing up

I spent my early childhood there, until 1932-33 when my parents built the new house. Until then we had a garden and a yard around the small house. I remember that the house had no foundations and its floor was directly over the ground, covered with boards. We had electricity.

We had running water and toilet inside. But my parents did not like that because the sink was right next to the toilet. So, he made a toilet outside the house right next to it and we did not use the one inside. In 1932 – 33 we built the new house in the garden of the old one, facing the street. The old house remained in the yard.

We lived in the big house until our internment 9. After my parents died, I sold it. We had everything in the new house – a toilet and a bathroom. It had three storeys and a big kitchen, a large basement, an attic, a toilet and a bathroom. It was not lavishly furnished – we had beds with iron boards, which I thought were very old-fashioned, a three-door wardrobe, a cupboard in the kitchen, a radio.

In the kitchen we had a stove using coals. After 1936 we bought a new Pernik stove. My father had brought the French culture with him. The whole basement was full of his books from France and he turned the attic into a workshop.

We lived in Iuchbunar 10 where there were a lot of Jews, but our neighbors were mostly Bulgarians. The Jews lived on the land between Klementina Str., Pozitano Str., Tri Ushi Str., and we were on the side, on Morava Str. We got one very well with our neighbors.

When we moved to the new house with my grandmother Niema and my grandfather Yakov in 1933 – 34, we let out the old one so that we could pay our loan. My parents insisted that our tenants were Jews. Our tenants also let out one of the rooms. I remember that we got along very well with them.

The people in those days helped each other very much, probably because they were not so overburdened by possessions as nowadays. My mother sewed at home. The woman in the tenants' family worked in a chocolate factory. I remember that my mother lit stoves with charcoal in order to cook because electricity was expensive.

She took the food for the little girls, warmed it, laid the table for them and the sent them home. If one of the three housewives was sick, the others made soups for all the children. They were very united. My mother taught them housework, what to buy, how to sew, how to keep the house clean etc. After all, she was educated, she knew French and had lived in France.

My mother washed the clothes twice a week. On Friday after we took our baths, she washed the underwear. On Monday we changed our clothes and she washed the bed linen. The next Monday she would wash the bed linen of my grandmother. She changed them every 15 days. All bed sheets were starched and ironed.

They were starched with flour. Even nowadays I starch my sheets. Starching keeps bed linen clean for longer. You put to boil some water and when it is ready you pour in it flour, which had been mixed with cold water before that and salt. You stir until the mixture gets thick like cream. Then you filter it and place the sheets in.

The housewives competed whose house would be the cleanest and the tidiest. In the wardrobe my father's shirts were ironed and tied with a blue ribbon. My mother's underwear was tied with a pink ribbon. My mother did not allow us to put or take things out of the wardrobe, only she did that.

My mother knitted and sewed. She sewed curtains, bed covers and a table cover for the new house. I remember that our bedroom in the house was facing the street. Right in front of the street there was an electric lamp post. While we were sleeping, my mother was sewing using the light of the lamp post in order to save on electricity.

We did not have enough money and lived sparely because we paid back the loan we took for the house until we were interned. My mother would take the old clothes of our relatives, wash them, turn them back to front and saw them again. I was always neatly and cleanly dressed.

As I child one day I went out on the street and one of my friends showed me a gorgeous doll and asked me where my doll was. I did not know what to say because I had never had a doll or another toy and now it turned out that every child on our street had some. I came back home crying.

My mother said, 'Don't cry, I will make you a doll.' She was sewing a black satin apron and she cut from the cloth a doll, sewed it, embroidered eyes, a nose and hair with the sewing machine and gave it to me. The next day I showed my doll to the others. But they all said to me, 'What kind of doll is that?

There are no black dolls. People are white.' And they showed me their dolls. I returned home crying once again because my doll was black. But my mother always had an answer for me. 'Go out and tell that that you are the only one in the neighborhood who has a Negro doll. No one else has such a doll. They will surely envy you.' So did I and later black dolls appeared throughout the whole neighborhood.

My mother read a lot in Bulgarian and French. I remember her reading 'Robinson Crusoe', 'Homeless' by Hector Malot, ‘Huckleberry Finn' [by Marc Twain]. I learned to read and write in Bulgarian and French at an early age before I started school. Later I read books to my sister.

My mother got a very serious kidney infection in 1928-29 before she gave birth to my sister in 1930. She had to have an operation. That made our life very difficult, but I think her brothers helped us. They paid her her share of their father's house and we used that money to pay for the operation.

The people who were poor at that time had special documents and could go to free examinations at Alexandrovska Hospital. But my mother was in University Hospital. My father was a proud man and paid the whole treatment there. Professor Stanishev, the best surgeon in Bulgaria at that time took out one of her kidneys.

So, she lived a healthy life until she was 68 years old when she died of liver cancer. I remember her going to change her bandages. My father also took me to see her in the hospital. I was three years old. My mother was lying in a narrow long room with four beds. I had a big bunch of flowers.

The professor came to check on her and told me, 'Hey, girl, where are you going with that bunch of flowers?' 'To see mommy,' I said. 'And who is your mommy?' 'The woman in the corner'. My mother started crying when she saw me. Then she got better.

My sister Dora was born in 1930. In 1934 my paternal grandmother Niema died. In 1936 my sister caught diphtheria. My grandfather Yako was also sick and my mother was looking after him. (He died the same year – 1936.) I took care of my sister. I remember that her throat was aching the whole time, she was diagnosed late. Everyone thought it was a throat infection and they prescribed her some creams to be able to swallow more easily.

I fed her. I would try to feed her two or three spoons, but she did not want any. And since I loved sweets, I would eat the rest. My mother and uncle Zhak got also infected from my sister, but my father did not. Immunity. My sister died in the infections ward of Alexandrovska Hospital.

My mother was admitted to the hospital at Stochna Station – the District Hospital, in the infections ward. But she made it through the illness and so did my uncle. Later, I went to work in the same ward where my mother was.

When my grandparents died, we started to let out their room too. A woman named Sterka took it. She was the mother of Dragomir Asenov [the nickname of Zhak Nissim Melamed, a Bulgarian writer of Jewish origin born on 15th May 1926 in Mihaylovgrad. Playwright and author of novels, novelettes and short stories.

Died in 1981.]. She was a Serbian Jew, a widow with no relatives in Sofia. She had three children. Dragomir Asenov was in the Jewish orphanage in the beginning. He came back every Saturday and we were friends.

Her elder daughter, his sister, lived with her grandparents in the town of Ferdinand [present day Montana, named Mihaylovgrad during Socialist rule]. Later she also came to Sofia to live with her mother.

When my grandparents were alive, we spoke Ladino 11 at home. My grandmother could not speak a perfect Bulgarian. We observed all traditions. We had a patriarchal way of life. We all had lunch and dinner. On Friday we cooked for Saturday – Fritas di praz – leaks balls, potato balls, a hen with rice.

On Friday we all had a bath, changed our clothes and cleaned the house thoroughly. We did not cook on Saturday. A gypsy woman came to light our fire to warm the food.

My grandparents did not touch fire and did not allow my mother to light it too. [A common ritual during Sabbath. Jews were not allowed to light fire and a person who was not a Jew had to come and do that for them.]

We arranged the table for Friday night and had a formal dinner. That was observed until my grandparents were alive. We had special dishes for Pesach.

After the holiday they were washed and were not used until the next holiday. Before the holiday they were boiled in water with soda so that they would shine

Once a year, in the three weeks before Pesach my mother started the great cleaning. On the holiday the whole family gathered at Mazarovi family – the elder sister of my father. She had a big house with four or five rooms. She arranged a big table for all the relatives. I remember that I would always fall asleep while they were reading the Haggadah.

They put a handkerchief full of matzah and boyos on the back of each child. The handkerchiefs were embroidered with gold threads on the ends. In this way we symbolized the aliyah.

The prayer ended with the words: 'This year we are here, but may we celebrate the next in Jerusalem.' On Pesach we ate paschal foods. We ate boyos instead of bread for eight days.

On Yom Kippur we all did taanit. [A fasting obligatory for the healthy and not – for the sick, the children, the pregnant women and those breastfeeding.] We sniffed a quince with clove and went to the synagogue... Before [Yom] Kippur the whole family gathered in the evening and had a celebration. When the fasting ended, we always ate soup.

Then we read a prayer and the real dinner started, most often a hen with rice. On Chanukkah the first and the last night my father's kin gathered at home because of my grandparents who lived with us. My grandfather lit the first shammash.

[Editor's note: The interviewee makes a mistake – shammash is the ninth candle of the Chanukkah candlestick, with it one lights all the other eight candles.] All the children were eager to light their own candles. And we competed whose candle would burn out last. That depended on the amount of oil.

We also gathered on Frutas 12. The children received purses with fruit. On Purim we put on masks and went around the houses of the relatives. Every one gave us some stotinkas. After that we counted our money and bought something. We loved that holiday because it was fun.

When my grandparents died, we arranged for them a funeral in accordance with the Jewish ritual. We were in mourning. The relatives, parents, brothers, sisters, the wife and children of the diseased, sat on a black blanket on the ground. The synagogue gave small black round tables, who were comfortable for the people sitting to eat.

The more distant relatives brought food to the mourning people for seven days. It was also typical when arriving from the cemetery, to be served coffee by one of the neighbors. Then the women stayed at home, did not go to the cemetery and prepared the welcome of the men and the rabbi from the cemetery.

They put yellow cheese, white cheese, baked eggs and boiled pasta with black pepper, a little oil, lemon and crackers on the table. The rabbi came to the house to make wings – he cut the shirt and the underwear of the wife as a sign of mourning. The mourning people wore black clothes and observed the mourning for a year.

During the internment and after 9th September [1944] 13, since we lived together with other families, we could not observe that ritual. And although we, the children, observed Jewish rituals different from the Bulgarian ones, we did not feel different from the other children and had Bulgarian friends.

My mother had a natural healing talent. She would visit Bulgarians and Jews who did not feel well, put on cupping glasses on their backs and advised them what to do to get better. She also sewed for Bulgarian families. Very often they invited her at their houses on different occasions.

My Bulgarian classmates also visited me at home to help them with the lessons, because I had excellent marks at school. On the street we also played with the Bulgarian and Jewish children. I remember that a Bulgarian family lived near our house and the girl Violeta was my friend. They had a big mulberry tree and we all gathered, Bulgarians and Jews, to pick the fruit.

The first time I felt I was different from the others, was when King Simeon 14 was born. Then as a sign of royal charity, all students got their marks increased by one point and the best students in the classes received awards. I was a student at junior high school at that time. I had excellent marks in all subjects throughout all my school years.

We were invited to the school gym for the presentation of the awards. The headmaster opened the ceremony and I went to the first row ready to go and take my award. I went to the stage, waiting for the headmaster to say my name. There was some confusion among the teachers and students on the stage, I saw that the headmaster was also embarrassed and then he announced the name of a student whose father was an officer.

He had had two 'fours' [In the Bulgarian system 'two' is the lowest mark and 'six' is the highest.] the previous terms. I was shocked at first but that was only for a moment. I was below the stage, I held my head high and went out the side door. I did not cry. I went home. We lived very close to the school.

When my mother saw me, she hugged me and said, 'What is the matter, why are you crying?' I told her everything. 'But, girl, we are Jews. The award is for the Bulgarian heir to the throne. A Bulgarian child should receive it.' Then I realized I was different from the others.

We kept in touch with the Jewish community. Before I started going to the Bulgarian school, I went to a Jewish nursery for two or three months, but not for long because my parents were afraid that I would have to cross the street alone. That is why the enrolled me in a Bulgarian primary school and not in a Jewish one. In order to get to the Jewish school, I had to cross Klementina Str. on which tram No24 was traveling.

The Bulgarian primary school is where the Jewish school is now. There were only three Jewish girls in my class. My cousin Fani, daughter of uncle Leon came to study with me in the third primary grade in the Bulgarian school. Her mother died, she fell into a severe depression and my mother took her home. We studied together from then on. Our friends were mostly Bulgarians.

From the primary school I remember the 24th May parades 15. Fani and I played in the school orchestra. I played the bass tuba. We also had shows in the end of each school year. We organized exhibitions too. We had classes in embroidering for the girls and making things out of wood for the boys. For example, they made shelves for books or clocks. And we, the girls, sewed aprons, skirts, embroidered nightgowns. There were both girls and boys in the classes in the primary school

On the high holidays we were taken to the St Nikola Church in the park. I did not go to church, but I stayed during the classes in religion because it was interesting for me, although we, the Jews, were exempt from that class. They taught us the Bible. My father never restricted me.

He very seldom said no to me and my mother listened to my father. During the classes they read the prayer, but the making of the sign of the cross was not obligatory and I did not do it. They were like classes in history for me and I learned some things about the New Testament from them.

I have wonderful memories from my teachers. They loved their profession. When we were in the third primary grade one of the teachers took us on an excursion to Pernik  [a city in Southwestern Bulgaria, 25 km from Sofia] by train. We went to the mines to see how coal is dug.

He must have had very progressive [here the word is used in the meaning of ‘leftist’] views because he made us learn the poem by [Hristo] Smirnenski 'Quarry Boy' 16. That was the first time I left Sofia. In my junior high school we also went on an excursion to Veliko Tarnovo [a city in North-Central Bulgaria, 195 km from Sofia]. .

I graduated the classic high school where we studied Latin and Greek, because I wanted to become a doctor. I was influenced by the movie on Robert Koch, a German physician who discovered the tuberculosis virus. The name of the movie was also 'Robert Koch'. I remember that his style of work, devotion and detailed investigation of the origin of the illness impressed me deeply.

From high school I remember our literature teacher Sakarova, sister of the great politician, the social-democrat [Nikola] Sakarov 17. She was a lean and tall, neatly-dressed woman. She loved her job and instilled that love in us. We all loved her very much.

She also taught us Greek mythology and Greek language. Had gone to Rome and showed us photos. I was much impressed by Laocoon. [Laocoön warned his fellow Trojans against the wooden horse presented to the city by the Greeks. He told them that it was a military trick by Odysseus.

Soon two large sea serpents came out from the sea where Laocoon and his sons were presenting a sacrifice to Poseidon. They strangled him and his sons. The famous statue was made by the Rhodian sculptors Hegesandros, Athenedoros and Polydoros around 175-150 BC.

Now it is in the Vatican museums]. I was much disturbed by this image, probably because of my mother’s story about the boa. I remember that at the time of the internment my cousin Fani Aronova and I took one of the most beautiful flowerpots and gave it to our teacher as a memory from us. She said nothing. She had progressive [i.e. leftist] ideas.

But one day when I was in the fifth high school grade (I was in the UYW 18 leadership of the high school), we disseminated leaflet throughout the school. She was deputy headmaster and she got very angry and started looking for the people who did it. I did not know if she found out that we did it or not, but she did not catch us.

On Sundays my parents and I went out on a walk to some of the parks and on our way home we went to a confectionery. My father bought us cakes, boza 19, ice cream. When we had no money, my mother would joke with my father in Spanish [Ladino], 'You bought me nothing on the way to the park and back.

Why should we bother going out at all?' My parents loved going to the theater and to the opera. My father told us a lot about the theater performances of Sarah Bernardt [1844-1923, a famous French actress] and a play by Victor Hugo he had seen. I remember that the famous singer Hristina Morfova 20 was singing in the 'Magic Flute' [by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart] and we went to see her.

I was around 8 or 9 years old. It was very interesting but I could not understand the plot. I started asking my father. He told me, 'You will see the 'Magic Flute' many times in your life, but only once will you have the chance to listen to Hristina Morfova. Remember that.' She played the part of the Night Queen and I still remember how she was lowered on the dark stage, all illuminated. She was very impressive, a tall, big woman with a scepter in hand...

We went to the cinema regularly – once a week. We went to the movies starring Shirley Temple and I loved her. She is the prodigy child. Although my parents were not rich and highly educated, they had a broad culture. My mother sang very well. Very often she would hum whole arias while cleaning and sewing.

She had a great memory for music and sang long before we had a radio at home. Her elder brother Leon also had such a memory, and so did Zhak who sang in the Tsadikov’s choir 21 in Bulgaria and in a choir in Israel. Leon played the guitar and mandolin. They were musical but did not have the opportunity to develop their talent.

My parents kept in touch with the Jewish community – they paid araha [a kind of a membership fee paid by the members of the community in the synagogue] and were members of the community, although they were atheists and did not go to the synagogue.

My mother was not able to take part in the women's organizations of the Jewish community, because she had much work to do and had no time. My father was not a member of any organizations or parties. He was against party membership because he thought that the aligning with one party or point of view led to sectarianism.

He had an open mind. He read a lot of different newspapers and compared information. Most often he bought 'Utro' [Morning] 22, 'Mir' [Peace] [newspaper published by the People's Party from 1894 until 1944. Became a daily in 1906. In 1920 became a newspaper of the People's Progressive Party. In 1923 it was published by ‘Mir’ joint-stock company], etc.

There were operettas in the town performed on the stage of Odeon Theater at the place of the Musical Theater. We did not go there very often and neither did we go much to the theater. Once we went on an excursion by cart. We were like the gypsies – the whole cart was full of children, relatives, baskets of food.

I think we were heading for Vladaya but I am not sure. I was an obedient child, but at that afternoon, when the horses were released to rest, I decided to mount one of them, he was startled and hurled me to the ground. I was hurt very badly. I remember that everyone panicked and my parents brought me back to town.

But there were no serious consequences from the fall. We went on excursions and picnics very rarely. During the holidays we stayed in Sofia. My mother made me help her with the housework. She had more clothes to sew during the Easter and the Christmas holidays and I had to help her.

I often had to sew the hems and I hated that. But my mother would say, 'You are a girl, you should know how to sew a blouse or a skirt.' And I would tell her, 'I will not become like you, sewing all day on the machine.' I never wanted to learn how to sew. When I finished junior high school with excellent marks, I wanted very much to continue studying although my mother thought it was unnecessary for a girl.

My father intervened. 'She will go to high school and that's it!' So, they enrolled me in the Second Girls' High School, which was private. It was in a number of buildings on Dunav Str. and Iskar Str. The fourth and fifth grade studied on Dunav Str.

A short distance along the street was another house where the sixth graders studied and on Iskar Str in a yellow building studied the higher grades. There were four Jewish girls in our class – Fani Avramova, Linka Natan, Beti Ashkenazi and I.

There were three tramlines in Sofia. Tram No4 passed along Klementina Str. and tram No3 passeed along Pirotska Str. Tram No5 went to Knyazhevo. The other means of transport were carts and carriages. The people living in a house next to ours had a carriage. One of the brothers who lived there was a cabman.

He would go to the station to wait for passengers. When he came back home from work we, the children, would wait for him on Opalchenska Str. and he would take us all home on the carriage. It was a lot of fun.

Another memory of the way Sofia looked then is from a later period when I was already a member of the UYW. I remember that the winter of 1941 was very cold. The temperatures in Sofia fell as low as -25, -26 degrees C. My friends from the UYW group and I decided that we should by all means buy tickets for 'Carmen' starring Ilka Popova 23.

At four o'clock in the morning and -25 degrees I queued in front of the National Theater in order to buy tickets when the booking office opened at eight o'clock. I was so cold that had no strength to get back home. My aunt Reyna, my father's sister, lived somewhere close and I visited her to get warm. My aunt put my feet in hot water and made me tea. I remember going back along Pirotska Str. and seeing stoves with charcoal placed outside so that people would warm themselves.

I became a UYW when I was 16 years old and it happened through the Jewish chitalishte 24. When I learned how to read, my father took me to the chitalishte because he was not able to buy me books. He showed me how to select my books. The first chitalishte was 'Hristo Botev', next to my school so I did not have to cross the street.

When I was second or third primary grade I became a member of another chitalishte – 'Emil Shekerdzhiiski' 25. It was on Klementina Str. between Sredna Gora Str. and Opalchenska Str. It had a number of names before 9th September – 'Aura', 'Shalom Aleyhem' 26, 'Bialik' 27 It also had a central office on Lege Str.

The librarian there was the famous Jewish writer Haim Benatov [writer, lived in Iuchbunar, author of the novel 'This long road...'] The librarian in the office on Klementina Str. was Elena Kehayova, a communist. She used her job in the chitalishte to introduce us to the UYW movement and its ideology.

The first UYW group was at the Jewish chitalishte. At first there were groups of sympathizers at the chitalishte. They were UYW groups. We became members of some of the groups as sympathizers. The first years there were educational groups.

We had meetings before which everyone had to read a book. That is why, I say that UYW educated us not only politically but also culturally. We read Erenburg, Gladkov, Pushkin, Lermontov 28, Tolstoy 29. We discussed their books at our meetings. We had literary debates in the form of trials.

For example, we debated whether it was right for Martin Eden to commit suicide [a character of the novel 'Martin Eden' by Jack London]. We also had discussions about love. Some of the members defended the position of Elena Kolontay [the first woman diplomat of Soviet Russia] on free love, the others were against. Most of us, the girls, were against.

• During the war

The anti-Semitic attitudes started around the 1940s. I remember the Legionaries [Bulgarian Legions] 30 and Branniks 31 on Klementina and Pirotska Str. and how they attacked the Jewish shops there [The Night of Broken Glass] 32

[Editor's Note: the interviewee is mistaken – no Branniks took part in that incident because their organization was founded in December 1940]. Then they wanted to attack the houses but the UYW organization consisting of both Bulgarians and Jews put up a resistance. We even had help from the Bulgarians from other quarters of the town.

While I was studying in the high school, I felt the negative attitude of the Legionaries and Brannik girls among us. They spoke loud enough for us to hear them and disseminated rumors that the Jews were the reasons for the troubles because they were rich and ruled the nation and their riches were accumulated in dishonest ways.

Their anti-Semitism was especially strong at Easter. Then they directly attacked us with the words that the Jews drank blood and if a child went missing, we were the first to be blamed to have killed him or her to drink the blood. We, the UYW members, gathered and decided to resist the Branniks by explaining the truth to the Bulgarians who were not against us yet. We used every opportunity to talk to them.

Then all Jewish property was confiscated 33. They started with the manufacturing plants. Then they closed the shops, the factories, the ateliers. My father also had a shop. At first, they forced him to take a Bulgarian partner, then they made him transfer everything to the Bulgarian.

They wanted to leave the Jews without any means of earning money. We were only allowed to practice some craft from our homes, like sewing or mending shoes. The Bulgarians were banned to employ Jews and the Jews were banned to take Bulgarian girls as maids. Those were difficult and hungry years for our family because we were still paying our loan.

My mother kept on sewing. Only the three of us were at home and my father continued to work as an electrical engineer going to the homes of his clients. He repaired stoves, but he did not have much work because there were not many electrical appliances then. He could not make the electrical wirings of new houses – that was not allowed.

Then we had to declare all our property. [In 1941 the Law for Protection of the Nation 34 was adopted and included a variety of documents on the real estate and movable property owned by Jews, including bank savings. Jews had to declare all their possessions within a month of the adoption of the law.]

No one was allowed to hide anything. Using these declarations, they came and confiscated what they wanted. We were left our new house, but they took the rent we received from the old one. They took our radio sets and gave all Jews pink ID cards. We were renamed during the Holocaust. My name Stela was changed to Ester.

My mother's name Matilda was changed to Mazal, but my father's name Morduhay was not changed 35. Then followed the curfew and the badges [yellow stars] 36. The Jews were allowed to live in the Jewish quarter only – between Hristo Botev Str., Klementina Str. and the river. A kind of a ghetto was forming there.

When the orders for internment arrived, we were given only 3 or 4 days before the day of leaving. Pirotska Str. turned into a kind of an open market. The people took out their belongings and sold them on the street. They needed money and they were not allowed to take more than 30 kg with them.

Villagers on carts arrived from the nearby villages and bought a lot of things at extremely low price. I remember that my mother took out the woolen mattresses for sale. I sold one of them for 5 levs – the price of one loaf of bread. My mother was sorry at first that I had sold it for so little but then dismissed it with the words, 'We lost everything, so a mattress is not such a big deal'.

Rumors were circulating that we would be sent to Germany to work there. My mother supposed that since I was young, I would be sent to work somewhere without them. I remember that we had some gold family jewels. She divided them into three parts – for her, for my father and for me and sewed them into the hems of our clothes.

In my winter coat she sewed a gold bracelet, a pair of earrings and a ring and told me, 'Sell these things only if you have nothing to eat.' Those jewels were not found during the arrests and searches later on and I had completely forgotten about them. But when I got home on 9th September, all my clothes had to be boiled in a big cauldron. My mother remembered the jewels and took them out.

We also had silver coins with the image of Boris I from 1942. My father also had a number of them. He took out the threshold board between the kitchen and the room, dug a hole in the ground and buried them in a metal box. After 9th September we found them there and by selling them we survived the first days after the Holocaust.

My parents did not know about my illegal UYW activity. We had a special way of distributing the leaflets so that the police would not find us. Usually we went out in couples – a boy and a girl. The girl would put her back against the wall and glue the poster on the wall behind her. Meanwhile the boy would lean above her as if they are kissing.

One evening my father followed me and saw me with a boy, while gluing a poster. The boy was leaning over me but we were not kissing. My father did not realize what we were doing so we must have been really good. When I went home, he beat me hard and shouted at me, 'Are you going to be a prostitute?' I did not explain to him the truth because that was our secret. My father gradually accepted the new ideas, saw what was happening to the Jews and to us. One event played a major part in his change of beliefs.

It was 1943 on the eve of 24th May [1943] 37. We had already received orders for the internment and a rumor spread among all Jews that Rabbi Daniel 38 would speak in the synagogue the next day. All Jews went to the synagogue to hear his words. According to police reports there were around 10 000 people in the synagogue.

The book 'We, the saved ones' by Haim Oliver [1918 – 1985, a writer, participant in the anti-fascist resistance] includes all police reports on that day. There was also an order to all UYW members to go and participate in the 24th May march. I went with my father who wanted to hear the words of Rabbi Daniel and to protect me.

Not because he supported our ideas. The whole Osogovo Street was full of people. So was the Jewish school because the school and the synagogue had the same yard. [Editor's Note: the interviewee is talking about the small synagogue, not the central one].

Rabbi Daniel sent a prayer to God to help us and then went out of the synagogue. We, the people in the synagogue, heard nothing, but then we were told that we should go on a protest march towards the castle because it was 24th May and everyone was supposed to be in the streets.

The students' march organized by the Bulgarian government started from the [St Kliment Ohridski] University 39. Usually the king watched the parade either in front of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral 40 or on the balcony of the Military Club 41. We were told that we would protest in front of the king against the internment of the Jews.

During all big national holidays the houses were decorated with national flags. The writer Dragomir Asenov and another boy took a flag, which was hanging from the fence of a house and led us marching. Initially we were a lot of people. On the corners of Osogovo and Klementina Streets the elder people would stop us with the words, 'What are you doing? You are getting us killed!'

But we marched forward and the rabbi also came with us. But when we started the protest demonstration not all the people came. Mostly the UYW members joined us – we were probably around 500 – 1000 people. Somewhere before Hristo Botev Blvd the police had found out about the protest and stopped us with mounted police.

The whole neighborhood was blocked for an hour. The police started beating everyone on their way. At that time I had two long braids. I wanted to fight the police with my bare hands. I was that stupid. Then I remember my father taking hold of me by the braids and taking me home.

With the whole neighborhood blocked, everyone out in the street was arrested and taken to the yard of the Fotinov school. The police started going from house to house and arresting every Jew they saw. The arrested women were released but the arrested men spent three days in the schoolyard. We went around the yard trying to give them something to eat but we were not allowed.

The police probably checked everyone in the records and all Jews whose relatives were political prisoners were sent to the Somovit camp 42 and the Kailuka camp 43.

The rest were released with the order to keep the deadlines in the internment orders. That was how the 24th May ended. The protest was very brave. Such a protest in the heart of the fascist power! Of course it cannot be compared to the Warsaw ghetto, but it was a great example of the Jewish resistance.

At the end of May and the beginning of June 1943 we were interned to the Jewish neighborhood in Gorna Dzhumaya [present-day Blagoevgrad, in South-West Bulgaria, 76 km from Sofia]. There were Turks, Macedonians and Bulgarians living in that town and they were all very tolerant and treated us well. I do not remember any anti-Semitic attitudes.

We even lived better than we did in Sofia where the Legionnaires raided the Jewish streets. We were not allowed to enter the Bulgarian part of Gorna Dzhumaya. We were forbidden to rent Bulgarian houses. In fact, we lived in some kind of a ghetto.

Our life during the internment was very difficult. We shared a house with Angel Vagenstein 44 who had been mobilized before the internment and worked in the construction of the railway Blagoevgrad – Simitli. At that time he had graduated a technical secondary school.

His family was also interned to Gorna Dzhumaya and lived in his room – his parents and his brother. The other room was occupied by another family. We did not have a room and lived in the corridor. There was a curtain above the beds made by the torn rucksacks so that we would have some privacy from the people passing through the corridor.

We were starving. There were some shops from which we could shop at certain times. We had rations but the Jewish rations were not the same as the Bulgarian ones. We mostly used the black market. The villagers from nearby sold us their produce. The first two months in Gorna Dzhumaya were calmer. But in June and August when the partisan movement gathered strength, the district police came and the situation got worse.

We were not allowed to work, but my father, who was an electrical technician, was hired by a communist who had an electrical workshop. His name was Tutev. He paid him the same salary he gave to the other employees and that helped us live a little bit better. That also helped my parents pay the lawyers and the expenses of my trial when I was arrested. We also used our savings and sold the jewelery and clothes. There was a curfew.

I was in the 12th grade and I was allowed to graduate high school in Gorna Dzhumaya. My father asked the authorities for permission and the regime was more liberal in its first months. Probably I was the only Jew who managed to graduate.

I enrolled in September. By the end of September I had to go underground. By the end of December all high schools were closed. After 9th September 1944 the school in Gorna Dzhumaya issued me a document that I had graduated their high school.

Despite the bad conditions we got our lives a bit organized. I immediately became a member of the UYW movement in Gorna Dzhumaya. Jacky [Angel] was in charge of the Jewish group and when he became a partisan and left in August 1943 I replaced him. We did a variety of activities there.

Every evening before the curfew, which started at 6 pm we gathered the young people at the synagogue and held lectures on popular topics. We, the communists used these lectures to familiarize them with our ideas. Each Jew, who had knowledge on a topic, could present a lecture. We finished 15 minutes before eight o'clock and since the neighborhood was small we had enough time to go back home before the curfew.

In the summer we organized the children – we divided them into three groups, each of which had a teacher, one of whom was I. We learned songs, folk dances and games. We took them out of the town near the large Bistritsa river which passed near the town.

When I went underground at the end of September I was replaced by Dr Reni Ashkenazi. Then they formed a Jewish school. The children were divided into classes according to their age and the Jews who had graduated high school taught them.

There was no entertainment in the town but the young people started gathering. We sang, danced like all young people. The elderly women gathered on kitas. I do not know what this word means, but what they did was the following. Four or five women gathered in a yard and knitted, sewed, talked and read newspapers.

We, the UYW members, also had a combat group. Our task was to disrupt the telephone lines of the German troops there. We prepared for attacks but we did not do them. We were taught how to fire a weapon or set off a bomb. We provided food to the partisans.

We collected food and clothes. One of the engineers who lived in the house made a radio set and we gave it to the partisans. We helped them in every way we could. The villagers also helped us a lot.

Our demise was caused by two factors. At the end of November 1943 in accordance with a decision of the Gorna Dzhumaya partisan team, Jacky, Mois Kalev and Liko Seliktar came to Sofia with fake IDs in order to rob a rich Armenian family and buy weapons for the team with the money.

The decision was taken by the team but when it reached the district committee of the party, they rejected it as unfair. But Jacky and the others had already left. A member of the leadership of the team met me and asked me to tell Jacky that the burglary was off and they had to come back immediately.

The meeting was on Sunday evening. I talked with Jacky's parents and we started looking for ways to reach him but could not think of anything because Jews were forbidden to travel. While we were wondering what to do, they did the burglary. Until recently there was a memory plate of Mois Kalev the Mouse there. He died during the action.

The other participants were Niko Seliktar, Ana Valnarova – guarding in front of the building, Jacky and Mois Kalev who went upstairs and broke into the flat. They demanded the money from the family. The daughter who was pregnant faked a fainting and Mois Kalev went to bring water from the kitchen.

Jacky remained with the family but suddenly the daughter jumped and started shouting from the window for help. At the same time a sergeant and a policeman were passing in front of the house. They ran towards it. Jacky and Mouse started running down. All partisans ran in different directions.

Jacky managed to escape but Mouse was surrounded and killed himself in order to escape arrest. Jacky went underground and stopped traveling. Yet, he was found and arrested at the end of 1943 because there were not many people in Sofia after the bombings and internments. That was one of the reasons for our demise.

At the same time there was another failure in our team. During some action in which Kiril Gramenov, Pesho Petrov and Nikola Parapunov, secretary of the district committee of the party [Bulgarian Communist Party up to 1990] 45, took part, there was a shooting, in which Nikola Parapunov was killed, Kiril Gramenov was wounded but managed to escape and Pesho was arrested. He gave the names of the leadership of the city committee of UYW in Gorna Dzhumaya and I was a member of that.

After those two events the secretary of the city committee of UYW was arrested along with a lot of people with whom I worked. The committee decided that I should go underground so that I would not be arrested. I started hiding in the houses. All people from the Jewish neighborhood sheltered me.

My illegal name was Dunya, because I had nice and long braids then. That was the name of the character in the movie 'Station Supervisor’ based on Pushkin’s novelette. They said I looked like the actress who played that part. Angel Vagenstein made up that nickname. And since no one looked for me for a long time, the committee decided that I was not betrayed and ordered me to come back and start school.

I was arrested on my first day at school. The interrogations were in the district police station in Gorna Dzhumaya. Fortunately, a lot of facts were already known before I was arrested. A policeman, whose name was Nedyalkov, always came to take us to the interrogation rooms and told us what was already discovered so that we would say it again and avoid torture. After 9th September he was arrested, but we stood up for him and he was not only released, but he was taken back to work.

After the torture, we were taken to the military barracks. The conditions there were very bad. I spent three months in detention in Gorna Dzhumaya and at the barracks. We were three girls – Slavka Kordova, Dobra Andonova and I. Besides the tortures, we were also subjected to humiliation.

There were only young men at the barracks. We had guards of course, who did not admit the boys to go near us, but they were also men. When they let us to go to the toilet in the mornings and in the evenings, we passed by the prisoners. All of them teased us and said terrible things. The walls of the men's toilets were low and the prisoners and the guards tried to peek it.

Tutev, my father's boss, was sent to our barracks to do some work and he told my father to come and see me. So, my father took out the yellow star, came to the prison and found us. He passed along our windows. I saw him and started crying. I felt so relieved. He did not dare stand in front of the windows but passed beside them as often as he could. I cried, he cried...

At the end of January and the beginning of February [1944] we were sent to 5th precinct in Sofia. It was hell. They searched us in the most humiliating way. We had to strip naked and they started searching our clothes. We stood there, naked and dirty because we had not had a shower in a very long time.

My last shower was on the 13th December and my next – on 9th September. We were put in a dark cell where the only light came from the cracks in the door. There were such big cockroaches that I have been afraid of them ever since. They were scuttling on the floor day and night... Hell! My parents did not know where I was.

They found out that we were no longer in Gorna Dzhumaya. While we were at the barracks, they regularly brought us food. My mother washed my clothes and sent them back. But when we came to Sofia no one knew where we were. There was one week when they gave us nothing to eat.

Suddenly the door was opened and a policeman came out. 'Hey, chifut 46, come and clean the stairs. Are you going to sleep all day?' He brought me to the kitchen. He made me fill a bucket with water and wash the stairs.

When I came back, he stood guard around me and when some policeman passed nearby, he started swearing at me. He brought me back to the kitchen to return the bucket. Meanwhile, the women in the kitchen had prepared some bread and yellow cheese for me. 'Eat, girl, eat!' But there was such a friendship and solidarity between me and the other girls that I said that the other girls were starving too.

So, the two women cut the bread in two and filled it with cheese, yellow cheese and butter. That was in the winter and I was wearing the winter coat in which my mother had sewn the gold rings, which no one managed to find. I hid the bread beneath it and the policeman took me back to the cell. After 9th September I did not manage to find these people. That bread, which we divided among ourselves in the cell saved us from death from starvation.

From the 5th Precinct we were sent to the Sofia prison. That happened on 22nd March. I remember that date because it was my birthday – the first day of spring. It was not so scary in the prison because there were no more tortures.

There was a female supervisor Konyarova, a die-hard fascist, who hated the Jews and sent me to the lock up room for the smallest things.

We were led out on a walk for an hour in the morning and one or two hours in the afternoon. We had no hot water and we used the beans soup to wash our hair. After all, it was mostly water with two or three beans.

The UYW organization was also present in the prison. One of our tasks was to bring to our side the criminal prisoners so that they would help us in contacting the outside world.

They were on a more lax regime – they were allowed to write letters and receive food from the outside. On afternoon I was sitting and singing a Katyusha song 'Apples and pears are blossoming', a famous Russian song. [The song is a symbol of the Russian army during WWII, because it is related to the Katyusha weapon and the turnover of the war after it started to be used.]

Then, a girl, about 19 or 20 years old, came to me. Her name was Katya. She had a one-year sentence because when she was a maid, she stole the satin corset of her mistress. She came to me and asked me, 'What are you singing about me?' She learned the song and started singing it from morning until night.

The prison was echoing from her strong voice and we all nicknamed her 'the cock-a-doodle-doo'. I also taught Katya a poem by my favorite poet Nikola Vaptsarov – 'A song of man' 47. She would go around by herself and recite the famous verse, 'But there in the prison he met honest people, became a real man!’ She was very fond of me.

We decided to organize a musical and literature performance on the occasion of 1st May [Labor Day] with songs and dances. We tried to keep our spirits up in prison. After the walk, we went back to our cells and without being noticed by the supervisor we gathered in one of the cells...

I had to play a dance accompanied by the rhythm of two clacking spoons. Konyarova found us, started shouting and did not allow anyone to go out of their cells for one week. And since she found me dancing, Sheli, another Jewish girl, singing and another girl clacking the spoons, she sent us to the lock up room.

It was dark and empty there with a bucket for a toilet. Three days passed on without any food or water. Konyarova lived in the prison and used Katya, 'the cock-a-doodle-doo', as a maid – to clean her room and wash her clothes.

While cleaning, she managed to steal the keys for the lock up room. She grabbed some food sent for the prisoners by their relatives and some clothes. She came downstairs, opened the door and threw everything in. But at that moment the alarm went off. Nobody knew that the lock up room was connected to it.

Konyarova came downstairs and saw Katya locking the door. She beat her in front of our eyes and locked her in the next lock up room. She opened our door and took everything back. In the fuss one of my friends managed to open the bucket and put the bread inside. After Konyarova left, she took it out and said, 'See, this piece on the top has not touched the bucket.' And since we had not eaten for four days, we ate it all. In fact, that saved our lives.

Around 5th May the great bombings took place in Sofia. The fences of the men's prison were taken down and we all we sent to the Pleven prison.

The trial was at the end of August. It took place in Gorna Dzhumaya. When we were taken to the courthouse, we passed along the streets – the men were wearing chains and the women – handcuffs. The people in the streets greeted us and threw flowers at us. The end of the war was near.

My lawyer was Cheshmedzhiev. I remember that he said, 'There is no point in sentencing them. In 20 days you will be forced to sit in their place.' When I came back to the prison, I brought a lot of illegal materials – newspapers, magazines.

Since I was underage, I was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for anti-fascist activities. There were two more Jewish girls in the Pleven prison – Sheli and Zizi, a schoolgirl from Pleven.

We, eleven or twelve women were locked in a single-person cell – two meters wide and 3.5 meters long. There were plank-beds in the women's prison and nothing at all in the men's one. In the evening we laid down, sideways, packed like sardines because there was not enough room to lie on our backs.

First, we lay on our left side, and then we all would turn on the right. There I caught tuberculosis because there was a sick woman in our cell. On the eve of the 7th September a Jewish boy who had been sentenced to death was taken out by the guards.

They said they would just interrogate him in order to avoid protests, but they never brought him back. Meanwhile, the people outside heard that something was happening in the prison. The Legionaries and the Branniks surrounded the prison to prevent the Russian army to storm it before the execution.

Our comrades in Pleven heard about that and made a blockade to protect us. They were on watch day and night. On 7th September [Konstantin] Muraviev 48 issued an order for the release of all political prisoners. But the director of our prison refused to let us go.

Then all of our comrades started to force the doors open. It looked like the storming of the Bastille. They brought some railway tracks and started smashing the doors. They opened them, came in and released us. Meanwhile the director notified the police and the doors had been forced open.

We were all coming out of the prison. At first the male prisoners forgot about the women and then came back to unlock us. Meanwhile, we caught Konyarova and took her keys. We rushed outside. Zizi, who had been released two months before, because she was acquitted at the trial, had mounted a door and when she saw me, she rushed to hug me.

We were chased by mounted police and we were being shot at. Some of us ran towards the grapevines. I went to my aunt's place with the three girls and four or five people from the prison. We went to the house of Meshulam Beni, a brother of my mother who lived with his wife Lora, his daughter Fani and my grandmother Yafa.

My cousin Fani Avramova was outside with the protesters. She took us there. Meshulam had been interned to Pleven and brought us food in the prison. Yet, the police managed to take a lot of people back to prison. On 7th September one of our saviors was killed in the shooting.

The next day Muraviev's order for the release of the political prisoners came and they had to obey. In the evening we took a train to Gorna Dzhumaya. On 9th September I heard the proclamation of the Fatherland Front 49 at 6 am at the station in Sofia. We traveled all night together with the political prisoners in a horse wagon on the eve of 9th September. We sang all the songs we knew – 'We will give hundreds of victims, but we will beat fascism!'

I arrived in Gorna Dzhumaya in the afternoon on 9th September. We were welcomed with a ceremony at the station. There was a field, two kilometers and a half between the station and the center. Someone had told my mother that we were back and she met me in the middle of the field. It was such a meeting, such hugs... My mother was crying with happiness that I was alive, I was hugging her and telling her, 'Walk mother, now is not the time for sentimentality!'

After 10-15 days we returned to Sofia. Fortunately, our house was not destroyed by the bombings but had been completely emptied. My mother found some sacks, filled them with hay and we used them as beds. Months after that we received aid from the Joint Foundation 50.

The authorities from Gorna Dzhumaya gave me a document certifying that I had graduated high school there. 2nd Girls' High School also gave me such a document. I enrolled to study medicine because that was my dream. I also started work in the Commissariat on supplies. I issued ration books and clothes.

• After the war

In April 1945, just before the end of the war, together with a UYW group I traveled to the front to bring presents to our soldiers. I was in Hungary when Berlin fell. Let me tell you about the fate of the 'cock-a-doodle-doo', who became our friend in prison.

All criminal prisoners were also released with us, but she had already served her sentence. She decided to go to the front line as a volunteer – a medical orderly. In Pecs on my way to the front lines, I was hugged from behind and it turned out that she was there working in the hospital. We were very happy to see each other.

We had half an hour and then I had to leave with the group. I promised to see her again on my way back. I returned a couple of days after that. I did not find her there. The commander of the base told me that she had been sent to accompany a group of wounded soldiers.

On their way one of the wounded wanted water and they stopped in a forest near a stream. She went down to fetch some water but stepped on a mine and died instantly. When the commander heard that I was her friend, he gave me a packet of her belongings. Among them I found the poem by Vaptsarov which I had given her in the prison.

I stayed in Pecs to help in the hospital until the end of the war. I remember that I had very big braids then and one of the soldiers said to one of the Hungarian girls, 'See, what beautiful hair our Bulgarian girls have!'

After 9th September I worked and studied. It was possible the first two years because the teachers did not check if everyone was present at the lectures. We were 2 000 people, gathering in the Moderen Teatar [Modern Theater] 51 in the hall of the Student's Home – its stage. Then I started work in the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. I was head of the human resources department until 1951. When my studies at the university got harder, I had to stop working.

My father's shop had been confiscated. During the Law for Protection of the Nation we had to hand it to a Bulgarian. Some of the Bulgarians were very honest people and gave the shops back to their owners. But my father received nothing back and he continued to work as an electrical technician.

Our life was very hard. Our way of life during the internment was very miserable, but it did not get better after 9th September because the whole town was destroyed. The houses which survived the bombings were occupied by two or three families.

Our house was not big. One part was let out even before 9th September but there was no forced accommodation in it. All members of our family came back to Sofia. Everyone was alive. The house of my other grandmother was also preserved. It can be seen even nowadays.

The goldsmith, my uncle Zhak, started working again, but he had no gold, so he repaired jewelery. Soon after that the youngest brother of my mother left with his family for Israel. Meshulam and the two elder brothers remained here. Vizurka also left. So did my aunt. [Mass Aliyah] 52

I never considered leaving for Israel because I was convinced that now was the time to realize my ideals. My husband was even more convinced that we should remain here. He was against the aliyahs. He believed that Bulgaria was our home and we should stay here and realize our dreams and live freely. But a lot of the Jews, especially the richer ones and those, whose shops, factories and workshops were once again being nationalized in 1947, left for Israel. The others, their relatives and friends followed and it was like a chain reaction.

My husband Yosif Hananel Astrukov (1912 – 1996) and I were in the same prison – the Pleven one but we had not met there. He had spent two years underground. He had been district secretary of the UYW in Sofia. He had become a member of UYW in 1936 and he had been much higher in the organization hierarchy than me. His illegal name was Herz, made up by his friends. Herz means heart in German, because he was the soul of every company.

He was an orphan. His father had died when he was a child and he lived with his mother until he was 7 years old when she decided to marry a widower from Vidin and left him with her parents for a year until she got used to her new family and the two children of her new husband. She gave birth to one more child. (Later she left for Israel.)

But the parents and the sister of my father-in-law filed a lawsuit against the relatives of my mother-in-law in a Jewish court because they wanted their grandson back. According to a Jewish law they had to have their grandson. There was a Jewish court, which solved such problems in accordance with the Jewish laws, which were valid until the law. If the mother was to marry a second time, the child was given to the parents of the first husband.

So, my husband was raised by his father's family – three aunts and three uncles. [Probably this is the Spiritual Court at the Jewish municipality. Jewish marriages have to observe the Jewish marital law.

The books by Yosif Karo 'Shulhan Aruh' and 'Even Aezer' focus ont he following major moments – engagement, education, marriage, cancellation of the marriage, divorce, halitza (cancellation of the marriage due to lack of children). A woman's second marriage and its privileges are also subject to Jewish marital law. There was no civil marital institution in Bulgaria before WWII.].

They lived in a house on Strandzha Str. Now the National Statistical Institute is in its place. My husband finished high school, started studying law but he was expelled from the university for his participation in an attack against Tsankov. [Prof. Alexander Tsalov Tsankov, Prime Minister of Bulgaria from 1923 to 1925, terror activities were typical for his governance.]

His relatives collected money and sent him to study in Belgrade. When the Germans came there, he left for Prague. He finished his first and second year of studying there and when the Germans came, he went back to Belgrade. We stayed there five or six months but when the persecutions started again, he returned to Sofia.

He immediately joined the resistance, but in 1941 he went underground. He was underground from 22nd June until 26 November. In 1942 he was caught because he was betrayed. He was sentenced to death. But the jury was bribed – for 250 000 levs his sentence was changed to life imprisonment. In prison he shared a cell with Traicho Kostov 53, whom he much respected. Although Traicho Kostov fell into disgrace later on, he always spoke in his favor.

Until he was imprisoned, my husband had finished three years of medical studies. After 9th September when I started studying I had no textbooks and remembered him. I had seen him on UYW conferences. I remember that he was a delegate at one of them and I was not. In one of the breaks he saw me and told me, 'You see, we have badges and you don't.'

So, he took off his badge and gave it to me. I decided to visit him and ask him if he could help me find textbooks. It turned out that he had none, but he asked me out. So, we started going out, but we did not spend much time together because we were very busy. Those were tumultuous times. He was assistant commander of the armored brigade.

On 22-23rd September he took me to a formal meeting on the occasion of the September rebellion 54. He was suddenly called away because of a fire. It was impossible for me to go home – there was a curfew and he could go around the town because he was an officer. He left me at the place of a friend of his from prison.

They put out fires all the night and I fell asleep. In the morning he brought me back home. My mother was at the window, pale and very worried because the first days after 9th September were dangerous – a lot of fascist shot at us from hideouts.

They knew that only communist and partisans working for the Ministry of Interior could move around the town during the curfew. We did not see my mother and while we were saying goodbye and lifted my head and saw her. My parents did not know that I was in a relationship with him.

My husband came in and told my mother that his intentions towards me were serious and apologized for the late arrival. 'I have nothing against your relationship,' my mother said, 'but, please, don't do the same thing again, I was going mad from worry.'

So, that week he told me, 'We can't go on like this, let's get married!' He came to ask for my hand and next Saturday we got engaged. His relatives – uncles and aunts – came to meet my parents and we married on 13th October 1944. We were among the first in Bulgaria who married only before the registrar.

Before us there were only religious weddings. We did not have a ritual in the synagogue. We went to live with his family on Strandzha Str. As a bachelor he had lived in one of the rooms with one of his aunts.

Another aunt lived in the next room with her husband and the mother-in-law of the married aunt lived in the third room. When we got married, the aunt who slept in his room went to live with her sister and we occupied his little room with a balcony. We lived there for two years.

On 6th July 1946 I gave birth to the twins Evgeni and Emil.

In any case Evgeni and Emil learned some Ladino from the aunt who raised them. She knew Bulgarian but spoke mostly Ladino at home. My husband and I were very busy. We were both studying. His uncle and aunt opened a small shop on Dondukov Str. and started selling things they had collected even before 9th September.

Since they had no children, they helped us financially so that my husband would finish his education. His other aunt, tanti Ora, also helped us raise our kids. She had remained a widow at 28 years of age. My parents also started work – my mother as a seamstress and my father as an electrical technician. We lived in great misery and poverty.

There was nothing to buy in the shops and we had no money to shop from the black market. I caught tuberculosis in the prison and after I gave birth and breastfed my two kids, I was very exhausted. When they became one year old, the illness struck me down. I went to the sanatorium in Svoge and I had to stop breastfeeding them.

As a result of that, they had a terrible diarrhea... I spent three months in Svoge, I recovered and came back. After that we were given a flat on Dondukov Str. We lived there a year and a half and we changed that flat with one on Ekzarh Yosif Str, which was owned by the famous dermatologist Dr Shailov [Jewish Hospital in Sofia] 55.

He made a private medical office on Dondukov Blvd because it was in the center. Dr Shailov invited my husband to work in the Jewish hospital when he graduated. I was still studying.

The party obliged him to become assistant commander in the army for the second time. The first time he occupied that post was immediately after 9th September during the war but the Defense Minister Damyan Velchev banished all Jews from the army and my husband continued his studies.

The second time he served in the army, he worked with the son of Vassil Kolarov 56. At some meeting my husband ordered to place portraits of Georgi Dimitrov first, Traicho Kostov, second and Vassil Kolarov, third on the walls. Petar Kolarov 57 was furious and found out that my husband had shared a cell with Traicho Kostov.

So, he accused him of being a 'kostovist'. He was expelled and was left unemployed. We were starving again. My husband had pure communist ideals. He never used his position to his advantage. When he was banished from the army for the second time, he received six salaries and as compensation we bought this flat on Lyuben Karavelov Str. In 1951 I graduated medicine with the second highest marks.

I was a mother of two children at that time. That was why I was not sent to work in the countryside and had the right to choose my workplace. I started work in the infections department of the district hospital in Sofia. My first specialty is in gastroenterology and my second, which I finished in 1956 – in infectious diseases. I retired there as chief of the department.

When Traicho Kostov was rehabilitated, so was my husband. He was elected a deputy. He became a chairman of the Jewish cultural and educational organization in 1961. For about 30 years we lived for the first time a calm and financially stable life. My children knew that they were Jews and I have never denied being a Jew.

Even before the internment when some of the Jews changed religion in order to be saved from fascists because the Holy Synod had secured that the Jews who changed their faith would be spared from the Law for Protection of the Nation. I remember that my father put the issue on discussion at home, but we firmly rejected it although I had never been religious.

Later I did not have problems at work for being a Jew. After 9th September we did not observe any special rituals. On Chanukkah or Pesach I told my children, 'Today is Chanukkah, or today is Pesach' but we never went to the synagogue. We did not fast on Yom Kippur. I cleaned the whole house for Pesach.

My parents celebrated the holidays but did not go to the synagogue. My parents kept in touch with our relatives in Israel but we were forbidden to do that when my husband was an officer. My father only wrote letters to our relatives in Israel saying that we were okay. Sometimes I also wrote a line or two in his letter but we did not dare keep regular correspondence.

I buried my parents in accordance with the Jewish ritual. Before one of my husband's aunts died, she came home and said to me, 'Daughter, I want to tell you something. We are not religious, but when we die we want you to make us a Jewish funeral.' I remember that when we buried her, I was a party secretary in the hospital.

The day after the funeral, which was also visited by people from the hospital, some angry party members came to ask for an explanation. I, who was an atheist, told them that when I die, I would have a communist funeral, but when I was burying my parents, I would bury them the way they lived and the way they wanted. No punishment followed.

My children graduated the English language high school. I remember that the students in that high school were the poorest and every year some of them were sent on a free camp. They both have medical degrees. They applied for positions in the ISUL Hospital [acronym for 'Institute for Specialization and Development of Medics'] and became assistants in the surgery.

When ISUL was closed, one of them went to work in chest surgery and the other in 2nd surgery. We are a family of medics. There are 27 – 28 medics in the family tree of my family. Both of my sons are married to Jewish women. I think they met their wives in a Jewish choir in which they sang for some time. Evgeni's wife is Neli Samuilova.

They have two children – Linda and Yosif. Yosif is married to a Bulgarian – Mariana and they have a daughter Sara – my great-granddaughter. Emil is married to Medi Levi, they have two children – Ines and Yosif.

My husband was somewhat insistent that our sons should marry Jewish women. He believed that Jewish girls had different moral qualities than the others, they were more conservative towards life and values and had a better upbringing.

Life was very hard during the first years after 9th September. We did not go on any vacations. Afterwards in the 1970s we often went to the seaside in the summer staying in the resting homes of the war veterans together with our children. We often went to the Hisar mineral baths. We gathered with our Bulgarian and Jewish friends.

For example, Avram and Ester Kalo, Solomon and Rashka Bali, Beti Danon, Apostol Pashev, Gen. Marko Markov, prof. Gancho Savov, Ivan Sugarev etc. Those evenings were very nice because we talked, had fun, sang songs. My husband had a very nice voice and we carried with himself his own songbook. It was known as the Herz' notebook. On Sundays we often went on excursions. We educated our children to be honest, brave and loyal.

I thought that I would always believe in the left idea. My husband also shared my ideas. But that does not mean that we did not see the shortcomings of the times. Yet, we explained them with the mistakes of individual people on positions, which did not suit them.

It was only after the myth of Stalin was brought down that we experienced... I do not know how to say it... When Hrushchov told the congress the truth about Stalin and his attitude towards Jews, it was such a tragedy for us. None of us knew about that. For us the USSR was the Promised Land.

We worshiped everything coming from there. We were hit very hard. I remember that my husband came... We were such fanatics that for our sons' second birthday, we gave them as gifts some of Stalin's books. That was how strong we believed in that ideal then. After we learned the truth about Stalin, my husband came, took out all Lenin's books, tore them all and threw them away.

We had a positive attitude towards the state of Israel even during the cold war with the country. We obeyed the official position, but we believed that our government was not right. My husband was the first who established contacts after the end of the cold war and invited Mrs Shamir to visit Bulgaria.

The Foreign Minister at that time was Ivan Bashev 58 who was very open-minded. He had met her at a congress in Washington and she had told him that he was a Jew from Bulgaria. When he came back, he asked to see my husband who was chairman of the Jewish organization from 1961.

They both decided to invite Shamir but it could not be an official visit because of the Arabs, with whom we kept warm relations. So, she came as our personal guest. I remember that she came with Ruth Shaul from the president's administration.

During the official welcoming Ruth greeted my husband on behalf of her mother and father. She was also a Bulgarian Jew. It turned out that her parents had helped my husband when he was underground. They had had a workshop for wool textile on Pirotska and Hristo Botev Str.

During the most dangerous period of his illegal activity the locked him with food in the workshop. That was the only place, which was warm because of the wool there. We took them on a walk along Vitosha Str. Shamir was very happy to come here.

She gave me a very beautiful mezuzah as a gift and later sent me a letter of thanks. Later a round table was organized on the topic of the salvation of the Bulgarian Jews and she came with an official invitation. Later she came with Shamir himself. I remember that we got very close.

After 10th November [1989] 59 a wave of rejection destroyed everything created up to that moment in the Jewish organization. In January 1990 a cultural meeting was held in the Cultural Home in the Jerusalem Hall during which my husband was accused of favoring the communist and his reputation was destroyed.

He was accused of all sins in the world, except of moral decay and embezzlement. He was accused of helping the Jewish assimilation. Our closest friends attacked him and no one defended him except Edi Shwarts, who said that my husband did his best in the situation at those times.

One day I will write about that period if I still have the time and strength. He did so much for that Jewish organization. He preserved it thanks to his reputation in the communist movement. He had a lot of connections and could influence a lot of people.

He preserved it as an organization while all the others except the Armenian one were destroyed in accordance with the policy of assimilation. The Armenian organization was preserved but its situation was different. Soviet Armenia was a federative republic in the USSR, so the Soviet State backed the organization in Bulgaria.

Besides, my husband organized an exhibition for the salvation of the Bulgarian Jews, founded the Yearly Book [a scholarly edition issued in Bulgarian and English. [Its full name is 'A yearly book. Social cultural and educational organization of the Jewish in the People's Republic of Bulgaria] containing materials on the Jewish everyday life.

The articles in it were recognized as academic publications. Its editor in chief was Baruh Benvenisti, a very honest man of principle who did a lot for the magazine.

The assistant of Todor Zhivkov 60 at the time, Niko Yahiel also contributed to the start of the magazine. He was in charge of cultural affairs. One day the three of us, my husband, Niko Yahiel and I were walking. He and my husband were talking about the creationg of the Yearly Book.

Yahiel supported his idea and introduced it to the Central Committee of the [Communist] Party. That magazine played a very big part. It was translated into English by Prof. Zhana Molhova and was distributed worldwide. My husband contributed to the creation of movies about the salvation of Bulgarian Jews. He did a lot of other things for the organization because he was a Jew and was proud of his Jewish origin.

After that meeting, he fell into depression. He could not forget the humiliation. He was such an honest and pure man and he was accused of so many untrue things. He died devastated... I cannot find the exact word... It took me a lot to try to bring him out of that depression.

I fought for months but to no avail. Soon after that in 1995 he had a stroke. He was paralyzed for a year and a half and he died in 1996. Shortly before he died I met a friend from the Jewish organization, who firmly believed that my husband was unfairly accused.

He told me, 'Stela, I met Nina Aladzhem, who was chairperson of WIZO 61, they are preparing a big celebration for Herz!' I thought that if the Jewish organization was preparing for a celebration, they should tell me and at least ask for some materials.

I believed him, went home and said to my paralyzed husband, 'Herz, everything is alright now, you are reabilitated, you will be celebrated on 23rd February!' He looked at me and a small tear trickled down his face. Nobody contacted me for a week, the celebration was drawing near.

I called Nina Aladzhem. She said, 'You are mistaken, we are celebrating Yosif Herbst 62, not Yosif Herz.' I realized that I was mistaken. My husband was paralyzed, could not talk or write, the right half of his body was affected. But I did not tell him about the mistake so that he would die in peace.

He died on the 25th April, convinced that he had been celebrated. Even while my husband was alive the medical services in the Jewish organization were very bad, there was much chaos in medicine after 9th September. I had a medical office for a number of years and examined for free everyone who came.

We had some kind of a clinic. I examined the patients were gastroenterologic, infectious and internal diseases and since my sons were working in the Academy, they did the laboratory tests. They did that for free.

Now I am a member of the Golden Age club. I received an aid of 1 000 levs recently and before that some German compensation. I visit the Jewish organization but not very often. I am never bored. Although I am a pensioner, I am always short of time. I examine everyone in our neighborhood for free.

That is how I feel useful. I gather with friends who always increasingly need medical help. I read a lot. I wrote a book 'Memories from my physician's practice' which is not published because I have no money for that. I am very happy when my great-granddaughter Sara is with me.

• Glossary

1 Expulsion of the Jews from Spain: The Sephardi population of the Balkans originates from the Jews who were expelled from the Iberian peninsula, as a result of the ‘Reconquista’ in the late 15th century (Spain 1492, and Portugal 1495).

The majority of the Sephardim subsequently settled in the territory of the Ottoman Empire, mainly in maritime cities (Salonika, Istanbul, Smyrna, etc.) and also in the ones situated on significant overland trading routes to Central Europe (Bitola, Skopje, and Sarajevo) and to the Danube (Adrianople, Philipopolis, Sofia, and Vidin).

2 Sephardi Jewry: Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origin. Their ancestors settled down in North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, South America, Italy and the Netherlands after they had been driven out from the Iberian peninsula at the end of the 15th century. About 250,000 Jews left Spain and Portugal on this occasion.

A distant group among Sephardi refugees were the Crypto-Jews (Marranos), who converted to Christianity under the pressure of the Inquisition but at the first occasion reassumed their Jewish identity. Sephardi preserved their community identity; they speak Ladino language in their communities up until today.

The Jewish nation is formed by two main groups: the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi group which differ in habits, liturgy their relation toward Kabala, pronunciation as well in their philosophy.

3 The Dobrudzha Front: Existed during the Second Balkan War in 1913 and during WWI in 1916. The battles on that front were with Romania for the return of Dobrudzha which had been taken from Bulgaria at the Berlin Congress in 1878. The Neullies Treaty also gave Dobrudzha to Romania, which ruled it until 5th September 1940.

4 Mastika: Anise liquor, popular in many places in the Balkans, Anatolia and the Middle East. It is principally the same as Greek Ouzo, Turkish Raki or Arabic Arak.

5 Luiza, Maria (17.01.1870 – 19.01.1899): Daughter of the Parma Duke Robert and Princess Maria Pia Bourbon. First wife of King Ferdinand I. Married the king in 1893 and gave birth to four children – Boris, Kniaz Tarnovski; Kiril Preslavski, Evdokia and Nadezhda. She was not involved in political activities.

She did not accept the change of religion of her first-born son and heir to the throne Boris from Catholic to Orthodox Christianity which took place on 2nd February 1896. She died three years later. Buried in the Catholic Church in Plovdiv.

6 King Boris III: The Third Bulgarian Kingdom was a constitutional monarchy with democratic constitution. Although pro-German, Bulgaria did not take part in World War II with its armed forces.

King Boris III (who reigned from 1918-1943) joined the Axis to prevent an imminent German invasion in Bulgaria, but he refused to send Bulgarian troops to German aid on the Eastern front.

He died suddenly after a meeting with Hitler and there have been speculations that he was actually poisoned by the Nazi dictator who wanted a more obedient Bulgaria. Many Bulgarian Jews saved from the Holocaust (over 50,000 people) regard King Boris III as their savior.

7 Bulgaria in World War I: Bulgaria entered the war in October 1915 on the side of the Central Powers. Its main aim was the revision of the Treaty of Bucharest: the acquisition of Macedonia. Bulgaria quickly overran most of Serbian Macedonia as well as parts of Serbia; in 1916 with German backing it entered Greece (Western Thrace and the hinterlands of Salonika).

After Romania surrendered to the Central Powers Bulgaria also recovered Southern Dobrudzha, which had been lost to Romania after the First Balkan War. The Bulgarian advance to Greece was halted after British, French and Serbian troops landed in Salonika, while in the north Romania joined the Allies in 1916.

Conditions at the front deteriorated rapidly and political support for the war eroded. The agrarians and socialist workers intensified their antiwar campaigns, and soldier committees were formed in the army. A battle at Dobro Pole brought total retreat, and in ten days the Allies entered Bulgaria.

On 29th September 1918 Bulgaria signed an armistice and withdrew from the war. The Treaty of Neuilly (November 1919) imposed by the Allies on Bulgaria, deprived the country of its World War I gains as well as its outlet to the Aegean Sea (Eastern Thrace).

8 Bombing of Sveta Nedelia Church: In 1925 the military wing of the Bulgarian Communist Party launched a terrorist attack by blowing up the dome of the church. It was carried out during the funeral ceremony of one of the generals of King Boris III. There were dozens of dead and wounded, however, the King himself was late for the ceremony and was not hurt.

9 Internment of Jews in Bulgaria: Although Jews living in Bulgaria where not deported to concentration camps abroad or to death camps, many were interned to different locations within Bulgaria. In accordance with the Law for the Protection of the Nation, the comprehensive anti-Jewish legislation initiated after the outbreak of WWII, males were sent to forced labor battalions in different locations of the country, and had to engage in hard work.

There were plans to deport Bulgarian Jews to Nazi Death Camps, but these plans were not realized. Preparations had been made at certain points along the Danube, such as at Somovit and Lom. In fact, in 1943 the port at Lom was used to deport Jews from Aegean Thrace and from Macedonia, but in the end, the Jews from Bulgaria proper were spared.

10 Iuchbunar: The poorest residential district in Sofia; the word is of Turkish origin and means ‘the three wells’.

11 Ladino: also known as Judeo-Spanish, it is the spoken and written Hispanic language of Jews of Spanish and Portugese origin. Ladino did not become a specifically Jewish language until after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 (and Portugal in 1495) - it was merely the language of their province. It is also known as Judezmo, Dzhudezmo, or Spaniolit.

When the Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal they were cut off from the further development of the language, but they continued to speak it in the communities and countries to which they emigrated. Ladino therefore reflects the grammar and vocabulary of 15th century Spanish.

In Amsterdam, England and Italy, those Jews who continued to speak ‘Ladino’ were in constant contact with Spain and therefore they basically continued to speak the Castilian Spanish of the time.

Ladino was nowhere near as diverse as the various forms of Yiddish, but there were still two different dialects, which corresponded to the different origins of the speakers: ‘Oriental’ Ladino was spoken in Turkey and Rhodes and reflected Castilian Spanish, whereas ‘Western’ Ladino was spoken in Greece, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia and Romania, and preserved the characteristics of northern Spanish and Portuguese.

The vocabulary of Ladino includes hundreds of archaic Spanish words, and also includes many words from different languages: mainly from Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Greek, French, and to a lesser extent from Italian. In the Ladino spoken in Israel, several words have been borrowed from Yiddish.

For most of its lifetime, Ladino was written in the Hebrew alphabet, in Rashi script, or in Solitro. It was only in the late 19th century that Ladino was ever written using the Latin alphabet. At various times Ladino has been spoken in North Africa, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, France, Israel, and, to a lesser extent, in the United States and Latin America.

12 Frutas: The popular name of the Tu bi-Shevat festival among the Bulgarian Jews.

13 9th September 1944: The day of the communist takeover in Bulgaria. In September 1944 the Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria. On 9th September 1944 the Fatherland Front, a broad left-wing coalition, deposed the government. Although the communists were in the minority in the Fatherland Front, they were the driving force in forming the coalition, and their position was strengthened by the presence of the Red Army in Bulgaria.

14 Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Simeon (b.1937): son and heir of Boris III and grandson of Ferdinand, the first King of Bulgaria. The birth of Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in 1937 was celebrated as a national holiday. All students at school had their grades increased by one mark.

After the Communist Party's rise to power on 9th September 1944 Bulgaria became a republic and the family of Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was forced to leave the country. They settled in Spain with their relatives. Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha returned from exile after the fall of communism and was elected prime minister of Bulgaria in 2001 as Simeon Sakskoburgotski.

15 24th May: The day of Slavic script and culture, a national holiday on which Bulgarian culture and writing is celebrated, paying special tribute to Cyril and Methodius, the creators of the first Slavic alphabet, the forerunner of the Cyrillic script.

16 Smirnenski, Hristo Dimitrov Izmirliev (17.09.1898-18.06.1923): a classical Bulgarian poet and writer. Lived and worked in the Jewish neighbourhood Iuchbunar. He made his literary debut in 1915 during his second year at college in the satirical newspaper ‘K'vo da e’ (‘Anything Goes’). Hristo first called himself ‘Smirnenski’ in the magazine ‘Smyah I sulzi’ (‘Laughter and Tears’).

His hard tireless work and deprivations undermined the 25 year-old poet's health and he died on 18 June 1923 from tuberculosis, ‘the yellow visitor’, as he called the disease in one of his poems. In the eight brief years of his prolific career Hristo Smirnenski penned thousands of pieces of poetry and prose in various genres using more than 70 pseudonyms.

17 Sakarov, Nikola (1881 – 1943): He joined the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party  (BWSDP) in 1904. Graduated the philosophy faculty of the Berlin University with a degree in political economics, finance and statistics. At the same time he was secretary of the students' social democratic group in Berlin.

On returning to Bulgaria he worked in the Finance Ministry.  From 1913 until 1920 he was an MP. In 1921 he left the BWSDP and joined the Bulgarian Communist Party. He retired from active political activities in 1925. Sakarov is one of the founders of the Scholarly Sociology Association.

Member of Parliament from 1938 until 1943. During WWII he defended the anti-fascist position. He was one of the few MPs who openly protested against the Law for Protection of the Nation.

18 UYW: The Union of Young Workers (also called Revolutionary Youth Union). A communist youth organization, which was legally established in 1928 as a sub-organization of the Bulgarian Communist Youth Union (BCYU).

After the coup d’etat in 1934, when parties in Bulgaria were banned, it went underground and became the strongest wing of the BCYU. Some 70% of the partisans in Bulgaria were members of it.

In 1947 it was renamed Dimitrov’s Communist Youth Union, after Georgi Dimitrov, the leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party at the time.

19 Boza: A sweet wheat-based mildly alcoholic drink popular in Bulgaria, Turkey and other places in the Balkans.

20 Morfova, Hristina Vasileva (24.04.1889 – 1.06.1936): A Bulgarian opera artist and concert singer, lyrical soprano. Born in Stara Zagora, graduated her musical education in Prague. She was an opera artist in Prague, Barno and Sofia. Besides her opera roles, she is also famous for her pedagogical skills.

21 Tsadikov, Moshe (1885 - 1947): Born in a poor family, he started showing love towards music at an early age and drew the attention of the professional musicians. He started taking lessons from Dobri Khristov. On the occasion of the sanctification of the synagogue, the board decided to organize a special choir.

Tsadikov had been awarded a grant from the board and in 1908 he began studying at Wurzberg Academy in Germany. He graduated with flying colors and returned to Bulgaria.

He started work with the Synagogue choir and re-organized their repertoire and changed their manner of singing. At his first concert works by Mendelssohn, Schubert, Brahms were performed. He attracted some extremely talented singers to the choir among which were the eminent Mimi Balkanska and Gencho Markov. He presented on stage his own operetta for children entitled ‘Prolet’ [Spring] and he took part in the first symphony concerts of Maestro Georgi Atanasov.

After World War I the repertoire was enriched with classical plays by Brahms, Schubert, Handel, Haydn. In 1934 he prepared the performance of the oratorio ‘The Creation’ by Haydn and the concert was celebrated as a real musical sensation by all the connoisseurs of music throughout Bulgaria.

Eminent Bulgarian composers like Dobri Khristov and Petko Staynov devoted some of their musical works to Tsadikov’s choir. At the 25th anniversary of the choir Tsar Boris III decorated Tsadikov with a medal for public service. In 1938 Tsadikov emigrated to the USA where he died on 4th November 1947. The Jewish choir was reinstituted by Bulgarian Jews in Israel where it is known nowadays as ‘Tsadikov’s Choir'.

22 Utro: Meaning Morning, it was a Bulgarian bourgeois daily, issued between 1911 and 1914. It was founded by St. Damyanov and the first editor-in-chief was St. Tanev. Utro published sensational both local and international news, supporting the policy of the Government, especially during the World War II, as well as Bulgaria’s pro-German orientation. Its circulation amounted to 160,000 copies.

23 Popova, Ilka (1905 – 1975): Opera singer, mezzo-soprano, actress since 1951. Student of Ivan Vulpe in Bulgaria and F. Tanaro in Milan. Her debut in the Sofia Opera was in 1929. Immediately after that she went to Paris where she had acting lessons. Worked in the opera house in Bordeaux.

Later became a soloist of the Paris Grand Opera, Milan La Scala and the opera in Cologne in Buenos Aires. Sang on all European opera stages. Returned to Bulgaria in 1940 and became first singer of the Sofia Opera.

24 Chitalishte: literally ‘a place to read’; a community and an institution for public enlightenment carrying a supply of books, holding discussions and lectures, performances etc.

The first such organizations were set up during the period of the Bulgarian National Revival (18th-19th centuries) and were gradually transformed into cultural centers in Bulgaria. Unlike in the 1930s, when the chitalishte network could maintain its activities for the most part through its own income, today, as during the communist regime, they are mainly supported by the state. There are over 3,000 chitalishtes in Bulgaria today, although they have become less popular.

25 Shekerdzhiiski, Emil Mois (1912 – 1944): A journalist, writer, literature critic, member of the communist movement in Bulgaria, joined the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1932. Studied law in the Sofia University and architecture in Belgrade. Member of the community-house and the temperance movement. During WWII he was a partisan in the Kyustendil partisan squad 'Dragovishtitsa'. He died in battle with the gendarmerie in the Chernevets area near Kyustendil.

26 Aleichem, Sholom (1859-1916): born in Russia as Solomon Rabinovitz, he is a Yiddish literature's clasical writer. He is best known for his unique humorous style, ’laughter through tears’. His works include five novels, many plays, and some 300 short stories. Among them are: ‘Adventures of Mottel, The Cantor's Son’, ‘The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl’, ‘Tevye the Dairyman’, etc.

27 Bialik, Chaim Nachman: (1873-1934): One of the greatest Hebrew poets. He was also an essayist, writer, translator and editor.

Born in Rady, Volhynia, Ukraine, he received a traditional education in cheder and yeshivah. His first collection of poetry appeared in 1901 in Warsaw.

He established a Hebrew publishing house in Odessa, where he lived but after the Revolution of 1917 Bialik’s activity for Hebrew culture was viewed by the communist authorities with suspicion and the publishing house was closed.

In 1921 Bialik emigrated to Germany and in 1924 to Palestine where he became a celebrated literary figure. Bialik’s poems occupy an important place in modern Israeli culture and education.

28 Lermontov, Mikhail, (1814-1841): Russian poet and novelist. His poetic reputation, second in Russia only to Pushkin's, rests upon the lyric and narrative works of his last five years. Lermontov, who had sought a position in fashionable society, became enormously critical of it.

His novel, A Hero of Our Time (1840), is partly autobiographical. It consists of five tales about Pechorin, a disenchanted and bored nobleman. The novel is considered a classic of Russian psychological realism.

29 Tolstoy, Lev Nikolayevich (1828-1910): Russian novelist and moral philosopher, who holds an important place in his country’s cultural history as an ethical philosopher and religious reformer.

Tolstoy, alongside Dostoyevsky, made the realistic novel a literary genre, ranking in importance with classical Greek tragedy and Elizabethan drama. He is best known for his novels, including War and Peace, Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilyich, but he also wrote short stories and essays and plays.

Tolstoy took part in the Crimean War and his stories based on the defense of Sevastopol, known as the Sevastopol Sketches, made him famous and opened St. Petersburg’s literary circles to him. His main interest lay in working out his religious and philosophical ideas.

He condemned capitalism and private property and was a fearless critic, which finally resulted in his excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901.

His views regarding the evil of private property gradually estranged him from his wife, Yasnaya Polyana, and children, except for his daughter Alexandra, and he finally left them in 1910. He died on his way to a monastery at the railway junction of Astapovo.

30 Bulgarian Legions: Union of the Bulgarian National Legions. Bulgarian fascist movement, established in 1930. Following the Italian model it aimed at building a corporate totalitarian state on the basis of military centralism. It was dismissed in 1944 after the communist take-over.

31 Brannik: Pro-fascist youth organization. It started functioning after the Law for the Protection of the Nation was passed in 1941 and the Bulgarian government forged its pro-German policy. The Branniks regularly maltreated Jews.

32 The night of broken glass: In March 1938 the fascist organizations Ratniks and Bulgarian Legions attacked the Military Club where Metodi Popov had to present a lecture against racism. The next incident is on 12th March 1939 when the same fascist elements attacked Bulgaria Concert Hall where Bensusan was conductor.

At the same time they broke all windows of the Jewish shops in the central part of Sofia and everything that happened resembled the 'Crystal Night' of 10th November 1939 in Germany.

33 Confiscation of Jewish property: The Jewish property was confiscated in May 1943 when the Sofia Jews were interned to different parts of the countryside. In the days of the internment the Commissariat on Jewish Issues went to all Jewish houses, listed their movable property and sealed their houses.

The process was in accordance with the Law for Protection of the Nation and all decrees of the Minsitry Council from 1941 to 1944 which limited the right of ownership of Jews. The confiscated properties were sold at special auctions.

34 Law for the Protection of the Nation: A comprehensive anti-Jewish legislation in Bulgaria was introduced after the outbreak of World War II. The ‘Law for the Protection of the Nation’ was officially promulgated in January 1941. According to this law, Jews did not have the right to own shops and factories.

Jews had to wear the distinctive yellow star; Jewish houses had to display a special sign identifying it as being Jewish; Jews were dismissed from all posts in schools and universities. The internment of Jews in certain designated towns was legalized and all Jews were expelled from Sofia in 1943. Jews were only allowed to go out into the streets for one or two hours a day.

They were prohibited from using the main streets, from entering certain business establishments, and from attending places of entertainment. Their radios, automobiles, bicycles and other valuables were confiscated. From 1941 on Jewish males were sent to forced labor battalions and ordered to do extremely hard work in mountains, forests and road construction.

In the Bulgarian-occupied Yugoslav (Macedonia) and Greek (Aegean Thrace) territories the Bulgarian army and administration introduced extreme measures.

The Jews from these areas were deported to concentration camps, while the plans for the deportation of Jews from Bulgaria proper were halted by a protest movement launched by the vice-chairman of the Bulgarian Parliament.

Legionaries: (see: Bulgarian Legions)

35 Forced name change during Holocaust: in accordance with а clause of the Law for the Protection of the Nation voted on 24th December 1940, as well as Decree 192/29th August 1942, all Jewish names ending with -ov, -ev and -ich were changed. According to the requirements first names mostly of Ashkenazi Jews were also changed.

36 Yellow star in Bulgaria: According to a governmental decree all Bulgarian Jews were forced to wear distinctive yellow stars after 24th September 1942. Contrary to the German-occupied countries the stars in Bulgaria were made of yellow plastic or textile and were also smaller.

Volunteers in previous wars, the war-disabled, orphans and widows of victims of wars, and those awarded the military cross were given the privilege to wear the star in the form of a button. Jews who converted to Christianity and their families were totally exempt. The discriminatory measures and persecutions ended with the cancellation of the Law for the Protection of the Nation on 17th August 1944.

37 24th May 1943: Protest by a group of members of parliament led by the deputy chairman of the National Assembly, Dimitar Peshev, as well as a large section of Bulgarian society. They protested against the deportation of the Jews, which culminated in a great demonstration on 24th May 1943.

Thousands of people led by members of parliament, the Eastern Orthodox Church and political parties stood up against the deportation of Bulgarian Jews. Although there was no official law preventing deportation, Bulgarian Jews were saved, unlike those from Bulgarian occupied Aegean Thrace and Macedonia.

Raisa Roitman
Kishinev
Moldova
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: July 2004

Raisa Roitman lives near a large park, in an old, beautiful district of Kishinev [Chisinau in Moldovan] built in the 1960s. The yard of the so-called Khrushchovka 1 is very green. Raisa’s two-room apartment is well-furnished. She lives with her son now, and the apartment is too small for two adults. Raisa Roitman is a buxom woman. She is very polite and reserved. Raisa has taken out a lot of old photographs. There are a lot of pictures, and all of them are very interesting. Raisa comes across as quite standoffish. She is reserved and rather tacit. Her answers are curt. She is not willing to say much and she avoids answering certain questions that refer to her private life. Nevertheless, in the course of the interview, Raisa comes to trust me more and we part as friends. A couple of weeks later, I find out from one of the employees of Kishinev Hesed 2 that Raisa had immigrated to Israel shortly after our meeting. She didn’t tell me anything about her intentions.

My family background

Growing up

During the War

After the War

Glossary

My family background

Rubel was the surname of my paternal great-grandfather. The surname, which looked more like a nickname, was passed on to my grandfather, then to my father and then to me. Great-grandfather Itsik Rubel was born in the 1840s in the town of Rezina [80 km from Kishinev]. He lived there all his life. Itsik was involved in agriculture and mostly in viniculture. He had a large vineyard with vintage variety. Great-grandfather worked mostly by himself, occasionally hiring workers during the harvest time. He made wine and then sold it to the marketers from Kishinev at a wholesale price. Itsik had his own house, though it was rather small and modest, not to say poor.

My great-grandmother Charna was a housewife. She was a tall beautiful woman, always dressed in a dark skirt with an apron, blouse and a neckpiece. Grandmother also wore a crocheted headkerchief with lace trimming. Itsik was a good match for Charna – a tall and handsome tanned old man with a wrinkly face and a spade-like beard. He always wore a broadbrim hat or a kippah when he went to the synagogue. He also had tallit and tefillin. He never worked on Sabbath, even in the busiest times. My great-grandmother was a housewife, she raised the children and helped Itsik with work in the field. Her hands were parched because of the sun and with the dirt ingrown in the skin. Charna was also religious, observed Sabbath, the kashrut and raised her children as true Jews. I don’t remember Great-grandfather Itsik very well. He died in 1930, when I was a small girl. Great-grandmother died later, in 1939.

Itsik and Charna Rubel had many children. I know hardly anything about them. I know that the eldest one, Monysh, was also a vine grower and lived in Rezina, in Itsik’s house. He died in 1920. I don’t know what happened to his wife and children. Out of all the siblings of my paternal grandfather I knew grandfather’s sister Perl best of all. She lived in Rezina with her husband David [Roitman], who worked from morning till night, and her son Nahman. She was a housewife. With the outbreak of World War II 3, she and her husband went into evacuation on foot. They reached Rybnitsa, where Grandfather’s younger brother Gedali Rubel lived and worked. They didn’t walk far and were chased down by the Fascists. All of them – Perl with her husband and younger son and Gedali with his wife – were brought to a ghetto in Transnistria 4, in the town of Balta [Vinnitsa region, today Ukraine, about 250 km from Kiev]. All of them perished there during one of the actions against the Jews. Perl’s son Nahman, born in 1920, was drafted into the army in 1941. He was in the labor army 5 and when World War II was over, he came back to Kishinev.

My grandfather Abram, born in the 1870s in Rezina, was Itsik’s middle son. He got married rather early, which was traditional for Jews. His wife Nehama was also from Rezina. She was even younger than Grandfather Abram. My grandmother’s maiden name was Torba. They [her parents] had many children, but I only knew Uncle Yankel and Aunt Haika, who lived in Kishinev. Yankel had four children. All I know is that they left their parents’ home at a young age. They were members of an underground Communist organization. They were often imprisoned in Romania. Yankel died at the age of 94. Haika lived a long life as well.

Grandfather Abram finished cheder. I don’t know whether he got any further education. I think that his education was rudimentary. He could read and count, which was necessary in his work. Abram was a forwarding agent. He accepted cargo at the railway station and then forwarded it to the clients, who were rich victualers and owners of stores. This job wasn’t stable. Besides, it didn’t yield a sufficient income. It took a lot of money to support a large family.

Abram and Nehama had nine children. I only knew my father’s eldest brother Yankel. I remember the names of the rest – Nahman, Srul, Revekka, Golda, Lena… The thing is that in 1913 Grandfather Abram left for Argentina to look for a job and a better living for his children. Some of the elder children left with him, and Grandmother Nehama with the rest of the children joined them in a couple of years. That is why I never met my grandparents, my uncles and aunts. Only the eldest son Yankel, born in 1892, and my father Shapsha were so much against the departure to Argentina that Grandfather Abram got upset with them and left without his elder sons. Father and Yankel also were frustrated that they parted with the family and didn’t keep in touch with them for a long time. Only ten years later did they start to correspond with the family.

Father and Yankel had already been working when their family left. They were loaders at the creamery since the age of 13. Yankel lived in Rezina. He got married rather early. His wife was a Jew called Pesya. They had four children – a boy, Monya, born in 1922, and the daughters Golda, born in 1917, Revekka, born in 1924, and Leya, born in 1926. Yankel worked really hard to provide for such a large family. He worked two shifts at the creamery. On 12th October 1935 my uncle died as a result of the collapse of the ceiling in one of the creamery premises. During his funeral the coffin wasn’t open so that the relatives wouldn’t see Yankel’s dreadful remains.

For two years Pesya and her children lived on the money given to them by my father and the kin from Argentina. In 1937 they received an invitation from Argentina and Pesya left with her children. I loved them a lot, especially Revekka and my peer Leya. We took a picture together before they left. That was the last time I saw them. Before 1940 we received letters from Argentina and then the Soviet regime was established 6 in Bessarabia 7 and it was impossible to write to our relatives abroad 8. We couldn’t correspond with them after the war either.

I found out from my distant relatives, who lived in Israel, that neither my relatives who left with Grandfather, nor Yankel’s children ever became rich. However, they had a decent and good life. They didn’t respond to my letters that I sent after perestroika 9, when it became possible to keep in touch with relatives abroad. I know that Grandfather Abram and Grandmother Nehama died in the 1960s, and both of them were over 90 years old. Yankel’s children are still alive and have their own families with the exception of Leya. She was the only one who remained single. Unfortunately this is all I know about my father’s family.

My father Shapsha was born in 1894. He studied at cheder until he turned twelve. He began working at the age of 13. Father didn’t go to school. In spite of the fact that he was self-taught, he was a very literate man. He knew Russian, later he studied Romanian. Besides, he had an aptitude for Mathematics. He was able to add, deduct and multiply up to three figures. After Grandfather Abram’s departure for Argentine, he and Yankel lived with their Grandparents Itsik аnd Charna. Maybe for the reason that they were the bread-winners of the family neither my father nor Yankel were drafted into the Tsarist army during World War I.

Father worked as a loader at the creamery. He loaded milk and butter and delivered it to the sales agents. Owing to his intelligence and good sense he became the assistant to the owner. During one of his trips he met Moishe Lerner, the owner of the creamery located in the small town of Vad-Rashkov. He invited him to come over to his house. Shapsha was rapt by the beauty of Moishe’s daughter Tabl and began to make frequent trips to his colleague from Vad-Rashkov, [90 km from Kishinev]. In a couple of months Shapsha sent a shadkhan to Moishe and in 1924 my parents got married.

My mother’s parents, Moishe and Sura Lerner, born in Vad-Rashkov in the 1870s, had a modest living. Grandfather’s creamery was the only income source for the whole family. Although the yielded income wasn’t high, it was enough for the Lerners to get by. The creamery premises are still preserved in the town. Moishe had an adobe [construction material made from clay and thatch] house, consisting of three rooms. The members of this large family usually gathered in the largest room during family reunions on Sabbath, on Jewish and family holidays.

Grandmother Sura was a housewife. Her mother, my great-grandmother Haya was helping her out. She was born in a Moldovan village, and there were only two Jewish families there. She was equally fluent in Russian and Moldovan, but she preferred Yiddish. Great-grandmother lived to be almost a hundred years old, preserving a clear mind and a great sense of humour, being kind and benevolent. Haya had an ear for music and a melodic voice in spite of her age. She used to sing beautiful Jewish songs to her great-grandchildren and grandchildren. She was also good at knitting and embroidering. The ladies of our family looked very nice in her handmade laces. Haya had a calm death as if she just fell asleep. She passed away at night, on 8th May 1940.

Moishe and Sura lived the way other Jews from small towns did. They observed Jewish traditions, celebrated Sabbath, went to the synagogue, even raised their children in a Jewish spirit. Finally, at the end of the 1930s Grandfather was severely afflicted with leukemia. He died on 9th May 1941.

Moishe and Sura raised five children. Ousher, born in 1899, was the eldest. He lived not far from my grandparents, with his wife Klara and three daughters – Fira, Feiga and Mara. Ousher was a peasant. His wife and children did their best to help him with work, but their family still lived from hand to mouth. On 8th July 1941 Klara and the youngest girl, Mara, died during the bombing. Ousher, his daughters and Grandmother Sura were captured by the Germans on their way to evacuation and happened to be in Kishinev ghetto 10. Here Grandmother and Ousher died of hunger in the first hard winter. The girls survived. Feiga has terrible memories of the war times. All of her fingers were amputated as a result of severe frostbite. Fira and her daughters have lived in Israel since the late 1980s. Feiga was married to Magelman and lived in Soroca [130 km from Kishinev] with two sons.

The next son, Leib, born in 1901, owned a small bakery. Apart from the ordinary bread, Sabbath challah, Purim hamantashen and white loaves were baked there. Leib’s family was so indigent that Reizl had to learn how to sew. It helped the family budget. Leib and Reizl had three children – the daughters Ida and Sonya and their son, Pinhus. During World War II all of them were in evacuation in Andijon [today Uzbekistan, 3500 km from Kishinev]. Leib died from typhus fever on 23rd March 1943. Reizl and her children came back to Moldova and settled in Soroca. She worked very hard as a seamstress for her children to get a good education. She died in 1967. Her children left the town with their families. Ida is currently residing in Israel. She took back her maiden name of Lerner after her husband’s death. Pinhus and two of his daughters are in Chicago. Sonya Vougsdorf [married name] also lived there. She died in 1998.

Mother’s younger sister Feiga, born in 1907, was a very beautiful woman. She got elementary education. She was married to Shneer Kleiman, who worked as a steward in the store owned by his rich relatives from a small Jewish town, located not far from Vad-Rashkov. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of the town. Feiga and Shneer had two children – Rimma, born in 1928, and David, born in 1930. Feiga was a housewife. She took care of the household and raised their children. Feiga’s family was also evacuated to Andijon. When she returned to Moldova, she settled in Soroca, not far from Leib’s children. Feiga didn’t live a long life. She died in 1951 from liver disease. Her children got university education. Rimma was a therapist. She died a couple of years ago in Kishinev. David was an engineer. He lived in Moscow and died in 2000.

The youngest in the family, Joseph, born in 1910, is still alive. He is still of sound mind and body. He is currently residing in the USA. His wife Fira died three years ago. Their twin daughters Mara and Raisa have families – children and grandchildren. Sometimes they send me New Year’s greetings.

My mother, Tabl Lerner, born in 1904, wasn’t the most beautiful, but she was the most intelligent out of all the children of Moishe and Sura. She was able to express reasonable thoughts and make wise decisions. She was the head of our family. Father followed my mother unconditionally. She was often the ‘judge’ in many moot questions addressed by friends, relatives, neighbors. Usually those were issues concerning reconciliation of some quarreling spouses, raising children, keeping a family budget, seeing a doctor. Mother was an intellectual person, though she only had elementary education. She was very good at Russian as she studied it at school, and later on she was fond of Russian literature. She knew the works written by Pushkin 11, Lermontov 12. She was also attracted to Lev Tolstoy 13 and Fyodor Dostoevsky 14. My mother was self-taught. She had an insatiable appetite for learning. When Bessarabia became Romanian territory 15, Mother learned Romanian rather quickly.

Mother had many friends and admirers. But she liked Shapsha, who called on her father all of a sudden, at once. When my adolescent parents met, they soon began dating. Father came to Vad-Rashkov, and Mother used to come to Rezina. On 11th November 1924 they got married. I have a picture of the gorgeous newly-weds. Mother was dressed in a posh dress and Father in a new suit. The wedding took place in the synagogue in Vad-Rashkov under a chuppah. There were a lot of bride’s and groom’s relatives. Mother said it was very merry. Klezmer music was played and the guests danced till dawn. The tables were abundant in delicious dishes, mostly cooked by my grandmother and great-grandmother Haya. The bride had a dowry. I don’t know what amount was given to my father, but it was enough to buy a small house in Vad-Rashkov, where Shapsha and Tabl settled.

Growing up

I was born in that house on 21st April. I was given the Jewish name of Ruklya, but I was registered with a more modern Russian name 16 – Raisa. My parents called me Raisa, only Great-grandmother Haya called me by my Jewish name. In 1930 my brother Motle was born. I remember the day when my mother was giving a birth to my brother. Farther was going to and fro. The moans and screams were heard from the bedroom. Then I heard the cry of the baby. I remembered it for ever. I loved my brother at once. I had a kind of adult and maternal feelings for him.

I remember my childhood very vividly. I recollect our house – a small adobe low-set house, consisting of two small rooms and a kitchen. There was a stove in the kitchen, which was heated with firewood. It was used to cook food. Later on we had a Primus [Primus stove: a small portable stove with a container for about 1 liter of kerosene that was pumped into burners], and Mother used the stove only for heating purposes and during preparation for Sabbath, when a lot of dishes were supposed to be cooked and kept warm for the next day. Mother usually started cooking festive Sabbath dishes since early morning on Friday. Friday and Saturday were special for our family, because Father worked in Rezina and came home only on his days-off. Early Saturday morning my parents left for the synagogue. When they came back, the dinner cooked on Friday was still warm. On Sabbath we often went to Grandfather Moishe. All the children and grandchildren got together in the drawing-room. The table was laid with such festive dishes as gefilte fish, chicken broth and tsimes. Challah and wine were in the center of the table, and Grandfather was saying a benediction. After that, I, the favorite granddaughter, came up to everybody with a wine carafe on the tray and everybody was supposed to sip wine from that vessel.

We also observed the kashrut. There was a shed in the backyard of our house. Firewood and other household things were kept there. Father made a coop here for chicken and ducks. We didn’t have a kitchen garden, because the whole yard was the size of a room, but poultry was a big help for us in nutrition. Mother took chickens to a shochet. I often went with her. When I grew up, I went to the shochet by myself. I observed the butcher putting the fowl on hooks so that the blood would seep into a special tray. Only after that the chicken was considered kosher. After that, Mother plucked feathers from the chicken. She disemboweled the chicken and scorched chicken at home. The meat was also made kosher. There was a special cutting board with the notches placed at a certain distance from each other. Salted meat was placed there and blood would seep from the notches. Meat was made kosher within an hour. There were separate dishes for meat and dairy, as well as differently marked knives and cutting boards.

Since my early childhood I went to the synagogue with my parents. There were several synagogues in our small town. I remember four of them. Maybe there were more than that. The synagogues weren’t classified in terms of the craft. Synagogues were attended by the Jews who lived in the closest vicinity. There was a rather large synagogue not far from our house. It was a one-storied building, though men and women prayed in different halls. On Saturdays Father put on his tallit and tefillin. I carried his prayer book to the synagogue. Sabbath was sacred to my father, though during the rest of the week he was a secular Jew. He didn’t even cover his head all the time. What I liked the most in our synagogue was the place where the Torah was kept – adorned with gold and velvet. I liked to listen to the singing of the cantor and chorus. It was spectacular.

Synagogues were crowded in our town. The population of the town mostly consisted of Jews. There were a few rich people. I remember the owner of the manufactory store, Tsenner, and the owners of the grocery stores, the Goldenbergs and Fainsteins. The shoe-store belonged to Gonikman. There were also several doctors and a lawyer. The rest of the population lived very moderately, not to say indigently, counting every kopeck. My family was one of those. There were neither class nor national divisions among children. All of us were very friendly – Moldovans, Jews, the children of the rich, middle-class and poor people. Jews respected the poor ones. On Sabbath and holidays there were always indigent Jews, who where sitting at our festive table. 

I had a lot of friends, mostly among boys. In winter the Dniestr was frozen and we used it as a skating rink. I didn’t have my own skates. I usually borrowed them from some boys, who helped me skate on ice. In summer, I liked to stroll in the central park, located on the bank of the Dniestr, on the picturesque turn under the hill. There was a large and nicely decorated Orthodox church on the central square. The bell toll of the church was very beautiful and we liked to listen to it. I also liked going to the market, located not far from the church. The counters were full of all kinds of vegetables and fruits of different colors. There was also a wholesale of grapes. Father always bought grapes from one and the same Moldovan. He also made wine for us, which was kept in our cellar. Mother liked to haggle. How could she do without making a bargain? The sellers from the market went shopping to the stores to buy the things they needed as well as presents for their children. The peasants liked bagels most of all. They bundled bagels on the thread and put it over the neck. Jews and Moldovans treated each other as neighbors. I can’t say it was a cemented friendship, but at least there were no insults.

Jewish traditions were observed in the house of Grandfather Moishe. I learnt from my neighbors about the Jews, their mode of life, traditions and holidays. The rabbi and his wife lived in front of our house. They didn’t have children and they loved me very much. I was a welcome guest almost every day. I am sorry that I fail to remember the names of such close people to me, who taught me the Jewish traditions. The rabbi’s wife taught me the ethics of the Jewish family life, housekeeping. She was always wearing nice dresses, wigs and kerchiefs tied in an eccentric way. She taught me to be dressed up in the house, for the family, so that the husband enjoys looking at his wife, not only the outsiders. She also taught me how to cook a variety of Jewish dishes in accordance with the holiday traditions. She and I baked hamantashen for Purim, potato fritters and doughnuts for Chanukkah. She also taught me how to place all Paschal products mentioned in the Haggadah on the dish and cook bitter herbs.

I liked holidays very much. The fall holidays of Sukkot and Simchat Torah appealed to me the most. They were after Yom Kippur, when our parents were fasting and attending the synagogue, and we, the children, were forbidden to have fun and chatter. I began fasting rather young, at the age of six. During other periods of time I couldn’t fast, but on Yom Kippur, I was as if choked and got over the fasting rather easily. I also enjoyed the ceremonious Rosh Hashanah, when they blew the shofar in the synagogues.

I liked Sukkot for its being so peculiar. There was a festive table laid in the sukkah, built by Grandfather Moishe. The sukkah was decorated with tree branches. I liked the mirthful holiday of Simchat Torah, when the Jews were carrying the Torah scroll with dancing and music. The parade, carrying a hollowed-out-pumpkin lantern with the candles inserted inside, was descending from the mountain to the central park and walking along the town. Like many other children, I remember Chanukkah, as I was given money by Grandfather Moishe. My mother’s brothers also gave me money.

We were looking forward to the joyful Purim. First, there was a pageant procession in the town. When I was in my teens, I also took part in it. Children got together in the rabbi’s house, where a Purimshpiel was organized. As a rule I was Esther, the heroine of the Jewish peoples. Apart from hamantashen there was also a white loaf, baked only in the rich houses. It was made of dough with honey and nuts. Not everybody could afford such a luxury. In the evening the Jews could be seen with trays, taking shelakhmones to each other. There should be no less than two presents. As we had a lot of relatives, my mother would start baking the hamantashen in the evening. She also used to make homemade sweets and cookies. My brother and I used to take those presents. We also were given delicious shelakhmones. We knew the way each lady baked, and we could tell with the eyes closed whose present it was.

Pesach was the king of all the holidays. We started getting ready for it right after Purim. I liked the fuss in the house. We were cleaning things, moving the furniture, beating carpets, whitewashing the stove, putting dressy curtains on the windows, and a lacy cover on the table. Even the chicken coops were cleaned. Father came home beforehand and brought presents for all of us – Mother usually got a nice shawl or fabric for a dress. I got patent-leather shoes or a dress, my brother was given boots or a coat. Though our garments were pretty nice, we were looking forward to getting new pieces. The chest with beautiful dishes was taken from the loft. Those dishes were used once a year for a week.

Chametz was banished from the house on the eve of the holiday. Father was walking around the house with a goose feather and sweeping out non-existent crumbs. Starting on that day only matzah was used. Sweet or sour keyzels, kneydlakh for the chicken broth were also made from matzah. Even gefilte fish was made with soaked matzah flour. Mother always baked nut cake for the dessert with the following ingredients: 100 nuts, whipped egg whites from ten eggs, matzah flour and lemon.

Father would always carry out the seder. First, I asked the four traditional questions about the origin of the holiday. Then my brother Motle took over. Our neighbors, the Tkaches, were always invited to sit at our festive table. They used to be rich, and then they went bust and became very poor. They had a large family of eight children. For the second seder we usually went to Grandfather Moishe. Grandmother Sura, who loved me best of all, always demonstrated special attention to me. She gave me the best presents and let me lay dishes on the table. So I felt that I was her favorite granddaughter.

In 1934, I went to a Romanian elementary co-ed school. I was good at my studies, ranking top of the class and getting the first and the second prizes. At the end of the year we were given prizes, usually these were books and backpacks. The teachers treated me very well. They had an equal attitude towards Jews, Moldovans and Russians. Jewish children were exempt from the course of Orthodox Christian religion. They were taught Jewish history. It was so interesting that Orthodox children cut their classes to attend our lectures. I liked such subjects of natural sciences as botany and zoology. I was also good at such crafts as knitting and embroidery. At the end of the year there was an exhibition organized at our school. The students’ works were exhibited there and my works were always in the most conspicuous place.

Grandfather Moishe asked me to embroider him a night shirt. Back in those times men went to bed in long night shirts. I had been procrastinating all the time, and didn’t manage to embroider the shirt for my grandfather. On 9th May 1941 Grandfather Moishe passed away. Great-grandmother Haya had died one year before. My grandparents were buried in accordance with the Jewish rites. They were covered in a shroud. I didn’t go to the cemetery. It was not traditional for the Jews to take those children to the cemetery, whose parents were still alive. I remember the period of mourning. We took part in it as well. We sat on the floor with our relatives. I was walking without shoes, just in my stockings. Our neighbor, the rabbi, read a prayer for the deceased.

I studied in Vad-Rashkov for four years. I had to go to another town to continue my studies, as there were no other schools in our town. I studied in Vornicheny for two years. The town was 18 kilometers away from us. I shared the apartment with two girls from our school. Our landlady was a Jew, Sima. We had bed and breakfast. She fed us very well. All of us lived in one room and got along with each other. On the eve of Sabbath, viz. on Friday we went home. We also went home for Jewish holidays. By then I wasn’t as delighted by the holidays as I had been in the period of my childhood. I was just paying a tribute to tradition. Besides, I didn’t have other things to do other than observing Jewish traditions.

The Fascist organizations of the Cuzists 17 and Legionnaires 18 were established. Jewish youth adhered to two opposite camps – Zionists 19 and Communists. I was indifferent to either of them. When I came for a visit to Uncle Yankel and Aunt Haika I heard their delightful stories about the USSR from their Communist children and their dreams about justice and equality in the society of the future. I, being calm and well-bred, and respecting traditions and the existing mode of life, wasn’t carried away by their ideas. I didn’t participate in the Jewish Zionist organizations either.

When in the late June of 1940, Soviet peace troops came to Bessarabia, my family wasn’t meeting them with admiration, the way many other Jews were. Moreover, we were plagued by the feeling of uncertainty. Father even locked the door. Nothing bad happened. We weren’t affected by repressions and sequestration, which started a couple of days later. We heard about those things from other people. There were few rich people in our town, and all of our acquaintances and relatives were poor. Father was employed at some sort of an enterprise. In late August I left for Rezina and entered the eighth grade of the Soviet school. I turned over a new leaf. My life was more interesting now. I was an excellent student at school as always, in spite of the fact that subjects were taught in Russian and it was rather difficult for me. I became fluent in Russian rather swiftly. The main difference between the Soviet and Romanian school was that now children of the poorest strata of society were able to study at school, before that it had been unaffordable for them. The atmosphere was also more democratic. I lived with my father’s aunt Perl. I made friends with her eldest son Nahman. We spent a lot of time together. It was a puppy love with him. I had a lot of friends. We became pioneers 20 and had a lot of new events for us – pioneer meetings, workshops, PT, but it didn’t last long.

During the War

In June 1941, I passed final exams for the eighth grade and was supposed to go back home on vacation, but I stayed in Rezina for a couple of days as I didn’t want to part with Nahman. At 12am on 22nd June we found out about the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War from Molotov’s speech 21. That was the last time I saw Nahman before leaving for evacuation. As it turned out, he was drafted into the Soviet army 22 in the first days of the war. There was panic at home. Father insisted on evacuation, Mother still had doubts whether to leave or not to leave. On 8th August the town was bombed for the first time. We stayed in the town for another week. Almost all the Jews left for the evacuation – some people left on carts, others went on foot. Some Jews, especially the elderly ones, weren’t in a haste to leave as they thought that the Germans would do no harm to them.

On 16th July my parents decided to leave, right after Kishinev was occupied. Mother thought that things would be settled down within a couple of days and we would be back home. She only took some documents and money. She even left her modest jewelry at home. Mother locked the house and gave the keys to the Moldovan neighbor, asking her to watch over the house. We didn’t take most of our belongings, we just had light luggage. Only Motle took his favourite thing – his backgammon. I still keep it. I don’t remember how we met our relatives on our way to evacuation. Soon the families of my mother’s relatives joined us. These were Leib, Feiga and Joseph. So, our big family left the household for nowhere.

We walked along the road together with other fugitives. There were frequent bombings and we had to hide in the field or in the forest. There was screaming and sobbing. There were wounded and killed people. Sometimes we went to the Ukrainian villages. The hosts were very hospitable. They let us take a bath in the bathhouse. We stayed overnight in their house. They also fed us, gave us milk and clean clothes. Kind Ukrainian ladies asked us to stay with them. They were sorry for my mother, me, and especially for my little brother. We carried on like that for a month. There was no way we could return home. In each village we came to, we got together by the radio at 12am to listen to the news round-ups. We found out how rapidly the Germans were penetrating and moving forward in our land.

On 25th August 1941 we happened to be in the town of Bataysk, Rostov oblast [today Russia], about 1000 kilometers away from our home. We took locomotive trains and moved further to the east. There were people evacuated from different towns and villages of Ukraine and Russia. There were crowds of people, but everybody was given a chance to get on the locomotive. There was hardly any food. We managed to get some boiled water at the stations, sometimes some food. We didn’t know exactly where we were going. All we knew was that we moved eastwards. It took us almost a month to get to the town of Andijon in Uzbekistan.

Father, together with other men, went to the evacuation point right away. They went to work as loaders in the vegetable warehouse. We found a lodging the same day. We rented a small house, where our family settled. We were starving at first. Though, owing to Father’s work at the warehouse he got potato and beet skins and semi-rotten cabbage leaves. We were fed once a day in the evacuation point. We were given some porridge made of water and grains. Usually the neighbor boy, who was lame, cried to us: ‘Porridge is given out’ and we would dash to the evacuation point with our plates. There were long lines of people. The most important thing was that we were given 400 grams of bread daily. It was military, underbaked, sour bread, but it seemed a tidbit to us. I went to the ninth grade in Andijon. I worked after classes during the second shift. I did my homework at night.

In 1942 Father, my uncles Joseph and Shneer were drafted into the labor front. They were sent to build the metro in Moscow. Father sent us letters. Sometimes he sent us money as well. It made our life a little easier. I worked as a loader at the cotton oil factory. Before I left the factory I was allowed to soak my clothes in cotton oil. I put as many clothes as possible and soaked them in oil very well. The members of my extended family were waiting for me by the entrance. There was a considerable lack of fats in our diet, so they had to suck cotton oil from my clothes. I was standing there and crying. Almost all the factory workers were taking the cotton oil the way I did, and there were other people close to us, who were saturating in oil like my relatives. Mother used to cry a lot because I worked very hard. I tried to leave some oil for my little brother. Motle took the hunger really hard.

At the beginning of 1943 my little brother and Uncle Leib got afflicted with typhus fever. I was surprised that the rest of our relatives, stuck together in our poky place, didn’t catch that disease. I was immune, as I had had this disease in 1936. No matter what we did we couldn’t save my brother Motle and Uncle Leib. They died on 23rd March 1943. They were put in the cart and taken to the cemetery. They were buried in a common grave for the afflicted with the typhus fever. I kept the backgammon of my brother Motle as a precious thing.

In spite of working hard, I finished school with honors in 1943. Father sent me some money. He insisted on my continuing my studies. I went to the town of Osh, located at the border of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Rostov University was evacuated there. I submitted my documents and was enrolled without taking any exams, because I was an excellent student. I entered the Chemical Agents Department. I settled in the hostel. A new stage in my life began. I became a student. I had studied at Rostov University only for two months. In late October there was a terrible explosion in the laboratory of our university and a couple of our students died, many students were evacuated with severe scalds. I didn’t tell my mother about it, but Mother had a hunch that something had happened. Mother came to Osh, and having found out that I had remained alive by a miracle, insisted on my leaving the institute. I always listened to my mother and left Osh, in spite of liking my studies and having friends there.

I was transferred to the Tashkent Medical Institute, where I studied until 1944. I have never regretted that, because I understood that medicine was my calling. There, in Tashkent [today capital of Uzbekistan] I made friends with Jewish girls from Moldova 23, with whom I lived in the hostel. Gradually our life was getting better. I received an increased stipend and was paid for knitting, so I had the opportunity to send some money to my mother. What made me rejoice the most was that Nahman had found me via the bureau of the evacuees. We started to write each other tender letters. In late 1944 Father came back from Moscow and began working as a digger. He was grieving over his son’s death, but he tried not to show that to my mother. Mother couldn’t forgive herself for Motle’s death. She thought it was her fault.

After the War

In late December 1944, right after the liberation of Bessarabia we left for home. Of course, our way back home seemed much shorter to us. We had to change trains and on 3rd January 1945 we arrived in Kishinev. The city was dark, devastated and dilapidated. Father decided that we should stay in Kishinev, as Vad-Rashkov was also devastated. From our pal’s letters we found out that our house was demolished as well. So we didn’t go back to our town. There were a lot of unoccupied basement and semi-basement premises. We took one large room and began settling in.

Father started work at the creamery. Mother was a housewife. Shortly after my arrival in Kishinev, I applied to the newly-founded Medical Institute and was accepted in the second year. I was happy. Here in Kishinev I met Nahman. He barely participated in any battles. Like other Bessarabians, Nahman was demobilized from the lines in a month, as the Soviet regime didn’t trust people from the newly-annexed lands. In Buguruslan [today Russia] he entered the History Department at the Teachers’ Training Institute. In 1944, Nahman was among the first graduates. By that time he had become an active Komsomol 24 member, the secretary of the Komsomol committee of the institute. [Editor’s note: Komsomol units existed at all educational and industrial enterprises. They were headed by Komsomol committees involved in organizational activities].

Nahman came to Kishinev with other graduates of the institute right after the liberation of the city. Nahman moved in with us, being our relative. His close relatives died. His mother Perl and brother Gedali perished in a ghetto. Nahman and I became more and more close. Soon he proposed to me. It happened on Victory Day, 9th May 1945. Nahman and I were in Odessa on that day 25, strolling along a beautiful maritime boulevard. It seemed to us, that the entire population of Odessa was in the street. Unacquainted people were kissing each other, rejoicing in our victory and hoping for a bright future.

In spring 1946 Nahman and I got married. We had a hard life. Bread was given out by cards 26: there was neither provision nor essential commodities. But we were young, we loved each other and hoped for the future. I sold my bread card and bought my dream – nylon stockings. I also put on a skirt made from burlap and a patched blouse. That was the way I was dressed to go to the state registration office to register our marriage. In the evening our relatives got together in our dark room. We had tea with rye bread and sweets made of colored sugar and water. Then we danced to the gramophone and had fun.

We kept on living with my parents in their poky room. We made a kitchen from the small corridor, where Mother cooked on a Primus stove. We didn’t feel the lack of space. Our relatives came over often. We kept late hours, having tea and they stayed overnight. Some of them were sleeping on the table, others on the floor. There wasn’t enough room for everybody, but we had a good time anyway. I brought up my first-born son, David, in this room. He was born in 1948, and in 1952 I gave birth to another boy, Boris.

I didn’t quit my studies when David was born. It was difficult to combine my studies at the Medical Institute with sleepless nights, laundry and changing swaddles. My parents helped me a lot. I became a Komsomol member at the institute and even found time for social work. Nahman became a member of the Communist Party after graduation. He began to teach at the Teachers’ Training Institute, then at Kishinev University. When I was graduating from the institute, state anti-Semitism became commonplace. It was the year of 1949, famous for the overthrow of the anti-Fascist Committee 27, and then the Doctors’ Plot 28. I graduated that year.

In spite of having graduated with honors, I wasn’t accepted for the post-graduate studies, after I submitted the documents and passed all exams with excellent marks. They told me that I was to practice medicine first. But my Moldovan friend was easily accepted. I got my mandatory job assignment 29 to a distant Moldovan village, but they had to let me stay here, as my husband was working in Kishinev, and besides I had a small child. I was sent to the department of preventive care of the health care ministry and was employed as a therapist part-time. It was dreadful to practice medicine during the sensational Doctors’ Plot. I came across such a case: the patient whom I was calling on, shut the door right in front of me. She didn’t tell me anything, I understood everything by her grouchy look. It was hard for me to go to see other patients on that day.

When I addressed this case to the head of our department, he told me that patients were entitled to refuse to be treated by certain doctors and concocted a kind of a petty accusation for me. Jews were always criticized. In spite of being calm and reserved, I cried all night long. My husband was comforting me and saying that all that injustice would be over soon. He had the power to predict and at the same time to have a fair opinion on the reality. Either this was a feature of his character or his profession of a historian made such an imprint on him. Anyway when Stalin passed away in 1953, he wasn’t mourning like the rest of the people, he was one of the few ones who were almost glad. He said that now justice would prevail. I, being influenced by my husband, had a clear mind and took the death of the leader rather calmly. But my parents, especially my mother were grieving over it and crying.

Mother was ill at that time. Her health was undermined when she was working hard in Andijon. The years of starvation also affected her. Mother had liver cancer. In 1956 she died, being a little over fifty. She was buried in the Jewish sector of the Kishinev cemetery. Father read a commemoration prayer. It was very hard for me to get over my mother’s death. She was the dearest person to me. Father did many chores, trying to help me about the house. He went shopping, to the market, cooked and looked after the children. He was so complaisant and reliable that it helped me to overcome a hard period of grievance.

I have always had two jobs since our financial situation wasn’t favorable. I had to raise two children. The salaries of doctors and teachers weren’t high. I never got a promotion and remained in the same position. However, in 1956, after the revelations about Stalin’s personality cult, I had a new feeling of the wind of change. But in reality things didn’t change that much for the Jews. My husband was a talented historian. For several years he had been working on his dissertation 30, but he couldn’t defend it as it was declared outdated. Then he wrote another thesis, on a different topic, and he was told the same. He remained an ordinary teacher till the rest of his life.

Our children were growing up like any other Soviet children: nursery, kindergarten. When they were ill, my mother often looked after them, and when my mother died, Father would help out. In 1959 we got an apartment, and finally moved out of that basement. I am currently living in that apartment.

My sons were excellent students, both of them finished school with a golden medal. [Editor’s note: the golden medal was the highest distinction in USSR secondary schools. A student was supposed to have straight excellent marks (100%) to get the golden medal.] We paid a lot of attention to our children and tried to bring them up as civilized people. We used to discuss the books, read by our boys. They read almost all the Russian and foreign classics. They also knew Sholem Aleichem 31. At that time he was the only Jewish writer, whose works were published in Russian.

We were theater-goers. We also liked to attend symphony concerts, go on excursions to Moscow, Kiev. One of our vacations was totally devoted to Leningrad, its palaces and museums. We went to the seaside, to the Crimea, the Caucasus. I can say we had a full life. Of course, we were not rich: we didn’t own a house or a car, but at least we had a well-furnished apartment. We also could afford good food, clothes and recreation.

Jewish traditions were always kept only by my father. Of course, my husband and I were atheists. Nahman was a member of the Party. We worked on Saturdays, as Saturday was a working day, but Father always observed Sabbath. He attended the synagogue while he could walk. The kashrut couldn’t be observed, as it was hard to get any food products not to mention kosher ones. There was always matzah for Pesach. Father waited in a long line to get it in the synagogue. Father cooked traditional dishes for the holiday.

David and Boris always felt themselves to be Jewish and were interested in the long Jewish history since their childhood. Father told them many stories. He told them about the town we lived in, about Jewish traditions. I think he plied them with love for the Jewish people. Father lived a long life and died in his sleep in 1988, at the age of 94. He was buried next to my mother in the Jewish sector of the city cemetery in accordance with the rite. He was buried in a shroud. The warden of the synagogue, an elderly Jew, read a prayer.

My children got a wonderful education. The elder one, David, entered the Physics department of [Kishinev] university. He was an excellent student and graduated with honors. He worked for many years as a theoretical physicist. After perestroika the institute he worked for was closed down and David remained jobless. He decided to become an entrepreneur and founded his own company on sales and installation of computer equipment. His company is prosperous now. David was married, but got divorced. He keeps in touch with his son and helps him. My grandson Pavel, born in 1983, graduated from the police academy. He is currently living and working in Kishinev. He has a two-year-old son, my great-grandson Dmitriy. My son David left the apartment to his wife and lives with me now.

My younger son Boris followed in his father’s footsteps: he graduated from the History Department of Kishinev University. He is married to a Moldovan lady, Lidia. They have a wonderful family. They have two children – Polina, named after my mother-in-law Perl, born in 1985, and their son Sergey, born in 1987. Their children are grown now. Sergey is finishing school. Polina left for Israel to study. I visited her in Israel. We had a good time together. Israel is a marvelous country. I admire it, but I am always nostalgic about my motherland. Polina doesn’t want to leave Israel. She has become a real Israeli citizen. She observes all the traditions there. She has a lot of friends. Polina wants to serve in the Israeli army. She sees her life only there and I am happy she has found what she sought.

We always implicitly supported Israel, even during those years when it was officially stigmatized as an aggressive country. It was hard for my husband, as he worked in an ideological atmosphere, and he had to take part in the conversations and listen to accusations towards the young Israeli state. When the immigration started, most our relatives left for Israel. Neither my husband nor I wanted to leave, as we were attached to out motherland, Bessarabia. We were born and raised here, being part and parcel of it.

My husband died in 1989 from a heart attack. I have been by myself for many years now and I still can’t get over his death. He was a remarkable man – intelligent, thoughtful and kind-hearted. I was barely affected by perestroika and the foundation of the independent state of Moldova. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to live on my pension, but my children are helping me out as they have their both feet firmly on the ground. Besides, Hesed is assisting me a lot as well as other Jews. I receive food and what is most important, I have some moral support. I have a lot of friends among Hesed’s clients. We celebrate Jewish holidays and Sabbath together. I am not religious, but I became a member of the women’s club, where Jewish traditions are studied. I can say that perestroika brought about a revival of Jewish traditions, which is wonderful.

Glossary:

Ida Voliovich
Kishinev
Moldova
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: July 2004

Ida Voliovich readily gave her consent to meet me for this interview. She lives in a two-bedroom apartment on the top floor of a nine-storied building in a new district of Kishinev [Chisinau in Moldovan]. Ida has recently renovated her apartment. She has new furniture and appliances: a Japanese TV set and modern kitchen appliances. There are pictures on the walls and stuffed animals all around: Ida’s husband was a passionate hunter. Ida looks young for her age, though she is already 84. However, she has a nice dressing gown on, her hair is neatly done and her nails manicured and polished. Ida gives me a warm welcome and offers me a cup of coffee. Ida speaks very distinctly and adds clear comparisons and descriptions to her story. It was almost midnight when we called it a day.

We called Ida Voliovich again in November to ask her a few questions to add to her story, but unfortunately her son told us that Ida had passed away on 24th October 2004.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

My name is Ida Voliovich. Voliovich is my maiden name that I never changed; being the only bearer of this rare Jewish surname left, I decided to preserve the memory of my father. In 1903 a tragedy happened in my father’s family: My grandfather Kelman Voliovich was born in the 1830-1840s in the Bessarabian 1 town of Orgeyev [Orhei in Moldovan] and spent his youth there. Later he and my grandmother Hina, a few years younger than him, moved to Kishinev, where Kelman became a grain dealer, a wealthy and respected man. My grandfather owned a big three-storied house in the center of the town, on Gostinaya Street [today Schmidtoskaya Street]. Grandmother Hina took care of the children and the household. She had housemaids to help her around. They were a religious family. My grandfather had a seat in the synagogue of butchers [there were 65 synagogues and prayer houses in Kishinev before 1940. There were bigger synagogues for all and smaller synagogues: a synagogue of tailors, leather tanners, butchers, etc. maintained by guild unions], a big and beautiful one, on Izmailskaya Street. My grandfather got along well with his Jewish and Moldovan neighbors, never refusing to lend them money or give advice.

Therefore, when on the Pesach day in 1903 2 his neighbor and his Ukrainian friend, who had arrived from Nikolaev the day before, came into his yard, Kelman went towards them, to greet his guests. And his daughters Ita and Hava, young beautiful girls with long black hair, came out with him. However, their neighbors, who were intoxicated by alcohol, didn’t come there with good intentions – they knew that Jews were being beaten and robbed in the town and wanted to take advantage of Kelman’s wealth. When they saw the girls, they went for them. Grandfather stood up for his daughters. The ‘good neighbors’ beat him mercilessly, and the man from Nikolaev, whose name was Pyotr Kaverin, struck my grandfather on his head with an iron bar. Grandfather Kelman was taken to the Jewish hospital where all victims of this ‘Bloody Easter’ were taken. He died the following day. The bandits raped the girls and beat Ita brutally – she was ill for a while afterward.

For a long time after that there were feathers and down from the torn pillows flying around. There was blood on the walls of houses in Kishinev, where public representatives, including Nahman Bialik 3, a Jewish poet, and Vladimir Korolenko 4, a great Russian writer and humanist, arrived after this brutal pogrom. There is still no truthful information about who had provoked this pogrom. However, it is well known that the tsarist regime benefited from the situation [Editor’s note: The majority of the population of tsarist Russia lived in miserable poverty. There were revolts and uprisings against the existing regime and the government didn’t mind that people’s anger turned against Jews, who were always believed to be to blame for the hardships of people’s life. Therefore, the authorities supported the pogrom makers by silent observation from aside and imposed no sanctions on them]. The murderers of my grandfather got away with what they had done. My uncle Simkha Voliovich sued them, but the trial issued the ‘not guilty’ verdict, based on false testimony of bribed witnesses, and the murderer Kaverin went back to Nikolaev, where I guess he lived a long life afterward. It was not before the mid-1990s that I discovered the opinion of one jury member in the archive, who gave a detailed description of how false the testimony was and expressed his disagreement with the verdict, but this didn’t affect the final decision.

This terrible disaster shook the family. Grandmother Hina died shortly after the pogrom. The sisters Ita and Hava recovered physically, but their moral condition was terrible. They never got married. The whole town was aware that the girls had been raped and there were no young men, suitable from the point of their social standing, willing to marry them. They also rejected those young men, who had a lower status than their family. This was a family tragedy. According to Jewish traditions older sisters were to be the first to get married and since they never did, the rest of the children couldn’t get married either.

There were seven children in the family. They were not religious any longer in their adulthood, I must say. They were educated and secular people. David Voliovich, the oldest son, born in the 1860s, moved to America in the 1910s. This is all the information we had about David. He never wrote a single letter, and I don’t even know whether he ever reached America.  

The brothers Srul, Simkha and Lazar remained unmarried. Srul, born in the 1870s, finished a cheder. He assisted his father in the grain trade and took over the family business after Kelman died. Srul was a sickly person. He died in the mid-1930s.

Grandfather Kelman came from a small town, Orgeyev, from a poor family. I can’t be sure, but I don’t think he studied elsewhere besides a cheder. I would think he was a smart person and kept learning to become a successful and respectable man. He wanted his children to get education and took every effort to implement this dream of his. Simkha and Lazar got a good education abroad. Simkha was a pharmacist. A few years after the tragedy, Simkha moved to Belgium. He lived and worked in Brussels. Simkha often wrote to us and sent us parcels. During World War II my uncle participated in the Belgian resistance movement and perished.

Lazar Voliovich, born in 1886, finished the Geneva Medical College, returned to his parents’ home in Kishinev and opened a private office. During World War I Lazar was a doctor in a regiment. In 1940, when the Soviet power was established in Kishinev, he was summoned to the NKVD 5 office. He was accused of having been a colonel of the tsarist army, but Lazar replied with his common humor that a doctor in a regiment wasn’t quite the same as a colonel. Lazar was a popular children’s doctor in Kishinev and they left him alone.

The old residents in Kishinev still have grateful memories about my uncle: Lazar helped them and their children, where other doctors were helpless. There were always people crowding before the door to his office. He earned well and was a rather wealthy man. Lazar also worked for free in the Jewish hospital and was a consultant in the hospital of the Jewish Health Care Society established by the Joint 6 in Kishinev in the 1920s. Lazar lived with his sisters Ita and Hava, supporting and assisting them. During the Great Patriotic War 7 he and his sisters evacuated to Central Asia near Bukhara, and after the war they returned home. Hava died in the early 1950s, Ita died in 1960, and Doctor Lazar Voliovich died a few years later. They were buried in the town cemetery in Kishinev.

My father Moishe, born in 1883, assisted his father in the grain trade. He studied in cheder like his brothers. Moishe was raised to respect Jewish traditions like his brothers and sisters. So his brothers and sisters were shocked when he got married after the pogrom, ignoring the tradition. He was head over heels in love with my mother, whom he had known before the pogrom.

My mother’s family was also wealthy. Grandfather Itl Kniazer, born in Kishinev in the 1850s, owned a butcher’s shop, the first one in the butchers’ line at the biggest market in Kishinev on Armianskaya Street. My grandfather had an employee to cut meat, and my grandmother Nesia was also there helping my grandfather. She was a cashier since she wouldn’t have entrusted counting money to anybody else. My grandmother was a beauty, when she was young. She married my fifteen-year-old grandfather, when she was just thirteen. She was still young and strong, when their children grew up. She had a stern and strong character, more masculine than my grandfather’s. My grandfather Itl had died before I was born.

The Kniazer family lived in a big apartment of a two-storied building on Podolskaya Street. The synagogue of butchers was located on Izmailskaya Street, where Grandfather Kelman went, not far from where Itl lived, so my father may have met my mother at the synagogue. [Editor’s note: Men and women are seated separately in synagogues. She may have seen him there, however, the meeting couldn’t have taken place inside the building.] My grandfather and grandmother went to the synagogue and observed Jewish traditions, followed the kashrut and celebrated Saturday [Sabbath]. However, business came first with my grandfather, so the family didn’t consider it a sin to sell meat to their customers on Saturday. Grandmother Nesia died in the early 1930s.

There was one son and a few daughters in the family. Ruvim, the oldest, born in 1870, took over my grandfather Itl’s store after he died. Ruvim died in the late 1930s. His older son Monia, who had been ill since childhood, also died in about this same period. His wife Leya, their daughter Nina and son Israel evacuated during the Great Patriotic War and after the war they returned to Kishinev. Nina died shortly after the war. Israel lives in Israel. He has a wonderful family, and we keep in touch.

The daughters were beauties. Ita, the oldest one, born in the early 1870s, a very beautiful girl, married a much older wealthy Jew at the age of 14 or 15. Her husband took her to Moscow where Ita had a son. This is all I know about Ita or her son, except that she died at the age of 28, long before I was born.

Riva, the next daughter, also married a wealthy Jewish man. His surname was Tsymsher. They moved to Moscow before the Revolution of 1917 8. Riva died before the Great Patriotic War, and her two sons, whose names I don’t remember, returned from the front and lived in Moscow.

Polia married a wealthy Jewish doctor. I don’t remember his name. They moved to the Soviet Union in the 1920s, when Bessarabia was still under the Romanian rule 9. I don’t know any details, though I know that many families were moving to Russia at that time by bribing frontier men. Polia and her son Joseph lived in Moscow. I visited them there in the 1950s. They were rather wealthy. Joseph was involved in commerce and Polia had all kinds of delicacies on her table. My son couldn’t tear himself from the food. Polia died in the late 1950s. Joseph has also passed away. His son Edward lives in Israel.

Betia was the only one of them to get university education: she finished a Dental College in Moscow. She worked in Moscow till she turned 80. Her family name was Orik. I have had no contacts with her son Boris: he was also involved in commerce like Joseph.

Tsypa, the next sister, was the ugliest of all the sisters. She married Samuel Rozenzweig from Kishinev, and they moved to the lovely Romanian town of Braila on the Danube where she lived till 1940. [Braila is a major Danubian port in Romania.] Samuel owned a big store and they were very wealthy. Their daughter Ida, named after Grandfather Itl, finished a gymnasium [Editor’s note: probably ‘gymnasium’ refers to the former school system used to be called ‘lyceum.’] in 1939 and studied at the Faculty of Foreign Languages of Bucharest University.

In 1940 the Rozenzweig family moved to Kishinev, immediately after the Soviet power was established 10. They had hopes for a better and more just life. [Editor’s note: Most probably they fled from the large-scale pogroms in Romania, lead by the pseudo-Fascist organization of the Iron Guard.] Of course, they regretted it almost at once, but they couldn’t go back. Ida moved to her uncle in Odessa to continue her studies. Tsypa refused to evacuate. She and her husband perished in the Kishinev ghetto 11. My cousin Ida evacuated to Alma-Ata [today Kazakhstan] where she graduated from university and moved to Moscow to her aunt Betia. In Moscow Ida married a Jewish man from Bessarabia, who worked in the editor’s office of a magazine. Ida became a Romanian and French teacher and wrote a few textbooks. She died in the mid-1990s. Her son Alexandr lives in Canada.

Sonia, the youngest and the most beautiful of all sisters, married Isaac Bein, a pianist, who became a wonderful conductor and worked in the opera in Bucharest until 1940. They moved to Kishinev in 1940, after the Soviet power was established. He conducted our symphonic orchestra before the Great Patriotic War. He evacuated to Central Asia with the Philharmonic. From there he moved to Moscow where Isaac became the conductor of the orchestras of two popular theaters: Stanislavskiy and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theaters 12. At the age of 90 he established an opera team in the huge machine-building plant named after Likhachev, the Likhachev plant 13. Sonia and her family lived in a small room in a communal apartment 14. Sonia was very kind and happy about anything they had in life. She died an instant death from a heart attack in the early 1980s. In 1989 Sonia’s daughter Mariam died. Isaac died in the 1990s.

My mother, Leya Kniazer, was the same age as my father. She studied in a Russian gymnasium in Kishinev, but she never finished it for some reason that I don’t know. She knew Russian, though at home the family spoke Yiddish. Mama had a wonderful voice, which was common in the Kniazer family. She sang Jewish songs beautifully. They still sound in my heart, though I can’t repeat any due to my lack of musical talents. Mama was helping her mother about the house before she met my father. She and my father were bound with real deep love, ‘until the coffin,’ as was commonly said at the time. Fortunately, the Kniazer family didn’t suffer from the pogrom.

I don’t know how soon after my grandfather Kelman Voliovich died my parents got married, but in 1904 they were already married. They never told me anything about their wedding. By the way, I heard about the family tragedy and my grandfather’s death from my uncle Lazar, when I was already a grown up. I discovered the details in the archives in Kishinev in the 1990s. My parents probably wanted to keep the cruel story secret from me. Considering that the Kniazer family was also very religious, my parents must have had a traditional wedding with a chuppah at the synagogue of butchers. However, no relatives on my father’s side attended the wedding: his brothers and sisters repudiated him for ignoring the tradition. He studied the profession of a stockjobber and this became the job of his lifetime. Stockjobbers worked and stayed at a café on Alexandrovskaya Street, which was actually their office, where they made all their deals.

After the wedding my parents settled in a small apartment that my mother’s parents rented for them. They were rather poor, I’d say. A stockjobber’s life depended on many factors: crops, weather, price rates, political situation, etc. The life of our family was like a boat shaken by the waves. In some years my father earned all right, bought my mother expensive clothes and hired housemaids, and at other times Mama had to pawn our silver crockery for Pesach.

My mama’s first child died in infancy and so did the second one. The third son, born in 1907 and named Kelman after my grandfather, reconciled my father’s relations with his family. This was when my father’s sisters and brothers opened the doors of their house to my parents. However, they didn’t let my father join in the family business or have a part of what they had inherited from their parents.

After Kelman, my mother had a few miscarriages. Then in 1920, 13 years after my brother was born, I came into this world. I was named after my deceased grandfather Itl; the name of Ida sounds a lot like Itl. I remember my wonderful childhood. I remember our apartment on Alexandrovskaya Street [Lenin Street during the Soviet period and Stefan cel Mare at present], number 51а. I remember this particularly well since there was a lovely confectionary at number 51, on the corner of Izmailoskaya Street. We often went there, and its owner, a handsome Russian man with a big beard, attended to us. There were Jewish, Russian, Greek and Armenian store owners in Kishinev.

The owner of our house was Danovich, a Jewish man, a big manufacturer. He owned a down and feather manufacture, and there was a feather storage facility in our yard. Our small apartment was far to the back of the yard. There were two rooms and a kitchen in our apartment. There was a common toilet in the yard. There were Jewish and Moldovan families in our house. The children played in the yard, going home just for a meal. There was no national segregation from what I can remember. There was a croquet site in our yard.

Growing up

My friend was Mira Argiyevskaya, the daughter of our Moldovan neighbors. Her father was a barber. The boys Misha and Andryusha, the sons of our Ukrainian neighbor Kozhukhar, were also friends with us. My most loved friend Tzylia Blinder, a Jewish girl, lived in an apartment in the back of the yard. Her father owned a shoe shop where he had about ten employees working for him. The Khodorovskiye brother and sister, living in the house next to ours, became my lifelong friends. Danovich was a wealthy man and his daughters were older. We only followed them as they walked by, wearing fashionable gowns. 

My parents loved me dearly and my father just adored me. My brother Kelman, or Koma, as we called him at home, studied in Chernovtsy [today Ukraine]. My brother entered the Medical Faculty there, but after he visited the dissection room for the first time, he realized medicine wasn’t for him and switched to the Law Faculty. My parents also got along well with our neighbors. My father was an extraordinarily kind man and many people even took advantage of this feature of his. When he was carrying two chickens home before Sabbath, a poor man would approach him saying, ‘Moishe, you have two chickens and I have none,’ and my father didn’t hesitate to give him one chicken. My mother was also very kind. There was always a poor man joining us for Sabbath. We also followed the kashrut. Mama strictly followed kosher rules and never entrusted cooking to anyone else. At the same time my parents were modern people. Mama didn’t cover her hair. My father only wore a kippah to go to the synagogue. He also had his tallit and tefillin to take with him.

I liked Jewish holidays very much. Pesach was my favorite. Mama started scrubbing, cleaning and washing long before the holiday. She took expensive Pesach crockery and cutlery from a box, and at the times when my father didn’t earn well and Mama had pawned the crockery, she koshered our everyday crockery by boiling it in a tub. We always had guests at the table: they were Jewish soldiers from the town garrison. This was a custom with Jewish families. This allowed following the tradition [You are supposed to have guests at the table at Pesach] and also, the soldiers had a chance to celebrate the holiday. Since my brother was in Chernovtsy, I asked my father the four traditional questions and then looked for the afikoman to get a gift for finding it. We left a glass of wine for Elijah ha-nevi, and I couldn’t fall asleep, when I was small, fearing that the door would open at any moment to let the Prophet in.

I also liked Purim. I liked hamantashen: little pies with poppy seeds that my mother baked, but I liked fluden even more; waffles with layers of honey and nuts. On this holiday the rules required giving treats to the poor. There was a poor shoemaker Shir with his two daughters living across the street from us. They had no mother. Mama always sent me to them with a tray full of delicacies and I enjoyed doing this chore. I remember getting to their house across the snowdrifts one winter, when there was a lot of snow in Kishinev. When I studied in the gymnasium, we, the girls, used to arrange Purimspiel performances at somebody’s home.

There were beautiful holidays in fall – Rosh Hashanah, when we had delicious fruit, apples and honey. I also remember Yom Kippur. My father bought a hen and I went to the synagogue, where the rabbi conducted the kapores ritual, turning a hen over my head. Then I took the hen to the shochet, watching him hanging it on a hook to have the blood drip out of it. My parents always fasted on Yom Kippur. I remember the nice holiday of Sukkot. We didn’t have a sukkah, but before the holiday an attendant from the synagogue dropped branches onto the floor in our apartment. My father brought lemons [the interviewee probably means etrog], figs and some strange looking beans. We also visited our neighbors Khodorkovskiye in their sukkah. I had all these holidays in my childhood, but later I switched to other interests.

At the age of about six I was sent to the Jewish elementary school near the synagogue on Izmailovskaya Street. When I fell ill with measles, I had to stay home for some time, but I never went back to the Jewish school. I was a very independent girl and I was full of energy. Mira Argiyevskaya, who was two yeas older than me, studied in a special applied science school at the Pedagogical School. This school was established in 1919, when many Romanian intellectuals moved to Bessarabia to organize Romanian schools, vocational schools and colleges to improve the educational system. [The reason for this was to introduce the Romanian language in public as well as higher education in the previous Russian province].

The secondary school at the Pedagogical College was absolutely similar to Romanian rural schools. Students of the Pedagogical College were trained in this school as well. Florika Nizu, the headmistress of this school, was one of the developers of the educational system in Bessarabia. There was grade one and grade three in one classroom [there are usually no more than ten children of the same age in a village, and for this reason children of several grades studied together in one classroom, due to lack of facilities and teachers]. Besides, girls and boys studied together, while in Kishinev there were separate schools for boys and for girls. Florika Nizu interviewed me and approved my admission. They didn’t even ask my nationality. They treated me well at school. The pupil’s success was what mattered rather than his or her nationality. There were Moldovan, Russian and Jewish children at school. Quite a few known people finished this school. Thus, Mira’s classmate was Lusia Shliahov, who became a well-known physicist in Israel and the USA. All nationalities were respected at school.

When I turned eleven, I started earning money. Uncle Ruvim’s neighbors asked me to give private classes to their daughter, who was rather stupid. I prepared her for the first grade. In 1931 I finished elementary school. I tried to enter the state gymnasium where education was free, though they gave preference to Moldovan girls from rural areas to have them work in their villages later. It’s not that they didn’t admit Jews, but I’d rather say, they wanted to get bribes from them. So it happened that I failed to enter this gymnasium, despite my excellent marks from the elementary school. Florika Nizu helped me again. Her husband was the director of the French gymnasium and he helped me to enter it.

This gymnasium for girls was of shared private and state ownership and they charged a minimal educational fee in it. We studied French and many subjects were taught in French too. Our classroom tutors only addressed us in French. I still have a very good command of French. There were many Jewish girls in this gymnasium. When Christian girls were having their religion class, Jewish girls went to the Jewish history class. Our teacher was Yakov Miaskovskiy. I made new friends at the gymnasium. My favorite teacher of Mathematics, Nadezhda Kristoforovna, who was Greek, became my closest friend. I finished the fourth grade of the gymnasium in 1935.

By this time we’d moved house. My brother Kelman finished the Law Faculty, had two years of practice with one of the best lawyers of the town of Soroca, returned to Kishinev and decided to open a law office in town. My father either earned or borrowed money for him from Uncle Lazar, and shortly afterward we moved to a big four-room apartment on Benderskaya Street, across the street from the market. This was a big beautiful house with a front-door entrance. There was a dining room, a bedroom, my brother’s office and his bedroom in the apartment. I slept in the living room.

On the evening of 5th March 1935 my father rang the doorbell and I opened the door. He got into the room and complained of feeling ill. I ran to notify Uncle Lazar, who lived nearby, but when we rushed back, my father was already dead. We sat seven days of mourning after he died [shivah]. I remember that we made cuts on our collars. I cried, but one has to stop crying one day. I decided to read instead – the rules allowed it. I read ‘The Insulted and Injured’ by Dostoevsky 15.

When my father died, I realized that I had to get a good education – I was responsible for my mother. I decided to enter the Romanian gymnasium, the so-called Liceul ‘Principesa Natalia Dadiani’ [‘Princess Natalia Dadiani’s Lyceum’]. Princess Dadiani was a Russian lady from Bendery, a Moldovan town. She became a Princess after marrying a Georgian Prince. Before getting married she was a teacher of biology in the gymnasium, but when she became rich, she decided to open a state-run Russian gymnasium. She invited well-known architects to build this gymnasium, which houses the Museum of Arts nowadays. Princess Dadiani died at the age of 38 in 1903, but the gymnasium named after her prospered. It was a Russian gymnasium before it became a Romanian gymnasium in 1919. The Russian teachers, who had a command of the Romanian language continued to work. The director was Raisa Galina, a Russian lady.

I passed exams for the fourth grade and was admitted to the fourth grade of the gymnasium. I submitted the so-called ‘certificate of poverty,’ confirming that I was an orphan, to obtain exemption from educational fees. Jewish girls constituted almost half of the class and I made lifelong friends there. In those years Bessarabia was rapidly switching to the Romanian language in all spheres of life. My mother tongue was Russian and I communicated with other girls in Russian. However, I also understood Yiddish, since my mama and father spoke their native language to one another at times. I also knew Romanian. There were notes ‘Speak Romanian’ in public places, state offices, big stores and markets or in the streets.

We wore uniforms: black robes with collars and the letters LPD – Princess Dadiani Lyceum and our numbers embroidered on them. Once, my friend Zina Kogan and I spoke Russian, when we came out of the gymnasium. A teacher of the gymnasium for boys and secretary of the scout organization was passing by. He didn’t say anything to us, but on the following day our headmistress Raisa Galina invited us to her office and told us off slightly for speaking Russian. She apologized and suspended us from the gymnasium for a week. We were happy – we had a whole week for doing nothing and reading our favorite books. We read a lot of books by Russian and foreign writers. There was a library of salesclerks nearby and it had a nice collection of books. [Probably, as for the above mentioned synagogues, this library was also maintained by a guild.]

Mama often felt ill after my father died. She became secluded and stayed at home, saying little. My brother Kelman got married: This was a real marriage of convenience. He married Dora Fridman, a wealthy, but stupid and ugly woman. He also had a mistress. My brother named his son Mikhail after our father. My brother supported us, but he couldn’t give us more money, having to ask his wife each time. I started giving private lessons. There were two stupid Moldovan girls in my class – one was a daughter of a bishop, and the other one – a daughter of a merchant. The girls’ parents paid me 500 Lei for my doing their homework with them [at that time the average wage of a worker in Romania constituted 1500-2000 Lei per month, this was sufficient to have a good life. To go to the cinema cost 18 Lei, a kilo of bread about 10 Lei and a tram ticket cost 3 Lei]. This was sufficient for my mother and me. I also gave lessons to other girls.

I made a number of friends in the French gymnasium. There were Jewish, Russian, Moldovan friends: Chara Shapiro, Marah Itkis, Yakov Sorokin, an excellent violinist, the Ukrainian Nikolay Sadnyuk and the Moldovan Anatoliy Bezhan. We had common interests. Rahmil Portnoy, a wonderful, smart and well-educated person, a lawyer and philologist, who lived in our town, tried to give his knowledge to young people and interest them in literature and culture. He established a club that we attended twice a week to study literature. He read to us in Yiddish, since we couldn’t read Yiddish – Sholem Aleichem 16, and other Jewish writers. He analyzed the works of Russian and foreign men of letters too. I called him ‘Behelfer,’ a teacher in the best meaning of this word in Yiddish.

Fascism spread in Romania in the late 1930s, Fascist parties appeared – the Cuzists 17, and the Legionary Movement 18, propagating racial hatred. A bunch of my friends got gradually involved in anti-Fascist activities. We joined an underground Komsomol 19 organization [Editor’s note: There was no Komsomol organization in Bessarabia before the Soviet power was established in 1940, perhaps this was the organization of supporters of the Komsomol, since members identified themselves as Komsomol activists], supporting the MOPR [International Organization for Aid to Revolutionary Fighters] 20. Our major goal was political education. We read the classical works of Marxism-Leninism: proletariat and Soviet writers that agents from Moscow supplied. We were also responsible for distribution of flyers propagating Communist ideas and describing successes of the USSR. Besides, we collected money for political prisoners kept in Romanian jails. I asked my wealthier friends to make contributions and they asked their parents to give them money. These contributions were sent to prison to pay for provision of hot meals for prisoners. We were fond of Socialist ideas, believed in Communism and in our bright future. We didn’t know about the arrests and persecutions in the Soviet Union [Great Terror] 21, and believed that the socialist society was perfect.

My mother and I grew further and further apart from each other. She was still grieving over the loss of my father and didn’t notice that I had new friends and different interests. I didn’t care about Jewish traditions any longer, while my mother demanded that I observe them. However, my mother with her attachment to traditions unwittingly saved me from being arrested. One day in spring 1938 we appointed a mass meeting out of town. My friends observed strict conspiracy, but there was a provocateur among us. All those who went to the meeting were arrested, but I wasn’t there. This day was Friday and my mother insisted that I washed my hair, dressed up and celebrated Sabbath with her. I begged Mama to let me go, but she didn’t give up. Her mother’s heart must have had a premonition.

Chara’s mother didn’t allow Chara to go there either. My friends Tsylia Blinder, Mara Itkis, Yakov Sorokin and Anatoliy Bezhan were arrested. They were sentenced to one year in the colony for the under-aged. Besides, they were expelled from the gymnasium without the right to return there after serving their sentence. My friends didn’t betray me and I wasn’t even summoned to interrogations. I was afraid that my friends might suspect that I was the provocateur, but fortunately, this never occurred to them. One year later they were released and we were reunited. This was a wonderful time: we were young, full of hopes, attractive and in love. I was seeing a Jewish guy – Yakov Grossman. We spent our vacations in a big company of friends. We traveled to spend time in Budacu de Sus [Transylvania, Western Romania], and had a great time there.

I finished the gymnasium in 1939 and was awarded the Bachelor’s degree. [This degree is not the equivalent of BA in the United States, it’s a high school graduation certificate.] I passed a very important exam in front of a commission from Romania. Its chairman was Domnul [‘Sir’ in Romanian] Votez, professor from the Iasi University [Iasi University named after A. Kuza, Romania, was founded in 1860. The Iasi University was an important educational center. Its scientific and educational achievements were highly valued and acknowledged in Romania.] My first teacher of Mathematics, Nadezhda Kristoforovna, came to support me there. Natasha, a Moldovan girl, and I were given the highest grades: 8.3 out of 10. I decided to enter the Medical Faculty since doctors were well-paid. However, I needed money to continue my studies. Chara convinced me to talk to my uncle Lazar and ask him for the money. She even went to see him with me. Lazar congratulated me on my graduation from the gymnasium, and said that since I was an orphan, I had to forget about university education, but get a profession as soon as possible to start earning money. Chara shamed my uncle and said that I was the best student in town and just had to go on. She asked Lazar to lend me 1000 Lei. Lazar took some time before he agreed.

Chara, I and Tyusha Nathanzon, my other nice friend, went to Iasi to take exams to the Medical Faculty. The five percent admission quota 22 for Jews in higher educational institutions had been cancelled a few years before. So, the commission reviewed our documents, and agreed to admit us, but under the condition that we had to buy a corpse to work with in the dissection room, since Jewish students were not allowed to dissect corpses of Christians. This was the first time that I faced the state anti-Semitism. We were at a complete loss. Besides having to look for a corpse in a poor family that would wish to improve their situation, we also needed 30 thousand Lei. [Editor’s note: According to Jewish tradition, autopsy in general is discouraged as a desecration of the body. It is permitted only in certain cases. It must have been problematic to find a Jewish corpse, the only possibility were the secular and the poor.] I tried to convince Chara and Tyusha to switch to the Faculty of Biology. We were passing a long corridor, when I saw Domnul Votez, the chairman of my commission in the gymnasium, walking toward us. He remembered me and started telling me to go to the university. He even spoke for me there and I was awarded a 1500 Lei state stipend. So I became a student. Chara and the others could afford to pay for their education. 

This was the brightest year of my life. Chara and I rented an apartment. Once a month our mothers sent us a parcel with sales agents: Madam Shapiro bought food products and my mother took over sending us parcels. There was also a cheap canteen in the university, where students worked as cooks, which made the meals rather inexpensive. In Iasi we continued our underground Komsomol activities, distributing flyers and Communist self-education. I even copied the history of the Communist party of Russia in Russian in my own handwriting and distributed it among my friends. I fell in love with the secretary of the district underground Komsomol committee, Velvl Pressman, whose underground nickname was Volk [Wolf, in Russian]. We spent all our free time together.

During the war

On 26th June 1940 we were walking together and Velvl went to a secret address for a few minutes. He wasn’t like himself, when he came out of there. He said the USSR had declared an ultimatum to Romania and is preparing to come to Bessarabia. I decided to go back home immediately. Chara and other friends were already in Kishinev. The following day my loved one saw me off to the station and we said our good byes. It didn’t even occur to me that I should have stayed with him. I was eager to go back to Kishinev to greet the Soviet Army. The train made many stops on the way. Then the train stopped at some station and passengers had to get off and walk about 20 kilometers to Kishinev.

On 28th June, when I reached home, the Soviet Army came to Kishinev and the Soviet power was established peacefully. On the 29th I went to the Komsomol Central Committee, introduced myself and told them about our underground activities. I adapted to the new Soviet way of life promptly: I got involved in the district committee, met and made friends with its secretary Alexei Fesenko and his wife Frida, a Jew. We were intoxicated with the expectation of changes. They followed, but they turned out to be different from what we had expected. Literally on the third day all the food products disappeared from the stores: they were sold out to the residents of Ukraine from Pridniestroviye [Transnistria], the nearest area along the Dniestr River, pouring into the wealthy Bessarabia [those people came from Soviet areas where stores were empty]. Then arrests began: they arrested everybody related to the Zionist movement, manufacturers and traders.

Things were absurd at times. They arrested Tsylia Blinder’s father, a ‘manufacturer’ who owned a little shoe shop. He, his wife, Tsylia and her brother were deported to Kyrgyzstan. Even the fact that Tsylia had been arrested previously for her underground activities didn’t help them. Tsylia returned to Kishinev after the war. She died in the early 1950s. Actually the new authorities treated us, underground activists, with suspicion. Chara got married that summer. She and her husband Mikhail Grossman went to work in a village.

My new Komsomol friends convinced me to go to study at the History Faculty of the Pedagogical College. I finished the first year. I was still to take a few exams, when Chara’s husband arrived at a medical conference. He invited me to the banquet dedicated to the closing of the conference. We had a great time in nice company. We had fun and laughed a lot. Mikhail took me home way after midnight. I slept a few hours and woke up from the roar of bombs: they were falling on Kishinev. This was the early morning of 22nd June 1941, the beginning of the war.

Girls from our course were sent to a medical nurse course. We were given white robes and we forgot about our summer exams. The college was preparing for evacuation and we were told to bring our luggage to the building. Once I went to my college after our class in surgery. I was missing it a lot. I met our teachers, who were going to Tiraspol, and went to the railway station with them. I went in a carriage with them, and we kept talking. It was some time later that I noticed that the train was moving. So it happened I came to Tiraspol, with no clothes, just with my bag with the robe in it with me. Mama didn’t know where I was. I went to the Tiraspol district Komsomol committee that sent me to Kishinev with a secretary. Mama laughed and cried, when she saw me. She had already buried me in her thoughts. This happened in late June.

It was quiet in the town until 10th July. We seemed to be able to escape the ordeal of the war. Our relatives and many friends had gradually evacuated. Only Tsypa was staying. Frida’s husband Alexei Fesenko, who had already evacuated his wife, talked to me about urgent evacuation. He didn’t tell me openly that they were going to blast the town that night, but he told me and Mama to come to the building of the cinema that night – this was Friday – from where we were to depart. Mama started again, ‘Let’s wash ourselves, nothing will happen till morning anyway!’ So we stayed.

Early in the morning I heard explosions – many buildings were blasted. Mama and I grabbed our documents and left the house. Mama only made me put on my coat that my uncle had sent from Belgium. She also had her coat on. This was all we had. On our way we came by aunt Tsypa, trying to convince her to join us. She refused, saying that I had to evacuate being a Komsomol member, while they were fed up with the Soviet power and were going to wait for the Romanians. My brother Kelman was in the army. His wife Dora and her child also stayed. She and my nephew Mikhail as well as Dora Fridman’s father perished in the Kishinev ghetto in 1941.

Mama and I went to the railway station. On the way a Red Army military truck picked us up and we drove to Tiraspol. We went to my college, where my friends also got together. Chara had already evacuated. She was in the sixth month of pregnancy. We boarded a train for cattle transportation. At stations we were provided some meals. After the Debaltsevo station in Ukraine I had kidney colic and had awful pains. Mama, Tyusha and I got off the train at the nearest stop. Haya and Nyusia also got off with us. I got some medical aid at the medical office at the station and the pain subsided.

The chief of the station helped us to get on a train to Kuibyshev where my college had evacuated. It was a passenger train and we seemed to get into paradise from hell. It took us five days to get to Kuibyshev. Mama stayed at the railway station and we went to our college. We were told that Kuibyshev was a military strategic town, closed for residents of the newly-annexed areas. We were sent to Kinel station, where we were given some food and sent to a kolkhoz 23 in Bashkiria [today Russia, about 3000 km from Kishinev]. The kolkhoz accommodated us in a spacious room. Mama stayed at home and Tyusha, Haya and I went to work at the threshing machine, feeding it sheaves.

August was ending and Tyusha, the smart girl, mentioned: ‘Girls, are we going to continue our studies?’ We switched to working at the elevator, where we were paid money and grain for work. Tyusha went to Birsk, the nearest town, where she found a college. Mama, I, Tyusha, Haya and Nyuma took a bag of grain each, and moved to Birsk up the Belaya River. And we got lucky again: we met Nathalia Agasina, the instructional pro-rector of the Kishinev College, in the corridor. She was happy to see us and invited us to stay with her for a few days. We were admitted to the college and accommodated in the dormitory. Mama was employed as a janitor. We washed ourselves and did our hair – life was going on. When the first semester was over, Agasina told us that the Kishinev Pedagogical College was being reorganized in Buguruslan [today Russia] and it invited its former students. In summer 1942 we arrived in Buguruslan. There were other students from Kishinev, Leningrad and other towns there.

My brother found me soon. He was demobilized from the army like many other Bessarabians, whom the Soviet military didn’t trust. Kelman arrived in the town of Kagan near Bukhara [today Uzbekistan] where my uncle Lazar and aunts Ita and Hava were staying. Kelman convinced me to have Mama join him there. He wrote he would support her. During the summer vacations I moved Mama there, but I still can’t forgive myself for having done this. My brother and uncle were away from Kagan on some business and Mama stayed with the aunts. Some time later my brother wrote to me that they had sent Mama to an elderly people’s home. In early 1944 Mama died. Shortly afterward my brother Kelman died from enteric fever. Before he died he wrote that Bessarabia would be liberated soon and then we would see each other again.

I have warm memories about my students’ years. Despite the hardships we were friends, and coped with whatever we had to go through, together. We rented an apartment and bought winter clothes. Somebody gave me a coat and I bought valenki [warm Russian felt boots] in Birsk. Tyusha found her father, who supported us with money. I knitted sweaters for officers’ wives and they paid me for the work. Tyusha read lectures. In the evening we got together, recited poems and sang Soviet and Jewish songs. There were 16 students from Bessarabia and we were friends. We celebrated the liberation of Odessa in 1943: there were students from Odessa at our course. In 1944 there was the first graduation and we even had a prom.

The Soviet army liberated Kishinev on 24th August 1944. In September we boarded a train and arrived in our hometown on 30th September. The town was quiet and ruined. There were other people living in our apartment. I had lost my mother and brother to the war. However, I was quite optimistic. I went to see Frida and Alexei Fesenko. They were happy to see me and invited me to stay with them. Alexei offered me a job. I went to work as a history teacher at the conservatory and music school.

After the war

I stayed with Frida for ten days. One day I opened the door and saw Nikolay Novosadyuk, my pre-war friend. He was tall, handsome, wore leather trousers – I liked him at once. After seeing each other a few times we realized we were in love. Nikolay was Ukrainian. I think he came from a rather common Ukrainian family. Nikolay finished an agricultural college and worked as a zoo technician [responsible for the implementation of new technical innovations in cattle breeding, health care, vaccination], in a kolkhoz before the Great Patriotic War. When the Great Patriotic War began, he evacuated the cattle and transferred it to the authorities in Rostov [today Russia]. He was wounded during a bombing and taken to hospital. After the hospital he was acknowledged to be unfit for military service. He moved to Georgia, where he worked as a zoo technician.

Nikolay said he wrote to the information center in Buguruslan looking for me, but funnily enough, they replied they had no information about me, though I was in town. Nikolay kept looking for me in Kishinev. His neighbor, an NKVD officer, found me. Nikolay introduced me to his mother. His mother Frania Petrovna, a common Ukrainian woman, gave me a warm welcome. Nikolay and I registered our marriage in November 1944, and that evening Frania Petrovna arranged a wedding party. My dowry was an aluminum spoon and a plate and a pair of fancy shoes that I had bought on my miserable savings in Buguruslan. Frida and Alexei gave me a pillow. Nikolay and his mother lived in two rooms in a private house. They kept hens, ducks, a vegetable garden, a dog, a cat, and finally I felt at home.

My husband worked in a kolkhoz about 50 kilometers from Kishinev and he left shortly after our wedding, while I stayed to live with my mother-in-law. I went to see Nikolay on the New Year. We spent a few wonderful days and nights together and I conceived our first baby. In 1945 our son Vladislav was born. After his birth, I started work as a history teacher in the higher party school 24 of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Moldovan Communist Party. The ideology secretary of the Central Committee of the Party, my good acquaintance, whom I met in Buguruslan, helped me to get this job. It’s amazing, though, that they employed a non-partisan Jewish woman. This job was a great support to us. In 1946-1947, during the famine, when my mother-in-law went to stand in lines at five o’clock in the morning to get bread for our bread cards 25, I brought home rationed Party food packages including red and black caviar, ham, etc., besides common food products.

At this party school I had a nice group of future Moldovan Soviet Party officials and writers, whom I taught the history of the CPSU in Moldovan. A year later the Moldovan department was closed. I worked the following two years in a Russian secondary school near our house and then switched to a Moldovan school, where I was deputy director for teaching work. In 1951 my second son Yuri was born. Nikolay was working in forestry in Western Ukraine. Some Bandera 26 partisans robbed the storage, but the court accused Nikolay. I hired an attorney for my husband, but he failed to have my husband discharged. He was sentenced to ten years in a high security camp. This happened in 1952. I had to take care of the two children and my mother-in-law. I found an additional job in a pedagogical school out of town and my mother-in-law rented out one room: we needed money.

However, trouble never comes alone. In 1954, after Stalin’s death – by the way my husband told me how happy the prisoners were about Stalin’s death after he was released – during summer vacations I was summoned to the public education department. Its head, Makarov, a Russian man, told me that though he knew me as a good employee they wanted to have the national staff working for them – that such was the requirement of the time – and offered me a job in an evening school. This was the second time that I faced state-level anti-Semitism in my life, but the first time it happened in the Fascist Romania, while this second time it occurred in the country claiming that it followed the Communist principles of equality. I refused, telling him that I had been sent to strengthen the Moldovan school as a national employee.

I was furious. I went to see Chara, who lived nearby, and instantaneously wrote a letter addressed to Beriya 27 in Moscow. I addressed him as an ideologist in national issues, requesting him to review my case. I sent this letter to my cousin, requesting her to take it to the Ministry of Home Affairs. A few days later I heard about Beriya’s arrest and was horrified that now they would arrest me. A few weeks later I received letters from Moscow and from Kishinev. They stated that the officials had no right to fire me. When I returned to work after the summer vacations the director of my school apologized. I worked at this school till I retired. Now I am chairman of the council of veterans.

Nikolay was released following an amnesty. [Prisoners were granted freedom before term for appropriate work performance, proper conduct, at the discretion of their chief wardens, upon review of their relatives’ requests or for other reasons]. He was kept in the camp near Kotlas, where he was chief of the cultural department. He was treated fairly well. In 1955 I went to see my husband. When I arrived there, the prisoners had made a little hut by the gate of the camp for us to stay there, while I was visiting. It was a surprise for me.

In 1956 Nikolay was released. He started work at an artificial leather factory, where he worked until his last day. Nikolay earned well and we were doing all right. We had no car or dacha, though, but in summer we often went to the seashore with the children or rented a dacha 28. Nikolay was fond of hunting. He often went hunting with his friends and brought home trophies. We had many friends – they were mainly those whom we had known since our young years. We celebrated Soviet holidays together and went to parades. In the evening we went to theaters and followed whatever new publications were available. We were living a full life.

My sons Vladislav and Yuri chose their father’s nationality. [In the USSR the ethnic identity was indicated in citizens’ passports. The situation in the Soviet Union was such that Jews had problems with entering higher educational institutions, finding jobs, traveling to foreign countries 29. It was a natural decision if they wanted to enter colleges. However, they identify themselves as Jews.

Vladislav has written poems and articles since his childhood. He decided to dedicate himself to journalism. When he was in the army, he had publications in the army newspaper. Vladislav graduated from the Spanish department of the Faculty of Foreign languages of Moscow University [M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, the best University in the Soviet Union, also well known abroad for its high level of education and research]. He has worked as a journalist in newspapers and magazines and now he works for the television. Vladislav lives in a civil marriage with Margarita Zvit, a popular TV presenter. She is a Crimean Jew. He has no children of his own. He is raising his wife’s daughter from her first marriage.

Yuri finished the Viticulture Faculty of the Agricultural College in Kishinev. After finishing it, he finished a postgraduate course and defended a candidateship dissertation 30. Yuri’s wife is Ukrainian. Their daughter Liya, named after my mother, finished the Faculty of Italian in Leningrad. She works as a tour guide and interpreter in Rome. I’ve visited Romania and met with my first love – Velvl Pressman. His wife and I became friends. We often call and write each other.

We’ve always taken a great interest in Israel. Firstly, my husband and I never failed to understand that Jews needed a state of their own and secondly, because gradually our friends happened to have moved there. Emigration had never been an issue for us: Nikolay loved Bessarabia, his own country. My husband died in 1992. It was a terrible loss for me. I couldn’t adjust to the thought that he is no longer here. Yuri took my documents to Moscow to arrange a trip to Israel for me. I went to visit my dear friend Chara. I’ve been to Israel five times, visiting my friends and relatives. I love Israel, but Moldova is my homeland. I also loved the huge Soviet Union. I felt at home in Moscow and in Leningrad. However, now I know that the independence of Moldova is a fact of life and it can’t be ignored. If my children feel all right, I do, too. Yuri works for an American company where he earns well. Vladislav also has a good job. My sons care for me well.

I didn’t observe Jewish traditions after the war. Nowadays many of my compatriots and I are rediscovering our Jewish roots. I am a client and a volunteer for Hesed 31, I often read lectures in the daytime center. I took much interest in the history of my kin and I’ve spent a great deal of time in the archives, looking for information about my relatives. I’ve written a few articles about my ancestors for Jewish newspapers and digests, but my biggest pride is that I’ve immortalized the name of Princess Dadiani. When the school where I’d worked was turned to a lyceum, I insisted that they gave it the name of Princess Dadiani. The school headmistress, my former student, and I went to the monument of Princess Dadiani in the cemetery. I told her much about the Princess and we managed to get the lyceum named after her. By the way, the then President of independent Moldova, Petru Lucinski, attended the opening ceremony of the Princess Dadiani Lyceum.

Glossary:

Bella Chanina
Kishinev
Moldova
Interviewer: Nathalia Fomina
Date of interview: March 2004

Bella Semyonovna Chanina is a short plump woman with a sweet round face, thick silver-gray hair that she wears in a knot. Bella Semyonovna wears trousers and loose shirts, which make her look young. She has a pleasant deep voice that becomes commanding at times. She is very fond of the public work she does. Bella Semyonovna is the mistress of ‘the Warm House.’ One can tell that she was a lively and vigorous character in her youth. Bella Semyonovna buried her husband a few months ago. She hasn’t recovered from the loss yet, and when she tells me about her life, tears often fill her eyes. Bella Semyonovna lives in a cozy two-bedroom apartment. It is furnished with 1970s furniture: a living room set, a low table and chairs. She serves me tea and a cake that she has made herself. 

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

My maternal grandfather, Yoil Rosenthal, was born in the 1860s and lived in Telenesti [According to the census of 1897 this shtetl had 4379 residents, 3876 were Jews], in Bessarabia 1. My grandfather had two brothers: Lazar who lived his life in Odessa [today Ukraine] and we didn’t know him, and Srul, a handsome old man with a big white beard. I knew Srul Rosenthal, he was the father of my mother’s cousin brother Zalman, my mother’s big friend. Srul had two sons: Mordko and Yakov. Mordko and his family were killed in Kalarash during the war [Great Patriotic War] 2, and Yakov disappeared at the front. Srul died in evacuation. I didn’t know grandfather Yoil; he died in 1891. We had a big photographic portrait of my grandfather on the wall: in a white shirt, a small narrow tie in the fashion of the time. He looked like an intelligent man. I don’t remember a beard, but if he had one, it was small. I can’t tell what he did for a living. When we evacuated, we left the portrait on the wall and this was his only photograph.

My grandmother Ester Rosenthal was born and grew up in Telenesti. I don’t know her maiden name, but I know that my great-grandmother’s name was Beila since I was named Bella after her. At the age of 28, Grandmother Ester became a widow with four children, the oldest of whom, Gedaliye, was eight years old and the youngest, Iosif, was just a year and a half. I remember my grandmother well. She was short, round-faced, always wearing modest dark clothes and a kerchief. She lived with us before the war and sometimes went to stay with her younger son in Soroki. My grandmother wasn’t fanatically religious, but observed all the Jewish traditions. She lit candles on Sabbath and when she was with us, before Pesach she had all our utensils and crockery koshered. And I also remember – they don’t do it now – that my grandmother placed all tableware – knives and forks, into the ground in flower pots. She probably koshered them in this manner.

My grandmother Ester believed that the sons had to study, while the daughter had to help her about the house. My mother’s older brother Gedaliye graduated from the university in Odessa. He was a mathematician before the war and worked as a director of the Jewish school in Tarutino in Bessarabia. Uncle Gedaliye was a dandy, he liked nice clothes. When he visited Kishinev, he had suits made for him here. My mother always went to fitting sessions with him; I remember he didn’t leave her alone till she gave up what she was doing to go to a tailor with him. Uncle Gedaliye and his wife Sophia had an only son, Yuliy, born in 1926.

During the war they lived in Aktyubinsk in Kazakhstan, where Yuliy studied in a railroad school. In the last months of the war Yuliy volunteered to the front without saying a word to his parents. He was at the front till the end of the war and then served until the end of the term of his service. After demobilization Yuliy finished a law school and entered the Law Faculty of Lvov University. Uncle Gedaliye died in Lvov approximately in the 1960s. His wife Sophia died at the age of 92-93, many years later. I often visited Yuliy, who lives with his family in Lvov, and we went to my uncle’s grave at the Jewish cemetery.  

The next child in the family after my mother was Mordko, who lived in Moscow. I always knew him as Max, maybe he changed his name because the previous one was too Jewish. He had a higher technical education, but I don’t know where he studied. During the Russian Revolution of 1917 3 Uncle Max lived in Tbilisi and then moved to Moscow. My mother corresponded with her brother, but he rarely wrote to her. Max worked in the Ministry of Heavy Industry, where he was chief of the planning department. During the war the Ministry stayed in Moscow and so did Uncle Max and his family. His son’s name was also Yuliy – it was a tradition in my mother’s family to call older sons by the name of Yuliy after grandfather Yoil. Uncle Max died in 1969. Yuliy died in the 1980s, and his wife Nyusia lives with the family of their daughter Bella in Jerusalem. I’m not in contact with them.

My mother’s younger brother Iosif lived in Soroki [Soroca in Moldovan] before the war and after the war he moved to Kishinev [Chisinau in Moldovan]. Uncle Iosif didn’t have a higher education. He had different jobs and in his last years he was an insurance agent. His older son Yuliy studied in the Agricultural College. In his childhood he fell seriously ill and had heart problems. Yuliy died at the age of 20, before graduation from the college. Uncle Iosif died in the 1970s, he was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Kishinev. Two younger children of Iosif, Max and Ida, and their families, moved to the USA in the early 1990s. They live in Boston.

My mother Sarah Rosenthal was born in 1887. When she was four, my grandfather died. My grandmother Ester raised her to be a future Jewish wife. My mother learned to cook and sew and knew Jewish traditions well. However, my mother was eager to study. She had a strong character and ran away from Telenesti at the age of 16. She went to study in the Jewish grammar school. After finishing it she got a certificate of a teacher. My mother moved to Tiflis, that’s what Tbilisi was called at the time, to her brothers Max and Gedaliye. I don’t remember under what circumstances they had left there. She worked as a teacher.

When she was in Tbilisi this was the period of genocide against the Armenian population in Turkey in 1915-1916. [In 1915 the Turkish government issued an order for the forced deportation of Armenians from Eastern Anatolia. About 3 mln people were subject to deportation. Only one third of them survived]. My mother told me that in Tbilisi a committee was organized to provide assistance to Armenians and she worked in this committee. She said when Armenians came to talk to her, they complained, ‘You are a Georgian and you provide more help to Georgians,’ and vice versa, when Georgians talked to her, they said, ‘You help Armenians more than Georgians.’ They never guessed that she was neither Georgian nor Armenian, but a Jew. My mother helped Georgians and Armenians equally.

In 1917 my grandmother fell ill in Telenesti. My brothers decided that one of them had to go there and of course, it was to be my mother. She went to her mother and stayed in Bessarabia. This was at the time when Bessarabia was annexed to Romania in 1918 4 and the border was closed. My mother moved to Kishinev and was a teacher of Hebrew in a lyceum for boys. 

My father’s father, Moisey Fichgendler, lived in Yampol Vinnitsa region [today Ukraine]. [Yampol was a district town of the Podolsk province. According to the census in 1897 there were 6,600 residents including 2,800 Jews.] I can’t tell what he was doing there, but some time in the 1900s the family moved to Soroki in Bessarabia, since my grandfather couldn’t find a job in his town. I remember my grandfather Moisey. When I was born, he and Grandmother lived in Kishinev. My grandfather was a very modest quiet man with a gray beard. He always wore a yarmulka [kippah]. My grandmother was short, busy and sweet. She always wore dark clothes and covered her head. They lived in the lower town, the poorest part of Kishinev. I remember dimly their small apartment, very modest, two small rooms, and the front door led directly to one of the rooms.

My grandmother and grandfather were religious, but I don’t remember them going to the Choral synagogue [the largest synagogue in Kishinev, where besides the cantor there was also a choir], where my parents went. They probably went to a smaller synagogue. My grandfather died in Kishinev in 1930. He was buried according to Jewish traditions, wrapped in a takhrikhim, and there were candles on the floor. I was seven years old, and remember his funeral well. After my grandfather died, my grandmother Rosa moved to her younger son Boris in Soroki. During the war Grandmother Rosa and Boris’ wife were taken to a ghetto somewhere in Ukraine. They were killed there in 1941 or 1942.

My father had three brothers. I don’t know the names of two of them. One of them moved to America in 1910 and the second one drowned in the Dniestr at the age of about 20. My mother told me about it. I only knew my father’s younger brother Boris. After the war he lived in Beltsy. Boris was a worker at a plant. He remarried after his wife’s death in the ghetto. I met his second wife, with whom he lived after the war. They had no children. They visited us occasionally. They’ve both passed away.

My father Semyon Fichgendler was born in Yampol in 1888. When he was ten or twelve, his family moved to Soroki. I don’t know where my father studied, but he knew Russian and Yiddish well. He probably finished an agricultural school. He was an agronomist, a vine grower. I don’t know exactly, when he moved to Kishinev, but in the 1910s he was working in a Jewish children’s home in Bayukany, a district in Kishinev. Boys were kept in the children’s home till they reached the age of 14. My father was an agronomist, teaching the boys gardening. He lived in a small room in this home. After my father died, one of his pupils wrote to me, telling me how my father accommodated him in his room in 1912, when the boy had to leave the children’s home. He shared food with him and took him to work in surrounding villages and helped him to stand on his own feet in life.

My father was known for his qualifications beyond Bessarabia. Landowners offered him to work for them. My father told me that he got to know by chance what one of them wrote in a letter of recommendation for my father: ‘You know how much I dislike Jews, but I do recommend you to employ Fichgendler, he is a wonderful specialist.’ I know that my father was having problems with obtaining the Romanian citizenship since he wasn’t born in Bessarabia. We had a document that I gave to the museum, a special verdict of the court about granting the Romanian citizenship to my father.

My parents met in Kishinev, but I don’t know any details. We never discussed this subject. When my mother was his fiancée, my father bought her a French enamel brooch. It has been miraculously preserved till now. I don’t know, maybe my mother had it on her clothing, when they evacuated. Now this brooch is a rarity, but I don’t dare to sell it, though I need money very much. My parents got married in 1922.

Growing up

I was born in the Jewish hospital in Kishinev in 1923, and was registered in the rabbinate book. When after the war I needed to obtain a birth certificate since the original was lost, they found the roster of 1923 at the synagogue and found an entry about my birth there. Following the family tradition, my mother wanted to name me Yulia after her father, but the others talked her out of it: ‘What if you have a boy one day.’

When I was small we often changed apartments. Probably, my parents were looking for a cheaper one. I know the addresses, but the last apartment before the war was on 8, Teatralnaya Street, two blocks from the central street. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor: one bigger room – a dining room, and a smaller room – my parents’ bedroom. I slept on a couch in the dining room behind a screen. There was a bookcase with books in the dining room. We didn’t have fiction, but my father had a big collection of books on vine growing, mainly in Russian. During the war this collection was gone. Later I often found his books – they had his facsimiles – in the house of agronomists in Kishinev, but I don’t know who brought them there. There was also a big desk in the dining room, but I did my homework in my parents’ bedroom, where they had a small table. There was also a small hallway and a kitchen in the apartment. My mother cooked on a primus stove.

Our family was rather poor. I remember that my mother had one fancy dress of black silk, very plainly cut. I don’t remember my parents going to the theater, but they were often invited to charity parties arranged by the Jewish community. My mother wore her only fancy dress and pinned her brooch on it. If she lost weight she draped the dress on her side and pinned it with this same brooch. My mother was beautiful, had expressive black eyes and always looked nice in her outfit. Men couldn’t help liking my mother, but my mother was not soft. She was strict and imperious. My mother knew Russian literature well and read a lot in Russian. When guests came she liked to recite poems by Lermontov 5: ‘Tell me, the branch of Palestine, where you have grown. Where have you bloomed? What hills, what valley have you adorned?’

My father was soft and kind. He traveled to surrounding villages on business a lot. I remember that when he came home, he always had rakhat-lukum [Turkish delight] for me. I adored it. At times it was very hard from being stored for a long time, but my father just had to give me my favorite sweets and I have bright memories about it.

My father had an acquaintance who was an agronomist. His name was Fyodor Fyodorovich Pozhoga, he was Russian. He lived in the upper town in a cottage with a big yard where he grew flowers. On my birthday at dawn my father brought me bunches of flowers from there. When I got up in the morning I didn’t know to what corner to look first. There were flowers in vases on the floor and in vessels all over the room. I was born in June, when there are always many flowers.

I invited my friends from school to my birthday and my mother arranged a party for us. The hit of the parties was ice-cream. My mother borrowed an ice-cream maker. I remember a metal cylinder with another one inside and there was ice to be placed between them. Then it was necessary to turn the handle of the inner cylinder for a long time to make ice-cream. My mother made it in advance and put it on ice in the cellar in the yard. Once my dear Papa, who also had a sweet tooth like me, took a spoon going somewhere in the yard. Mama asked him where he was going and he said, ‘I’m going to taste the ice-cream.’

My mother cooked dishes of the Jewish cuisine: chicken broth with kneydlakh, sweet and sour meat and gefilte fish on holidays. My mother made noodles, cut and dried them. She was good at making pastries, but I haven’t any of her recipes left. My mother bought food at the market where she took me with her. The market in Kishinev was very picturesque. I particularly remember the rows with fish. The counters were plated with tin sheets. The vendors often wiped them and they shone in the sun and were very clean. We always bought lots of vegetables: tomatoes, red paprika and eggplants. My mother preserved tomatoes for winter. She had her own method to make preserves in bottles. My mother baked egg plants, put them under a press, tore them in pieces and placed them in a bottle. When the bottle was full she corked it, put the bottles in a big washing pan to sterilize them. She also made tomato preserves in bottles, adding aspirin to them. She also made gogoshari [a popular sort of sweet red paprika in Moldova]: she baked them, removed the thin transparent peel, placed them in a clay pot and added sunflower oil. She kept it in the cellar during the winter and the oil turned red and spicy and my mother used it in her cooking. We also ate lots of water melons. We usually bought a few dozens of them. The vendors delivered them to or home. My mother bought chickens and took them to a shochet to slaughter. My mother bought dairy products from certain vendors. Of course, we followed the kashrut at home.

My parents always celebrated Jewish holidays. I remember well that on holidays my father put on his black suit and went to the Choral synagogue, the biggest synagogue in Kishinev, with my mother. My father had a small tallit that he put on on holidays. Sometimes they took me with them. I sat on the balcony with my mother. The synagogue was very beautiful and there were many people in it. The rabbi of the Choral synagogue, Izhak Zirelson, was a public activist. He was a deputy to the Romanian Parliament. I saw him, but I don’t remember what he looked like. Zirelson perished in the first days of the war. They said, a bomb hit his apartment. I also remember that there was a very good cantor at the Choral synagogue.

On Pesach we visited Grandfather Moisey and Grandmother Rosa, my father’s parents. There was only our family there, no other visitors. My mother was the best connoisseur of Jewish traditions in the family. She conducted the seder. We reclined on cushions at the table. There were traditional dishes and wine on the table. Everybody had a wine glass and there was one for Elijah ha-nevi, the Prophet. My mother opened the door for him to come in. I am not sure, but I think it was I who asked di fir kashes [the four questions], there were no boys. My mother put away the afikoman, a piece of matzah, and I had to steal it unnoticed. 

On Rosh Hashanah my parents also went to the synagogue, and then we had a celebration. I remember apples and honey. On Yom Kippur we fasted and spent a whole day at the synagogue.

On Chanukkah I had a dreidl, beautiful, painted all over and big. I used to play with it for hours, sitting on the floor. My mother made doughnuts, sufganim. However, I don’t remember being given any money. I also remember how my mother lit another candle every day on Chanukkah. On Purim my mother made hamantashen, triangle little pies with delicious filling.

We didn’t have guests often. My parents were friends with the director of the children’s home, Kholonay. He was a doctor and his wife was a housewife. We often visited them. They had old dark wood furniture and very beautiful crockery at home. There were no children at their home. Perhaps, their children were away – Kholonay was much older than my father. We also kept in touch with our numerous relatives in Kishinev. The parents of Sophia, Uncle Gedaliye’s wife, lived on Kharlampievskaya Street. My mother often visited these old people. The parents of my uncle Iosif’s wife from Soroki also lived in Kishinev. But my mother’s closest relative was her cousin Zalman Rosenthal, the son of Srul Rosenthal, my grandfather Yoil’s brother.

Zalman was born in Telenesti in 1889. He was educated at home, gave private classes of Hebrew, worked in a pharmacy. Then he finished a grammar school in Odessa, as an external student. In 1923 he started to work as an editor with the daily Yiddish Zionist newspaper ‘Undzere Tsayt’ [Yiddish for ‘Our Time’] in Kishinev. Uncle Zalman was a Zionist. My mother and he often talked about politics and I often heard the name of Jabotinsky 6, it didn’t mean anything to me at the time. Zalman went to Palestine and bought a plot of land there. He wanted to move there, but his wife was against it. In March 1938 the Romanian government closed ‘Undzere Tsayt.’ In 1939 he went to work in the Zionist organization Keren Kayemet 7 in Kishinev as an instructor for collecting funds. When in 1940 Bessarabia was annexed to the USSR 8, he was arrested on the charges of Zionism and exiled farther than Arkhangelsk [today Russia] in the North.

I remember well the Kishinev of my childhood - lying out like a chess board: you could see the end of a street lined with trees, when you were standing at its beginning. The central Alexandrovskaya Street sort of divided the town into two parts: the wealthier upper part and the lower poorer town, closer to the Byk River. There were wealthy houses and apartments in the upper town: the rich Jews Kogan, Shor, Klinger lived there. There were many shops on Alexandrovkaya Street owned by Jews. I don’t remember whether they were open on Sabbath. I remember the jewelry and watch shop of the Jew Nemirovskiy. His two sons, young handsome men, worked in the store. When I turned 13, my parents said they didn’t have money to organize a party for me, but that we would buy me a watch. They bought me a wristwatch at the Nemirovskiy shop that served me many years. After the war Nemirovskiy’s older son worked as a watch repair-man in the Kishinev service center. He was excellently good and I took my watch to him for repair. He remembered me since I was a girl.

I went to a Romanian school at the age of six and then went to study in the lyceum for girls. When my grandmother lived with us, we spoke Yiddish at home and when my grandmother was not with us, we spoke Russian. Since my mother was a Hebrew teacher in the 1920s, she tried several times to teach me Hebrew, but I didn’t move farther than ‘Alef, beth’ [Hebrew Alphabet]. My mother was very strict about my studies at school. She even asked the teacher to be strict with me. I remember that I wasn’t happy about it. My mother taught me to recite poems and I performed at school concerts, but on the condition that she left the hall, or I got confused, feeling her strict look on me. We all wore black uniform robes of the same length. We lined up and the teacher measured the length with a ruler – they had to be 30 cm sharp from the floor. There were white collars and aprons, black nets to hold hair and a black velvet ribbon on the neck. There were Jewish, Moldovan and Russian girls in the lyceum. There was no anti-Semitism.

My closest friend Bertha Geiman was a Jew. I remember our class tutor reprimanding Bertha: ‘You and Fichgendler are friends. Why don’t you study as well as she does?’ A tragedy happened in Bertha’s family. Her older brother, a grammar school student, fell on the skating rink and hit his head. He must have had a concussion, but he didn’t pay attention to it. That same evening he went to a party where he felt ill and died. Bertha’s mother was grieving a lot after her 15-year-old son. She went to the cemetery almost every day. When the war began and there was the issue of evacuation, she said, ‘I shall not leave my son’s grave, I shall stay here.’ When I returned from the evacuation in 1944 I ran to Bertha’s house in the upper town. Their neighbors told me that Bertha and her mother were shot in 1941, at the beginning of occupation, during the mass action.

I was good at all subjects at school, but my favorite teacher was the teacher of Geography, whose surname was Mita. Mita is a ‘cat’ in Moldovan. She was a beautiful tall brunette. Somehow I remember the class where we studied the USSR. I was always interested in the USSR, since my mother’s brother Max lived in Moscow. She told us, ‘Imagine moving into a new apartment. Of course, your apartment is a mess, but gradually everything gets in order: furniture pieces, things and carpets. Of course, there was no order in the USSR after the revolution, but gradually things will be getting in order and it will be all right.’ She talked about it almost sympathetically.

There was a tradition in Kishinev grammar schools. 100 days before finishing school a class from the girls school made arrangements to celebrate this with a class from a grammar school for boys at somebody’s apartment. We called it a ‘100-day party’. In 1940 our class celebrated this ‘100-day party’ with students of the commercial school for boys on Mogilyovskaya Street. We danced, sang and got photographed. I don’t have a photograph of this party. After the war I met some people who attended this party in the streets of Kishinev. After finishing the lyceum I wanted to continue my education. Jews usually went to get higher education abroad: in France, Germany, Italy. There was only the Religious Faculty of Iasi University and Agricultural College in Kishinev, but my parents didn’t have money to send me abroad. What were we to do? There was no answer to this question. 

At that time Bessarabia was annexed to the USSR. I remember well this summer day [June 28th 1940]. We lived almost in the center. I plated red ribbons in my hair and went to Alexandrovskaya Street in the afternoon. The town was empty. I returned home. Later that afternoon I went out again. Somebody was making a speech from the balcony of the town hall, but I don’t remember what he said. There were few people and it was quiet. Later there came rumors that wealthier people were deported. Once, somebody knocked on our door at dawn. I opened the door and saw a young man wearing a summer shirt. He said the name of our neighbors. I showed him the door and ran to the window in the kitchen. It was high and I stood on the table to see what was going on in the yard. There was a truck and our neighbors were loading their things on it. They had everything well packed. Then they boarded the truck with NKVD 9 officers. They returned a few years after the war.

This summer I entered the Faculty of vine growing and wine making of the Agricultural College in Kishinev. My father wanted me to become a doctor, but there was no Medical College in Kishinev, and to send me, their only and beloved daughter to Uncle Max in Moscow was too much for them. There were Russian and Romanian groups in college. I went to the Romanian group. I became a Komsomol 10 member in the college. I knew a lot about my future profession from my father and I liked studying. I finished the first year.

During the war

In summer 1941 Germany attacked the USSR. We knew that Germans were killing Jews and many Jews were leaving Kishinev. Only those who had illusions regarding Germans and Romanians were staying. The sovkhoz 11 where my father was working provided horse-drawn wagons to Jews. My father was told we were expected in a sovkhoz in Kakhovka district, Kherson region [today Ukraine]. My mother, my father, Grandmother Ester and I left in the direction of Dubossary. We left the key to our apartment on the shelf by the door, as usual. We didn’t think we would be gone for long. We reached the town of Kriulyany on the Dniestr. The bridge across the river was destroyed and the army troops were making a bridge of boats before nighttime. There were many people and equipment on the bank. The army troops were the first to pass. At dawn the bridge was removed for the day. Our turn was on the third night. We reached the eastern bank in complete darkness. We didn’t know where to go and turned left. All of a sudden a silhouette of a soldier emerged before us. I can still see it: a short thin soldier with a rifle, its bayonet sticking over his head: ‘Where are you going, there are Germans there!’ He made us turn around. Wouldn’t one believe in miracles after this? If he hadn’t turned us around, we would have gone directly to the Germans.

We moved to the East for two weeks. We stopped to take a rest in the town of Voznesensk. My parents had a discussion and decided that my father would go to the sovkhoz in Kherson region, and my mother, grandmother and I would go to Uncle Max in Moscow. My father left on the sovkhoz wagon. My mother wasn’t feeling well and needed some medications. The owners of the house, where we were staying, told me the way to the pharmacy in the main street. Round the corner there was a steep descent to a bridge across the Bug River. I looked at the bridge, bought the medication and went back. On the next day the front advanced so much that we had to take a prompt leave. The owners of the house were evacuating with their office and couldn’t take us with them. My mother ran about the town the whole day, trying to obtain a permit to board the ship with a hospital on it. She finally got one, but the chief of the hospital said, ‘I can take you and your daughter and you will work for us, but I cannot take the old lady – we shall need this place for a patient.’ My mother refused to go – we couldn’t really leave my grandmother.

An evening and then night fell. Demolition bombs began to be dropped on Voznesensk. We left the house and were walking along the central street without knowing where to. There was a truck with some soldiers moving in the opposite direction to where we were going. The driver asked us from the cabin: ‘Where is a bridge?’ How fortunate that I knew where the bridge was! ‘Take us with you and I will show you the way!’ They pulled Grandmother in by her hands and my mother and I got in. Near the pharmacy I pointed to the right. We crossed the bridge and drove up the steep bank, when we heard an explosion. We turned back and saw the bridge burning. At dawn we had to get off – they couldn’t allow us to stay in the truck – they had ammunition in it. I remember that the soldiers offered us bread and something else, but we refused and didn’t take anything. We were too shocked by everything. We got to Novaya Odessa [Nikolaev Region] walking on the dusty road in the unbearable heat. I was exhausted and remember lying down by a clay fence. Military trucks were driving by, we were trying to stop one, but they didn’t stop until finally somebody picked us up. They drove us to Melitopol, where we met a middle-aged Jewish man. When he heard we were from Kishinev he took us to his house. He turned out to be the director of the town bookstore. He had a comfortable apartment and his wife treated us to a meal.  

We decided to go to Rostov [today Russia], where our good acquaintance Fyodor Nikitich Tifanyuk, director of the Champagne factory, had evacuated with his enterprise. We got to Donetsk in a train with other refugees and from there we went to Rostov. Fyodor Nikitich helped us to get a job in the Reconstructor vine growing sovkhoz in Aksaysk district near Rostov. They gave us a little clean room, my mother and I went to gather crops of grapes and my grandmother stayed at home. It was the beginning of September. One day, when my mother and I came to lunch, we were told that somebody from the factory in Rostov called us and told us to go there immediately. We went to Rostov with Grandmother. How happy we were, when Fyodor Nikitich gave us a card from my father! My father wrote to him that he was in the village of Grigoropolisskaya in Alexandrovsk district, Stavropol region, and that he had lost his family. Fyodor Nikitich gave us money for the road and we went to Papa.

Papa had lost hope to see us and was so depressed when he came to the village that he didn’t tell them that he was an agronomist and was handling sacks on the threshing floor. Later he got a job as an agronomist and earned more money, so we managed to save a little. We needed winter clothes. Winter was coming and we had lost all our clothes that we took from Kishinev. One morning my mother left for Armavir, located on the other end of Kuban. My mother went to the market there and in the evening she returned with her purchases. She bought a dark blue coat with a rabbit collar, a big size soldier’s gray overcoat and some other clothing. We made the overcoat shorter and I wore it for many years after we returned to Kishinev from evacuation. From the remaining cloth I made a sleeveless vest and knitted sleeves to it.

When they heard in the village that I had studied at the Agricultural College for a year, they offered me a job as an agronomist in a neighboring village. I agreed. The chairman of the kolkhoz drove me to the field. He explained, ‘These are winter crops, this is a stubble field.’ I had no idea what this was all about. To cut a long story short: I returned to my parents and stayed there quietly. In Grigoropolisskaya I took three months’ training for combine operators at the Mechanic School, and after finishing it I began to work in the equipment yard. It was a cold winter. Huge sheds with tractors and combines. There were hardly any tools, but grips and files sticking to hands from the cold. I wrote a letter to the Ministry of Higher Education asking them where our college was evacuated. It was just incidental that the director of our college, Nikolay Vasilievich Nechaev, was chief of the department of agricultural college at the ministry at that time. I received their prompt response that my college had evacuated to Frunze [today Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan] and that if I wanted to continue my studies there, they would send me money for the ticket. They sent us money for the whole family. This was July 1942. The front line was approaching our village and German troops were on our tails when we reached Mineralnyye Vody and then Baku [today Azerbaijan]. From Baku we went to Krasnovodsk [today Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan] across the Caspian Sea and from there we took a train to Frunze.

In Frunze we rented a corner in a room from one family. My father worked as an agronomist in the trade department. I was in my second year of college and my mother didn’t work. Uncle Max came by to take Grandmother to Moscow with him. In Frunze we received bread per bread cards 12. My mother had a card of a dependent and I had a student’s card. My father supported us: he went on business trips to sovkhozes that had bakeries. My father used to bring us bread. I remember it – flat gray loves of bread. Once my mother bumped into Uncle Zalman Rosenthal’s father-in-law, sitting on a bench in a park. It turned out that Zalman’s wife Betia, their daughters Tsyta and Musia were also in Frunze. Betia told my mother that Zalman was still in the camp. The girls studied music and often came to where we lived on their way from music classes. My mother always gave them at least a piece of bread. Of course, we didn’t observe Jewish traditions when in Frunze. We were starving and following the kashrut was out of the question.

On vacations students were sent to the construction of the Chuiskiy channel [one of the irrigational channels in Kyrgyzstan]. There was a lack of drinking water and we licked the water dripping between the slabs of the walls of the channel. As a result, many students fell ill with enteric fever. I also contracted it. I was taken to Frunze, where my mother brought me to recovery. I was young and wanted something nice to wear. I made a dress from bandage strips sewing one to another. Then I colored it with ink. I also made summer shoes. We bought rubber pieces at the market and I made soles and sewed some canvas on them. However, I couldn’t do anything of this kind now – I wouldn’t remember how. In fall there was a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the college. ‘What do I wear?’ I thought. My mother removed a silk lining from her coat that she had from Kishinev and made me a dress. She decorated it with lace from a night slip and a lace collar. I felt like a queen in this dress!

Soviet troops liberated Kishinev on 24th August 1944. I returned to my hometown with my college before my parents came there. We were accommodated in a hostel and first thing in the morning I ran to our yard. Our apartment was half-ruined, there was no furniture left. I climbed the ruins, imagined the dining room and the bedroom. Where there was a cupboard I found broken pieces of our dinner set, with purple flowers. I found my baby bathtub with a missing bottom and an old kettle. My mother and father returned a few months later, receiving a letter of invitation from Fyodor Nikitich Tikhanyuk. Papa went to work at his Champagne factory. We stayed in the ruins of our house, gradually fixing the roof and building up the walls. The town authorities reimbursed our expenses for the restoration of our house in part. For a long time there were no comforts [toilet and bathroom] in this apartment. Only many years later water piping was installed to supply water.

After the war

In the late 1940s Grandmother returned to Kishinev from Moscow. She was missing Moldova. She died in 1950. We buried my grandmother at the Jewish cemetery, and, as required, she was wrapped in a takhrikhim. My mother didn’t allow me to go to the cemetery: those whose parents are living should not go to the cemetery. I remember my mother grieving: ‘How far away we buried Granny. Oyfn barg’ [‘To grief’ in Yiddish]. There was a flat area and then a slope in the cemetery. Nowadays my Granny’s grave is by the entrance to the cemetery, since the former area of the cemetery was given to a park in the 1960s.

Our classes in college began in the winter of 1944. In spring we went to have training in the college yard in Bykovets station of Kalarash district. On 9th May we, girls, worked in the vineyard and the guys were in the field, when border guards came by riding their horses: ‘Girls, the war is over!’ Of course, we dropped what we were doing and went to the hostel in the village. On our way there, we picked bunches of field flowers that we took to our room! When the guys returned to the hostel after work and saw this beauty they couldn’t understand for a long time what happened, till we told them that the war was over. I remember an employee of this yard brought us a bucket of wine to celebrate the victory.

After finishing the college I received a diploma of a vine grower and wine maker. The dean of our faculty, a renowned wine maker in Moldova, Ivan Isidorovich Cherep, offered me to be a lab assistant at the department. It didn’t seem interesting to me and I still regret it. I went to work in the Winemaking Industry Department. In 1950 there were incredible crops of grapes. It was really disastrous, there were not enough boxes, fuel for transportation, barrels and big containers for wine. All department employees were sent to sovkhozes to help them resolve problems. I was in Kamenka. Once I went to the chief of our department in Kishinev and said to him that I wouldn’t leave till he gives a direction for me to get fuel. All of a sudden, a tall swarthy man with an aquiline nose stepped into the office from the balcony. He was wearing a tight-neck jacket and high boots, imitating Stalin’s style like many bosses did at the time. He must have heard our discussion. ‘Give her as much as she needs’ – he directed.

It turned out later that this was the chief of the Department of Wine Industry from Moscow, Azarashvili, a Georgian man. During that visit of his he made tours to all wineries, including my father’s. He liked what my father was doing and they became friends and Azarashvili visited us at home. He suggested that I should go to postgraduate studies in the Agricultural Academy in Moscow. I found this idea attractive and submitted my documents to the institution, but they refused without any explanation, but in those years it was clear that the reason was my nationality. This was when the campaign against cosmopolitans 13 began. I remember the much ado about the ‘Doctors’ Plot’ 14. It didn’t touch upon me directly, but I remember meetings at work with ridiculous accusations against Jewish doctors. Everything ended with Stalin’s death [1953]. So many people around were crying, but I kept silent. I didn’t go hysterical. In my heart I was hoping for changes.

After Stalin died uncle Zalman returned from a labor camp 15 in 1954. He had been kept there for 14 years and returned a broken ill man. He wasn’t released, but sent to reside in Kishinev, which meant that he had to make his appearance in the KGB office 16 in Kishinev every week. His wife and daughters finally saw him. Zalman went to work at the Aurika garment factory in the suburb of Kishinev. The former editor began to stamp tags for garment products. At one o’clock on Sunday he came for lunch with us. I remember that he sat beside Mama. One Sunday he didn’t come. This was unusual to us. What happened? We went to see him. He was staying in bed. He had had a stroke. Two days later he died. This happened in 1959. Zalman Rosenthal has never been rehabilitated 17. His older daughter Tsyta lives in Germany now, in Aachen, his younger daughter Musia lives in Jerusalem, Israel.  

I met my future husband Grigoriy Chanin at work. Shortly afterwards he invited me to the cinema. I took a colleague of mine there. We began to meet. He courted me for over a year. I introduced him to my parents. His parents had died before that. His mother, Sophia Chanina, died in 1946 from diabetes at the age of 56; his father, Wolf Chanin, who was a commercial man before the war, and a pensioner after the war, died in 1957. His sister, Nora Borenstein, was the first of his family whom he introduced me to. Nora and her family, her husband Izia and their son Slavik treated me like their own. Our friendship lasted for many years till they moved to New York, USA, in the early 1990s, where Nora died in the late 1990s. Izia danced wonderfully, and I loved dancing with him on our family gatherings. Grigoriy’s sister Rosa was an accountant. She died in the 1980s. Her daughter Rina and her family live in Israel. There were two brothers living in Kishinev: Rivik, who died in 1966, and Alexandr who moved to USA with his son’s family in the 1990s. He died there in 2003.

In 1958 Grigoriy and I got married. There were no big wedding parties in those years. Everything was quiet. We had a small wedding dinner with our relatives: his and mine. Grigoriy was five years older than me. He was born in Kishinev in 1918. When the war began, his parents, sisters and he evacuated. On the way he was mobilized to the Soviet Army. He took his first baptism of fire during the defense of Zaporozhiye. There was a power plant, the dam was blasted and the Dnieper flooded the town. Grigoriy couldn’t swim and many others couldn’t either. The water was neck deep and they were grabbing tree branches to survive. Grigoriy was wounded in battles for Zaporozhiye and sent to a hospital in Armavir. After recovery he participated in the Stalingrad battle, then he finished a school of intelligence studies and received the rank of lieutenant. Along with other Soviet officers who knew Romanian, Grigoriy was sent to the Romanian units formed in the USSR at the end of the war to fight against Fascist Germany. They were instructors to Romanian officers. He fought till the end of the war. When victory came, he was in Hungary. After the war he served in the registry office in Vadul lui-Voda district and demobilized from there. Grigoriy started work and entered the evening department of Kishinev Polytechnic College, the Faculty of Economics. When we got married, Grigoriy was finishing the college. I was helping him, went to exams to write notes for him. I also helped him to write his diploma thesis. Our room was full of sheets of paper all around, that were sections of his diploma thesis. He even placed them on the floor and to walk in the room I had to maneuver between them.

We lived with my parents. After my father retired, he received a plot of land out of town: one and a half rows of vines. He was growing grapes, tomatoes, cucumbers, anything one could imagine. My husband and I went to help him. Grigoriy made a kolyba [Moldovan] hut for Papa from some planks to serve as a sun shelter. There was another pensioner working on the adjoining plot of land, from the Caucasus, either a Chechen or an Ingush, a very strong old man. They became friends. The neighbor watched my father working and followed his example in everything. He admired him: ‘he is a magician.’ My father always had good crops of grapes, and he sold some. One year he bought me a golden watch for the money that he made selling grapes; I still wear it in the memory of my father. My father always liked spoiling me.

After the first heart attack in 1966, my father grew weak and suffered from this very much. Once I came home from work: he was lying down crying. ‘I can’t work and if I don’t work, I will rot.’ But he always had an amazing memory. My mother helped me about the house. She also did the cooking. She died in June 1971. My father asked me to have her grave not too far in the cemetery so that he could go there. Actually, he didn’t have much time left. He died in 1973. They were buried near one another at the Jewish cemetery, but not according to Jewish traditions. I didn’t observe the traditional Jewish mourning, when they sit on the floor for seven days. I just wore black clothes.

From the mid-1950s I began to work in the Republican Statistical Department. In 1963 I was appointed chief of the Department of Agricultural Statistics. Jews weren’t given such positions usually. Chief of Department Ivan Matveyevich Vershinin had to obtain the approval of the Central Department of Statistics in Moscow, and of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moldova. The Central Committee wouldn’t have approved a Jew for this position, and this was their policy. Ivan Matveyevich played a trick: he obtained approval from Moscow and they issued an order of my appointment for this position and then he notified the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Moldova of the fact. There were about 150 employees in the department, but one could count the Jews on the fingers of one hand. This was the result of state anti-Semitism. I worked in this position for 16 years till I retired. I had good records. We were a team in my department. We only had one man, Semyon Naumovich Litviak, a Jew, he worked with us till he retired. He was a very good employee. After him we didn’t employ men to our department. I thought they were not as good employees as women. The department of which I was chief was called a factory of chiefs of departments. Many of my former colleagues became chiefs of departments later. I let them quit willingly, but with a big regret.

I worked hard and often had to go on business to district towns. My husband and I tried to rest well on vacations. We went to health centers. We’ve been in Kislovodsk 18 a few times. Once, during our trip to Kislovodsk we traveled to Armavir, my husband wanted to find the hospital where he stayed during the war, but unfortunately, we failed to find the former employees of the hospital in Armavir. Like a drunkard loving to have a drink, I loved Kislovodsk. I liked walking the mountainous paths. There are specially developed routes in the mountains – a terrain course. Once, Artyom Markovich Lazarev, the former pro-rector of Kishinev University, my husband’s comrade, offered us a trip to a students’ camp on the Black Sea. We stayed in a tent at the seashore, bathed and lay in the sun, and my husband was fond of fishing. I made fish soup, but I made my best fish soup ever on the bank of the Dniestr.

Our department of statistics had a rest center on the bank of the Dniestr. Our employees and their families used to spend their weekends there. By the end of Friday our bus took all those who wanted to go there to this center. On Sunday evening this same bus brought us back. There were double rooms in the building there. In every room there were two beds, a table, chairs, a fridge and kitchen utensils – everything one might need for a good stay. There was a big kitchen with gas stoves. This was free for our employees and their families. One day in July, on the Fisherman’s Day [one of the professional holidays in the USSR], we decided to celebrate this holiday. Our men liked fishing and thought they were related to this profession. They went to a neighboring sovkhoz and brought a lot of fish from there. We decided to make fish soup for the celebration. There was a big metal container with boiled water in the kitchen. We poured this water into smaller pots. There was a little tap in the container that we removed and corked the hole. I was the chef. Our employee Masha Tatok made the rounds of the room collecting everything we needed for fish soup: greeneries, spices, laurel. A whole team of assistants scaled the fish. We took all tables to the yard to make one long table. We had fish soup for the first course and served boiled fish in garlic sauce – mujdeiin in Moldovan – for the second course. Children and adults stood in a long line waiting for their turn and I poured the fish soup into their bowls, but the funniest thing is that I didn’t even taste it. On Monday they discussed this fish soup in the corridors and in all offices for the whole day.

In 1975 my husband and I moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Ryshkanovka, a new district in Kishinev. It’s beautiful here: it’s very green and there is a big park near the house. We had many friends: my husband’s comrades and my colleagues. We often got together. We had friends of many nationalities. My husband’s comrade Petia Katan was Russian, his wife Anya was a Jew. Their daughter Luda lives in Canada now and their son lives here, in Kishinev. My friend Lilia Glushkova was Russian, we worked together since 1953. My mother used to say: ‘I like Lilia, she eats well.’ Lilia adored my mother’s little pies with cherries. Our friend Yasha Weinstein was a Jew, and his wife Mila was Russian. Mila was a doctor at the tuberculosis institute. We celebrated New Year with them. They moved to Germany in the 1990s. When Jews began to emigrate, my husband was thinking about it. It was my fault that we stayed, or I don’t know whether it was a fault at all. I was against moving away. I like this land. When my husband and I had discussions of this kind, I used to walk the streets of Kishinev gazing at each tree: can it be that I will never see it again? How can I leave the graves of my parents? I was born here and I have grown up here, and every little thing here is dear to me.

In 1979, when I turned 55, I began to receive a personal pension of the Republican significance. Considering my Item 5  19 line this was a great accomplishment. It wasn’t a lot more money, but it meant many benefits. For example, I paid 20 percent of the cost of medications for any medications and any quantity. I also paid 50 percent of communal utility fees for the apartment, power and telephone. Once a year I was allowed a free trip to any health center in the Soviet Union. Once I also received an allowance equal to my one and a half pension. Besides, I could have medical treatment in the republican polyclinic for governmental officials. As a pensioner I continued working in an ordinary job for a few years. My husband was very independent and proud and often changed jobs for this reason, though he was a very good economist, so he got a smaller pension than I had.

The life of pensioners became much worse after perestroika 20. Personal pensions were cancelled, and I lost all the benefits. We spent a bigger part of our pensions on our apartment fees and medications, as we were growing older and sickly. However, freedom was granted that didn’t exist before and we can talk about the rebirth of the Jewish life in Kishinev. At first we started a Jewish library and now it is our community center. There was a club of pensioners opened in the library and I became one of its first members in 1993. I also began to work as a volunteer in Yehuda, a charity organization in the Hesed. In 1997 I became mistress of the warm house. I am fond of this work. We celebrate all the Jewish holidays and I try to do everything in accordance with Jewish traditions. For example, on Pesach I put on the plate of each attendant four pieces of matzah, with a napkin between them, an egg, horseradish and potatoes, everything that traditions require. Young people from the Hillel, an organization for young people, visit us. Considering my age, it’s getting harder to manage my duties of the mistress of the warm house, but this activity supports me a lot. A few years ago I went to the synagogue on Sunday afternoon. There was a club conducted by Rabbi Zalman-Leib Abelskiy. The club is still there, but I can’t attend it due to my health condition. Hesed delivers a food package to me every month. A few months ago my husband died. It was his will to be buried at the Jewish part in the cemetery ‘Doina,’ but not according to the Jewish ritual - and so I did it.

Glossary:

Milka Samuel Ilieva
Ruse 
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Patricia Nikolova 
Date of interview: September 2004

Milka Samuel Ilieva is a cordial, sociable and calm person. Her restless spirit, however, was a witness to stormy and contradictory political and life turning events. Her sense of humor as well as her natural kindness have saved her many times from the despair that awaited her at every single step. So many nuances of the Jewish character and Jewish spirit are reflected in her life story, that it looks more like a screenplay than real life. That’s why her words are wise, precise and sincere. Her jokes keep hidden a lot of unarticulated grief and hidden bitterness. 

I’m a descendant of a Jewish family from the Sephardi 1 branch that came from Spain more than five centuries ago. As is well known, most of the Jews expelled by the Spanish Queen Isabella in the 15th century settled on the Balkan Peninsula 2. My ancestors had a similar fate. Unfortunately, I know almost nothing about my grandparents, because they died before I was born. And what’s more, I made the mistake of not asking my parents for details about them. However, I know that my parents, Ventura Samuel Mashiakh and Samuel Moshe Mashiakh, were born in Nis, Macedonia [Editor’s note: Nis is in today’s Serbia and Montenegro.]. They met in Nis and then the two families, Shamli and Mashiakh, decided to move together to Sofia. So it was in the Bulgarian capital that my parents got married, in 1910.

We were a merry big family of ten members. Eight of us were only the kids: five sisters and three brothers. Mois was the first, born in 1911, followed by Ester in 1913, then Albert in 1915, Nissim in 1917, Sara in 1920, Venezia in 1922, Jina in 1925 and lastly I was born in 1928. We lived poorly, I would say, but our life was very spiritual and amusing despite this. What’s for sure is that we never lacked a sense of humor.

My father was very religious, but we, the kids, didn’t manage to preserve this religious spirit. Our life made us atheists. Maybe this was because we lived in poverty and everyone in the family had to start working at a very early age. Our life was hard; we saw all the injustice around us and that provoked a strong social sense in us rather than a religious one. But at least when we were young we observed all the Jewish holidays with my father. He used to tell us a lot about them. We strictly observed the kashrut at home on Pesach, and on the eve of this great holiday, all of us used to help my mother with the big cleaning up. [Editor’s note: She probably means that they had a traditional kosher meal for Pesach and maybe other holidays too but didn’t observe the ritual rules for the rest of the year.] Nobody was allowed to bring bread home during Pesach. As a matter of fact, there were no religious books in Ivrit [Hebrew] at home. I have also no information on whether my father was a member of a Zionist organization, although he must have been a convinced Zionist. What’s more important, the Jewish rituals observed on high Jewish holidays made our family really united.

I’ll never forget how we used to celebrate Purim. There was a very nice song for Purim of whose origin I know nothing. The specific point about it was that every new stanza began with a letter in accordance with the order of the Hebrew alphabet. My sister Sara sang it marvelously. On Purim my father would always tell her, ‘Sarika, please, kerida… [‘dear’ in Ladino] and she would start singing. The feeling was remarkable. I remember visiting Sara in her kibbutz during my last journey to Israel in 1990. I cannot recall the name of her kibbutz. Her job was to patch up clothes on a machine and the people loved her. So we, the three sisters, went to see her. I remember she lived in a small neat room; she also had a toilet and office in her room. Well, I went to her and asked her, ‘Sister, please, sing the first stanza of our favorite Purim song.’ She was 80 then. When she started singing something happened to me. I rushed out of the room in tears; I just couldn’t stop crying. I remember we were a very warm, united, extraordinary family.

After my mother gave birth to me, she got paralyzed from rheumatism. She sat on a chair and was no longer able to stand up. Then they decided to ‘sell me’ to some rich relatives of my mother, her cousins. In those days it was routine for the poor and fertile Jewish families to give one of their children, usually the youngest one, to a relative childless family. In exchange, the well-off family offered financial support to the poor one. As far as I know they were trading with clothes. Since my mother was paralyzed, a woman had to come to wash and swaddle me. My brother Nisso [Nissim] helped her do that. He was eleven years old then. Once he came back from school and saw a car in front of the house. Let me mention that it was 1928. Automobiles weren’t a usual thing to see even in the capital. Right at this moment, they were preparing the baby’s napkins at home to give me to these people.

My brother entered and shouted, ‘Mother! What’s that car doing here?’ Are you going to separate us? Don’t give Milka away! I’ll fill my pockets with pebbles and I’ll break this car’s windows, mind you…’ And he started filling his pockets with pebbles. And it was exactly what my mother had waited for, ‘We will not give her, go away, that’s it!’ That’s how she abandoned her decision.

Another curious fact is that all the children from my family studied in Bulgarian schools. It was only me who studied in the Jewish school, because my parents had decided firmly to send me to Israel, where my father’s sister planned to adopt me. It was a normal thing in the Jewish families then; if some of the relatives are childless, the next of kin, who have many children, give one of theirs to them so that the childless family may bring it up as their own. I was the youngest and because of that, they decided to give me to my father’s sister. This never happened, though.

My maternal grandparents were Avram Shamli, and I don’t know my grandmother’s name. I know really nothing about them. Most probably, they were poor. My paternal grandparents, however, Moshe and Venezia Mashiakh were well off. I know that they set up a sugar processing plant when they emigrated to what was then Palestine in 1930. They produced chocolate sweets there. That’s all I know about them.

My mother was something like a martyr for me. She took great care of us, but we were eight children in the family. Although she was illiterate she always knew how to be kind to us, how to bring us up, what to feed us, so that we would be healthy. She was strict about cleanliness despite the poverty in which we lived. It was easy for an infection to spread, as we were many people in the family. She would take us to public baths at least two times every week, either to the one on Slivnitsa Boulevard in our district, or to the central public baths near the city’s central market hall. Wednesdays and Fridays, just before Sabbath, were the bath days. We had to wash our hands, legs, necks and faces every time we entered the house. My sister Sarika [Sara] often bathed us in a washtub in the yard on Wednesdays. My mother had her do this and she took it as a very important obligation. She used to rub us to death, as if we were as filthy as pigs. That raised bursts of laughter. 

I remember market days in Sofia very well. On the eve of Sabbath, on Fridays, I would always accompany my mother when she set off to the market. I’m speaking of Georgi Kirkov 3 market that’s still functioning in the [then] Sofia residential district Iuchbunar 4. [Today this market is called ‘zhenskia Pazar,’ meaning ‘woman’s market.’ It is the central open market of Sofia.] For me it was the greatest pleasure in the world. My mother liked shopping for long hours; she also loved bargaining with the sellers. Then I helped her bring the products home. All the sellers were my favorite. The mere abundance of vegetables, oranges, tangerines, and everything made me feel happy. 

As I’ve already mentioned I can’t recall anything about my father’s parents. I only know that when they moved from Nis to Sofia they built a huge house for my parents. So, the whole family – the eight kids, my parents, and my father’s parents, lived together in this house. Our house was situated in the poor Jewish district Iuchbunar near Bet Am 5 and the [Great] Synagogue 6. We lived on Odrin Street, while the Jewish school was nearby, at the corner of Osogovo and Bregalnitsa Streets. The yard of our house was also big. We didn’t breed animals but we had a bungalow there that we let out. My eldest brother lived there for some time when he got married, just before the Law for the Protection of the Nation 7 was introduced. Our house was really big, according to the criteria of the time. If we look at it now, it’s just a normal two-storey building.

There were three rooms on the ground floor, and a wooden staircase led to the upper floor where there were two rooms: a bigger and a smaller one. All the eight kids slept in the big one. The smaller one was for my parents. My parents slept in one bed, my brothers in two beds and we, the four sisters, had two mattresses, each of us had a special place one after the other according to our age. Directly on the floor. My place was at one of the ends of the mattresses, since I was born last. And because it was difficult for me to get sleep, I often crept into my parents’ room and I slept underneath their bed. Usually, everyone got up early in the morning, and began to look for me. Finally, they understood I liked sleeping underneath my parents’ bed. I must have been five or six years old then.

I remember that we used to read a lot at home. And we always sang when we went to bed, when we got up, when we felt bad, when we were happy – we always sang. We had arranged our own family choir; there were ten of us after all. We sang in two parts. The second part was of course for men, and we, the women sang the first part. I remember, for example, that my eldest brother was a tenor. My sister Sara was an incredible soprano and could have had a professional career in music, if she had had the opportunity. The others were altos. My parents also took part in our singing. So, without any exaggeration our choir sounded beautiful.

I remember that in our yard a big and picturesque willow grew. During summers, my family used to install a table below the tree and we had our meals there every day. And when we finished with the food, we cleared the table and started singing the most beautiful songs we knew. We sang in Ladino and in Bulgarian. We sang [Bulgarian] folk songs: ‘Kito, girl’ and the now so-called ‘old city songs’ which were in fact modern Bulgarian chansons, called ‘Bufoon’s song.’ We also sang traditional [Ladino] Jewish songs: ‘Adio kerida’ [Goodbye darling], ‘Ande stavne amor?’ [Where are you my love?], ‘Nigna sos de basha djente’ [Girl, you are of an inferior birth], ‘Ken me va tomar a mi?’ [Who is going to marry me?], etc. Of course, my mother knew many songs in Ladino. Mind you, my parents were from Nis, so they knew also many Macedonian songs. [Editors note: Nis is located in Serbia, not in Macedonia.] From Macedonian ones, my favourite was ‘Zapali se Shar Planina’ [The Shar Mountain Started Burning], especially when my mother sang it.

These days I have discovered a hidden, inherited talent in me. I need to hear a song only once to remember it. Every spring, when Pesach was nearing, my mother used to beat out all the carpets, brush and wash everything. She had the furniture taken out, leaving only a table and a chair in the house so that she may reach the ceiling more easily. And she herself painted it. From as young as I can remember, I used to stay around to help her. I carried a bucket of paint, dipped the brushes and then handed them to her. And she would sing all the time. I would remember all her songs. She used to sing as much in Ladino as in Macedonian dialect.

This talent of mine was, however, as much an advantage as it was a disadvantage. I remember Uncle Avram who liked playing tricks on the people around him. He earned his living by making flypapers. Uncle Avram knew that I remembered every song from the first hearing and once decided to play a trick on me. He called me to teach me, say, a very beautiful song. I was quite small and quite enthusiastic about all that. I was eight or nine years old then. He started singing a ribald song and I didn’t know what it was about, ‘Lies down Lola under the quilt, what to say I know not of.’ I came back home and still being at the door I started singing it, content that I had just learned it. My brother, who had never beaten me all my life, slapped me in the face immediately. I got scared and started crying, ‘What’s that for? Why are you beating me?’ And he said, ‘You shouldn’t sing everything you hear from Uncle Avram!’ And he was right. At the same time, my sister Vinka [Venezia] sang an old chanson, it was a popular tune of the time, ‘I live to lo-o-o-ve…’ - very popular it was. And so I started singing it at the top of my voice the following day, ‘I li-i-i-i-ve to lo-o-o-ove.’ It was ridiculous.

The songs I knew in Ivrit I’d learned in Hashomer Hatzair 8. We used to sing a lot there, too. There was a very nice song. It began with, ‘O, ani-i-i itayavti, itaya-avti-i-i…’ We were taught to sing polyphonic music so that it sounded really beautiful. We were divided into two groups. When the first group, consisting of boys, started singing alone the whole first stanza and in the moment when they began the second stanza with a slightly different melody, the second group joined, starting from the beginning and singing simultaneously with the first one. And it always turned out very nice. I remember us singing songs like: ‘Ine ma tov uma naim shevet achim gam yachad’ [literally from Ivrit: ‘how nice and cozy it is, brothers, staying together’], or: ‘Sham baerev…’ [From Ivrit: ‘There, in the evening…’], and so on. It was a wonderful time.  

It wasn’t by chance that I mentioned Hashomer Hatzair. When I was as young as seven, I was a member in this Jewish youth organization. I remember very clearly that as early as 1935 Hashomer Hatzair looked after the poor kids, among whom I was, too. We were all from the poor Jewish neighborhood of Iuchbunar. Our fathers were workmen. We studied at the Jewish school where we received free coats and shoes because of our poverty. We were supported economically there, while in Hashomer Hatzair the help was spiritual. And this was more important. They helped us grow up as personalities. This organization gave a meaning to my life. They not only recommended us what to read, I’m speaking of literature with very high artistic values, but also excellently entertained us with games stimulating the sense of unity in our community. Besides, the older boys and girls played the violin for us, so that we could get acquainted with music. For example, the well-known musician Klara Pinkas often played the violin for us.

We studied astronomy as well. And when we turned twelve we started studying Horel’s ‘Sex Question’ [It was then the most popular and highly respected reading for adolescents.] and let me say, not in separated groups of boys and girls, but all together. To put it in other words, they taught us to be friends, and to be united. It often happened that we gathered all our money, about a lev or two per child, and ‘ahot’ [sister in Hebrew] Karola, the girl who was looking after us, she had to make sure we observed the required discipline and she also taught us, distributed them: ‘This is for cinema, this for sweets, and this is for ‘Shkembe Chorba’ [tripe-soup, non-kosher].’ We all loved this Oriental meal.  

All my friends then were Jewish girls, whom I was with at the Jewish school and Hashomer Hatzair: Mati Yomtov, Sarika Shamli, Dora Benvenisti and others. Afterwards they left for Israel and since then we have met by chance, well advanced in years, and we have even made out who was who. But back in my childhood years, I was always with them. We had a favorite game called ‘semanei derekh’ [literally from Ivrit: ‘traffic signs’]. We walked in Borisova Garden, the big park in Sofia’s suburbs [today this park is in the city center] separated in groups. The first group had to start before the second one, they walked and from time to time they had to put some signs, for example arrows made out of twigs, to show the direction, or they made some kind of a funny obstacle. Or they improvised a swastika, again made of twigs that meant ‘danger.’ And the ‘danger’ turned out to be a puddle for instance. Or they drew a square and a number in it with chalk. If the number was ten for example the second group had to seek for something hidden at a distance of ten steps from the square. We sought, sought and finally found pink sweets wrapped in a paper.

We often went to the Byalata Voda area, which is on Vitosha [a mountain near Sofia]. We were scouts there. We were separated into two groups: boys and girls. And we arranged fantastic competitions. We ran with our legs in sacks. Liko [Eliu] Seliktar was irreplaceable as an organizer of these games. We were taught how to light a fire in open nature, how to cook and so on. My childhood was absolutely calm. Up to the moment when the Germans invaded Bulgaria and the Law for the Protection of the Nation and the Law for the Protection of the State were introduced.

My father was a brush-maker. He made special shoe brushes and brushes for clothes. In fact, he did the hard work of the brush-making handicraft. When I was a child, I often saw him drilling holes in a board with a drill, where the threads were to be fixed after that. And this board was very thin and delicate and a single false movement could have broken it. But he was a master. I know that the owner of the workshop for brushes on Nis Street, where my father worked, was called Persiodo [Precious]; he was а Jew, too, but I can’t remember his first name now. That’s why he paid my father a substantial amount. His daily wage was 100 levs. Every day at lunchtime, when I was back from school, I carried to my father the meal that my mother had prepared for him. I took home the empty dishes and he would give me his wage to take home to my mother and always gave me a lev. These simple things made every day a holiday for me.

Apart from being a great master, my father was also a very good man. He never slapped any of his children. And he sang beautifully. I adored him. Every day when he came back home I used to wait for him with a basin filled with hot water, because he worked standing all day long and his legs got swollen. I always expected him eagerly and when I saw him approaching with five loaves of rye bread in his hands I rushed and gladly grabbed the bread. After that we used to go to my parents’ room on the second floor. There my father dipped his legs into the hot water and I washed them for him. I was a young child then. This procedure was repeated every single day. I loved him very much, and he loved me, too.

I lost my father very early. He died on 31st December 1939. The reason for his death was that he had a lot of stress then. My sister Ester was to get married. She had match-makers who had found her a boy. In those days, however, it was a big problem for Jewish girls to get married. Every Jewish girl had to have a trousseau, a big trousseau, let me say. But a girl also had to have dowry. And we were poor. My father loved my sister so much that he bought her a ‘Singer’ sewing machine [a very popular one for its time; German sewing machine], he made her a big trousseau and gave her 30,000 levs in dowry, which was a huge amount of money then. And that brought him to ruins. He had taken a loan from ‘Geula’ bank and when the policies started to arrive, he got sick. They threatened to throw out our belongings into the street, take our house and so on. His anxiety created a tumor in his stomach. They told him it was non-malignant, but he had to undergo an operation. And he didn’t want to. So that’s how he passed away. When my father died and the policies continued coming, my sister exchanged her wedding ring at a pawnshop for some money to pay at least the first policy. From then on we lived in complete poverty, especially during the Law for the Protection of the Nation, but somehow we stoically coped with everything. 

I remember very well the Sofia Jews’ demonstration in protest to the government’s decision for interning us 9. It was on 24th May 1943 10. At that time I was already 15 years old, but I was not a member of the Union of Young Workers 11, in contrast to my sister Jina, who was. Well, on this day I was just walking down Klementina Square with my sister Jina when we met acquaintances from the Jewish community. They informed us that they were going to organize a manifestation addressed to King Boris III 12 and against his decision for our internment. After that, the whole Jewish community gathered in the synagogue. And our procession started from there to Klementina Square. We reached Father Paisii Street, near Bet Am. And suddenly mounted police appeared in front of us. A severe scrimmage followed while we, the kids, fled away in all directions. I remember that I started running from Father Paisii Street and I stopped as far as Osogovo Street, in the Jewish school. Then I hid with a friend of mine. The police started visiting the Jewish families, from house to house, and they arrested all the Jewish men. Not before long, they interned us. 

Our internment was painful. We were each given the right to carry with us only 30 kilograms of luggage. We left for the railway station in order to catch the train to Shumen, where we were to be interned. It was my mother, Vinka, Jina and me. The other two sisters, Ester and Sara, had already been married: in Stara Zagora and in Sofia respectively; while my brothers were sent to forced labor camps 13. When we arrived in Shumen, several hundreds of Jews, we among them, were accommodated at the local school’s gym-hall. And a commune cauldron of food was installed there.

In that confusing situation, we were sitting desperately, my mother, my sisters and I, in the gym-hall’s crowd, when Vinka, who was 20 then already, took the initiative and said, ‘Mum, we won’t live here.’ And we started asking for lodgings. So we came across some Turks who lived near the Tumbul mosque [the main mosque in Shumen, built in 1744, also the largest in the Balkans]. It was just opposite the local Jewish school. Well, these Turks told us they could accommodate us in one of their rooms upstairs. We were six of us in that room: my mother, we, the three sisters, and one of my mum’s cousins with her daughter. We immediately started looking for jobs. We had to dig, wash, clean and all that stuff. We quickly registered ourselves at the Jewish community in the town, where they prepared a list of people like us who wanted to work. So, through the Jewish community we were sent to a ranch of 200 hectares of land. It was situated in the village of Panayot-Volovo. The owner was Ivan Praznikov. Both my sister Jina and I worked there. We dug, harvested and did all kinds of agricultural work there. My elder sister became a seamstress.

After 9th September 1944 14 we finally came back to Sofia. Then I was already 17 years old. We lived in absolute poverty. We found our house overgrown with weeds and grass. The doors and windows were levered out. The furniture had been robbed. A gaping house. We looked at each other and started crying frantically. We were only the three of us. As we were crying, Vinka said, ‘There’s no use in crying. Let’s get things moving.’
We started tearing up the weeds. We cleaned the yard, but the problem was where we were going to sleep for the night. My mother had brothers in Dorbunar [literally from Turkish: ‘Four wells’. ‘Dort’ stands for four, while ‘bunar’ means well, but in every day life people usually don’t pronounce the ‘t’.], a residential district neighboring Iuchbunar. They had come back to Sofia from their internment before we did. And they told us, ‘Until you submit the documents to have the house restored and get help from the municipality, come and stay with us.’ We stayed for a while with our uncles. The house got restored quite quickly in fact; doors and windows were installed. We whitewashed the house, disinfected, cleaned everything and moved in. We gathered our entire luggage in a single corner, because we didn’t have any furniture, we didn’t even have beds. We slept on quilts on the floor.

Just before our internment, my first and second sister, Ester and Sara, who already had their own families, had been working hard. There was a special kind of home-employment for women then. My third and fourth sisters worked for a textile factory. I worked with them. I sewed buttons on shirts, a multitude of shirts every day, so that eventually I didn’t even look at the button’s holes; I knew them by heart. I could finish 60 shirts a day. My third sister got married in Ruse. Vinka’s husband Shlomo was in a forced labor camp during the internment, but he fled to Shumen, where he met my sister and they got married after 9th September 1944.

My brothers succeeded in getting married to the women they loved. In contrast to my sisters, let me say. My elder brother married Olga; his love from the school years. In the beginning, they lived with us. My second brother’s wife’s name is Ani; she lives in Israel. Her father was a grocer; they lived in the Jewish neighborhood, near our place, at the corner of Opalchenska Street and Stamboliiski Boulevard. My younger brother married the girl he loved, also from his childhood. They lived in a bungalow attached to our house in Iuchbunar in Sofia.

Shortly after 9th September 1944 I got married, too. It happened that I had an arranged marriage with an ex-political prisoner; his name was Sason Panizhel. He was a nephew of my sister’s mother-in-law. Once he went to visit his aunt and then he happened to see me there. They arranged a marriage for us and I accepted only because I wanted to get rid of that poverty. My co-existence with him lasted for three years [1945-1947] and it turned out to be real hell.

He took me to Ruse. Yet during the first week, I realized what I was in. But I was still an innocent child brought up with books. I idealized everything. I cried all the time; I just couldn’t stop. Soon my daughter Tinka was born in 1947, and because of her I managed to put up with this nightmare for three years. Our house in Ruse shared the same yard with Dragomir Assenov [a well-known Bulgarian writer of Jewish origin]. Besides, we lived with my husband’s mother, Estel Panizhel, who was close to my mother. His sister was a friend of my sister’s; in Sofia we lived near each other. I lived with him and was in incessant fear. He had acquired some habits in prison that I couldn’t stand. 

Sason’s mother was a martyr. And his father wasn’t a good man. I remember him as a very perverted person. And he had passed his perversion to his son. For him, a woman was just a tool for satisfying primary instincts. I was disgusted. Besides, he even reached out his hands to harm me. During that time his cousin, Luna Djain, and I became friends. She often told me, ‘How can you put up with him?’ and I answered, ‘What can I do? Where can I go?’ My parents and my sisters and brothers had all immigrated to Israel by then. And I had nobody in Sofia. Where could I go? Then Luna said to me, ‘You can come and stay with me.’ We lived close to her place then. And one evening when the situation became extremely unbearable, I decided to run away. Just as I was: in a nightgown.

Of course, the situation worsened. At first, he didn’t want to get divorced. He used to go to the kindergarten to pick up our kid. He used it as a lure to make me come back. I was terrified and I let my daughter stay at their place, but I tormented myself with this. I would go to him to ask for my kid, he would let me in, lock the door, beat me, and then chase me away bleeding. Of course, the kid witnessed these scenes and also got disgusted with her father. Luna asked me, ‘Leave him, leave him alone for three days and you’ll see, he can’t handle it with this kid. Why are you going there? Want to get beaten again?’ I was obstinate, though. And everything happened again and again. One day I decided to listen to Luna’s advice. I went there neither the first day, nor the second, and on the third day he came shouting, ‘Take this tag with you, it’s yours!’ That’s what I wanted to hear. And it was over. Afterwards I lived in an even worse condition with my daughter, in complete poverty. We had only my salary as a typist for a living, which was not high at all. At least, I always had some butter to spread on a slice of bread for her.

In 1952 I met my second husband, Georgi Iliev. The same year I found a job with the Regional Council. Georgi worked there, too. He was single and I was in the process of getting divorced. What I liked about him was that he was serious and modest. We got married in Ruse in 1953. Some very big troubles followed on the part of his relatives. The reason was that I was divorced and had a child. His relatives had the mentality of villagers and couldn’t put up with this. Even his father, who had been sent to Germany as a very qualified professional, he worked in the local locomotive plant, said after he came back, ‘It doesn’t matter if she’s divorced; she has a child. But she’s a Jew!’ However, I knew what a wise Jew should do. I stayed silent and waited. I thought this was their viewpoint. I couldn’t press my position on them.

Many years passed before we went to visit them. Until the day my husband’s uncle, who was studying law in France, came back to Bulgaria. He came to visit us. Our son was still a baby then. We sat at the table and started talking, and we talked for long hours, we talked sincerely to each other. He told me a lot of things about France. I don’t know what he said to his sister, my husband’s mother, but after two days she rang the doorbell. I invited her as if we had last met two hours ago. So, step by step they started to invite us to visit them. 

Years passed and my mother-in-law died. She didn’t suffer for long; she passed away within a day. It was 1963. The old man remained alone. My father-in-law sold his house and he had to come to stay with us until we had an apartment built. My father-in-law was born in one of the neighboring villages to Ruse, Chervena Voda, which was very riotous after 9th September 1944. In that village the local inhabitants started to make fun of him. They used to tell him, ‘Well, well, Ilia, what happened at the end? A Jewish daughter-in-law, and God knows what else, but a Jewish daughter-in-law is going to look after you, as it turns out.’ And he said, ‘I hadn’t known her. She’s decent. She’s not like us.’ That’s how he spread the fame of me in that village. I looked after this man for 20 years.

My daughter Tinka has two daughters: Rossitsa and Tanya who suddenly decided to leave for Israel after 10th November 1989 15. After my granddaughters immigrated to Israel, my daughter also went there. She has been there for ten years already and lives in Bat Yam. Her second daughter moved to Tel Aviv, while her elder daughter came back to Bulgaria. Rossitsa’s children are called Adam born in 2003 and Maya in 1997. Her husband’s name is Zoar, an Arab Jew, and an intelligent boy.

My son Iliycho [Ilia] Georgiev Iliev was born in 1953 and finished his secondary education at the Ruse music school. We knew he had the talent for music, but we didn’t expect that he would get addicted to music. This way he outlined his own fate. After that, he graduated from the Conservatory [in Sofia], specializing in violin. There he met his wife, Svetla Nikolaeva Toteva, who was also born in Ruse. She’s a cello player. Between 1980 and 1992 they were both members of the [Ruse] Opera orchestra. Then a Brazilian impresario came to the Ruse Opera; I don’t know how he persuaded them, but in 1992 twelve members of the orchestra decided to leave for Brazil to strengthen their orchestra there. Off they went and it’s now twelve years I haven’t seen them. That’s what I feel heavy at heart about. In fact, Iliycho went first and two years after him, his wife and two children, Milena and Nikolay, went to join him. They gave birth to a third child there: Victor. 

I have been to Israel seven times. The first time was in 1982 when I went alone. My second visit took place in 1986. From 1989 on, I have traveled to Israel once every three years. I’m impressed that it becomes more and more beautiful there. I like the people, too. My brother-in-law is a Sabra. [Literally cactus fruit in Hebrew, Sabra became the name for the native Jewish inhabitants of Israel. The self perception of Israelis is of the cactus fruit, that is rough and thorny outside and warm and sweet inside.] A wonderful person. Every morning he smiled at me, saying, ‘Miluka kerez kadiyko? Uno Kadiyko? [From Ladino: Milka, would you like a cup of coffee? A coffee?] And he prepared for me a special coffee from selected sorts. His name was Herzel Karmel. He was my sister Jina’s husband. I married before her, even though according to the tradition it was her turn to get married since she was elder than me. He was head of the municipality’s transport department. He was our cousin; his and our fathers were brothers. However, as we know, marriages between Jewish cousins are allowed. As a matter of fact, his surname was Mashiakh. But the people in Israel made fun of this so much that he decided to officially change his surname to Karmel. [‘Mashiach’ means ‘Messiah’ in Hebrew.]

I have experienced every possible misadventure: internment, ghetto, poverty, anti-Semitic regulations, disgraceful yellow star 16, curfew, and so on. So I celebrated 9th September 1944 as liberation. However, I can’t say I accepted 10th November 1989 as liberation, too. Before this date, there were a lot of things I liked. For example, there was more freedom to speak of your ethnical origin; at least, this is my opinion. Less antagonism. More economic safety and social stability. Before, there was a certain category of people, ‘active fighters’ against fascism. They received this date with hostility. Before that, they felt themselves as aristocrats, but this date dispelled their halo. I have never been an ‘active fighter.’ And I didn’t feel any hostility. I can’t say conditions of life changed for me, because I was already a pensioner when the democratic changes in Bulgaria took place. 

I retired in 1983. Until then I worked in the Human Resources Department at the Agriculture and Mechanical Engineering Institute in Ruse. I was at a very good self-dependant position and after that I started receiving a nice pension. I had another 15 years length of service before that. So my total length of service runs to 35 years, although I started working as young as a child during the Law for the Protection of the Nation.

The events that took place in Bulgaria after 10th November 1989 didn’t fascinate me. I’m for the tolerance. I never argue with friends in the organization [Milka is speaking of the local Jewish organization in Ruse called ‘Shalom’]: if one supports the Union of Democratic Forces or the Bulgarian Socialist Party, I’m simply not interested in that. Just the other way about. I try to respect other people’s opinions. My sister, who came back to Bulgaria for a while after 10th November 1989, listened to what people were commenting then and told me, ‘Milka, the people here are mad!’ Herzel and I vote with different bulletins. He’s for the conservatives and I’m for the liberals. But should we argue about that at home?’ I think this is the right way of thinking.

Glossary 

Antonie Militka
Brno
Czech Republic
Interviewer: Barbora Pokreis
Date of interview: November - December 2004

This interview with Mrs. Antonie Militka took place during our visit to the Jewish Community in Brno. This sprightly lady still works for the local Jewish community, and devotes all her time and energy to people that depend on her help.

My family background

Growing up

During the War

After the War

Glossary:

My family background

My maternal grandparents came from Romania, from the town of Drachinet [Drachinet: the town of Drachinet belonged from 1775 – 1918 to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, from 1919 – 1944 to Romania, from 1945 – 1991 to the Soviet Union, and from 1991 it belongs to Ukraine – Editor's note]. My mother's parents, Samuel Reiter and Rezi Reiter, were farmers. My brother and I inherited their Jewish names. My name is Antonie Rezi, and my brother is Karel Samuel. I never knew my grandparents, as we didn't visit Romania. I know them only through stories. My mother always reminisced about her beautiful childhood, but relatively hard life on the farm. My grandparents had eight children: four daughters and four sons. The Reiters followed the Jewish religion in everything, and raised their children in the same spirit. They attended Jewish schools. When she arrived in Brno, my mother knew not only Romanian and Yiddish, but also spoke Hebrew and German. Their household was strictly kosher 1 and they prayed before eating.

My paternal grandparents, Karel Michal and Grandma Michalova were from Brno. Grandpa was a book printer by trade. He worked for a printer in Starobrnenska Street. I didn't know him, as he died before I was born. He had a serious case of eczema from the chemicals he used in his work. With this diagnosis he was admitted to the hospital, where he died of sepsis [blood poisoning – Editor's note]. Grandma was a good and hard-working woman. They lived in Vinohradska Street in Brno. Despite the fact that they had three children, they lived in a one-room apartment. They had it modestly but tastefully furnished.

There were three synagogues in prewar Brno. The nicest synagogue stood by the Morava River. Alas, today it no longer exist, because during the Crystal Night 2 they torched it as the police and firemen stood by and watched. It stood alone in a large open space, which is why it was so easy to torch. We used to visit mainly the synagogue in Na Kolisti St. There was also an Orthodox synagogue in Brno, which was in Na Skorepce St. It's still there to this day. It's a small, modern building. I don't remember if Brno had a mikveh [mikveh: ritual bath – Editor's note]. Brno also had a Jewish nursery school, but I don't remember anymore where exactly it was located. On Silingrovo Namesti [Silingr Square] there was a Jewish primary school. We attended it for five years. The Jewish high school was at No. 44 Hybesova St. Today the building serves as one of the pavilions of St. Anne's Faculty Hospital in Brno. During my childhood, all the roads were paved, in some places they were better and in others worse. Streetcars ran throughout the entire city. They didn't run as often as they do today, but it was excellent.

We didn't have one favorite merchant. We bought meat at the kosher shop in Dominikanske Namesti [Dominican Square]. Later, when kosher meat was hard to get and the price increased dramatically, we slaughtered poultry at home. That was our father's job. We always had a lot of geese, chickens and ducks. Sometimes they'd swim away along the river. Mostly they'd return in the early evening, and if they didn't we children had to go look for them. Once a week our father would go shopping at the co-op store in Na Pisarkach, as he was a member and so had a discount.

I remember only my mother's oldest brother, Osias Reiter, who took care of her during World War I. My mother was born in the town of Drachinet, in Romania. She came to Brno during World War I, in 1916. Her oldest brother Osias Reiter served in the Austro-Hungarian army. He had a high-ranking post with the military police. After their parents died, he asked my mother to come live with him in Brno, because there was still fighting going on in Romania. Their village and the surrounding bridges burned down. She saved herself at the last possible moment. My brother helped her through all that military bureaucracy so that he could get her away from where the fighting was. She started working at the age of 16. He found her a job at the post office, where my mother then sorted parcels and letters. After the war my mother's brother returned to Romania. But prior to that he found her a sublet with one older Jewish lady, who became very fond of her. She considered her to be like a member of her family. She was more like an aunt to her. This lady lived a nice social and mainly Jewish life. I don't remember her name anymore, but I do know that she lived in Na Prikopech St. During World War II the building was destroyed by a bomb.

The lady had a large, luxurious apartment. I can still see it today. My mother and I used to visit her. She lived in an older building in a large apartment. All the rooms were large, with white doors and windows. The apartment was luxuriously furnished, with luxurious accessories. I mainly remember the beautiful dining room with candelabras. I felt like I was in a palace. The furniture and accessories were according to her taste. My mother had her own room. The room was more modest, but fit in with the style of the furniture. The lady didn't have her own children. My mother lived alone with her. For the most part, Jews didn't isolate themselves. They regularly socialized at her apartment. Many people would get together there, mainly during holidays, for the Sabbath on Friday evening [Sabbath: The fourth of the Ten Commandments says: "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy." (Exodus 20:8) because God rested on the seventh day after creating the world. Certain types of work are forbidden during the Sabbath, and believers are supposed to devote themselves to resting and the study of holy scriptures – Editor's note]. In this rich city environment, my mother entrenched the foundations of the Jewish religion that she'd brought with her from home. She learned everything perfectly, because she used to help out, but through this she also learned. When she got married, she was perfectly prepared, because this lady had taught her everything.

In 1922 my mother met my father, Ludevit Michal. They met at one party at this lady's place, where my mother was living. She supported my parents' relationship. My father wanted to marry her, and my mother liked him too. My mother's brother, Osias Reiter, objected that it was out of the question, because my father wasn't of the Jewish faith. He absolutely disagreed with her getting married. Osias was acting in his father's name, who was no longer alive. Even despite her brother's objections, my mother wanted to marry him. Her brother wrote her that if she did so, she should count on his disowning her as her brother. My mother was immensely hurt by all this, because she wanted my father, but on the other hand she didn't want to lose her brother either. She asked that lady what she should do. The lady told her: "How would your brother look at it if this gentleman converted to Judaism?" My mother asked my father, and he said: "Of course, I'll do everything for you, after all, Christianity grew out of Judaism. I'll do everything so that your brother will allow you to marry me, and so that we'll be together and happy for the rest of our lives." My mother asked her brother if the situation would change if her fiancée converted to Judaism. Her brother's answer was that then there wouldn't be any problem. So my father went for advice to the rabbi at the large synagogue.

Conversion wasn't simple. He had to go through everything a Jewish boy had to go through. That meant that my father spent at least three years taking lessons from the rabbi. Besides that, he went to services with my mother. He learned to read Hebrew, prayers, and also history. After three years he had to take exams. He was proclaimed a Jew, and was admitted to the Jewish community. I don't remember my father's Jewish name. So that's how my father became a member of the community.

The wedding took place in 1925 in the large synagogue. The had a proper Jewish wedding. The wedding and banquet was arranged by that lady that my mother lived with. Otherwise, my mother was, alas, alone, because no one from her family came. It was very difficult for them to make the trip there from Romania.

My father's family didn't have any objections when my father converted. They liked my mother very much. They were only concerned whether he'd have the means to provide everything that my mother was used to. They weren't thinking only of food and social life, but also education. My mother was raised according to Jewish traditions that existed in her family. This type of life was financially demanding, which is why they were concerned whether my father would be able to support the family and provide it sufficient security. And you know what young people are like, they'll promise their parents everything. And my father really did live for us. He was very accommodating, and did everything he promised for our mother and for us.

My father was a barber by trade, but despite that worked at a textile mill. He finished technical textile school while working.

After getting married, my parents lived in the city ward of Bohunice, in a rented flat. In 1930, when I was three, my father found out that they were looking for a superintendent at the newly-built Maccabi 3 sports field in Pisarky [a neighborhood in Brno – Editor's note]. There was also an apartment for the superintendent there. The new field had a good location, I think that it was the most beautiful field in the country. There was enough room there for soccer, handball and track and field, and there were tennis courts too. Twice they even held horse races there. There was also a restaurant, and lawns for families that would come during the weekend. They'd spread out blankets there, and play with their children. Jewish families congregated in this beautiful place, usually on Saturdays and Sundays. The superintendent's job was a very difficult one. In those days, machines and equipment to make the job of maintaining the fields easier didn't exist yet. This was precisely the job they offered my parents. My parents worked for the Maccabi, but the income wasn't enough to support us. We also had a large garden and livestock. My mother took care of the garden. She grew fruit and vegetables. This kind of work wasn't foreign to her, she'd learned it back home in Romania. And so we had chickens, rabbits and a goat. The animals had a stable back behind the house. Despite the fact that my father worked hard at the field, he also opened a coal and wood shop in Hybesova Street, in that textile mill where he'd worked before. The owners had moved out, and the company premises had remained vacant. There were large rooms there that were being rented to various small entrepreneurs – carpenters, merchants and auto mechanics. There were tailor's workshops there, and auto repair shops. My father also rented one huge warehouse. He obtained a business license. The coal and wood was brought in from Ostrava. He also leased a truck and a forwarder that transported the goods. The forwarder had a very important task, because the coal wagons could only stand at the station for a certain amount of time. All the goods were stored in that rented space. My father would then deliver the coal directly to his customers. He employed two workers in the warehouse. My father had good relations with his employees. During the winter months, my mother tried to have warm meals prepared not only for our family, but also for the workers. As children, we also had to help carry wood. The workers would bring us large pieces of wood from the sawmill. The wood would then be cut up right in the store. Our parents took us everywhere with them. Whether we were going out into the garden or to the store, we were always together. As I've already mentioned, they weren't strict, but took us with them everywhere they worked, and so we learned everything.

We had a very simple apartment. My parents bought themselves very nice furniture. We had a utilitarian, but nicely furnished kitchen and bedroom. Not only athletes visited the field, but also women visitors with small children that needed to be fed. My mother let them nurse their children in peace in the bedroom, or warm up food in the kitchen. That society was of a certain, high standard. If everything wouldn't have been according to etiquette, and proper, no Jewish woman would've brought her child there. My mother's task was to make sure the changing cabins were clean. She laundered and also mended athletes' jerseys. She also took care of the safe, where she stored money, jewels and documents for players and spectators. The depository was needed, because the changing cabins were left open, and anyone could enter them.

Maccabi Games were held regularly. They were big events, with exercises performed on the soccer field. We had beautiful blue & white uniforms. Many athletes and spectators would show up. The parking lots were full of cars. The leader was Fredy Hirsch 4, who was later active in Prague. He led the entire Maccabi Games. He was a big athlete that mainly taught us to exercise regularly, and also to do track and field. Alas, he died in Auschwitz. During the winter, we used gymnasiums. I unfortunately don't remember the names of the rest of the important athletes. The Maccabi also had a soccer team, and though it didn't ever win, it participated in tournaments every year nevertheless. They didn't pay just at the Maccabi, and when they went to play soccer somewhere else, my father would go with them. He'd carry their jerseys and shoes. Sometimes he'd take me with him.

I don't know if the Maccabi had anything to do with Zionist associations 5. There were several Zionist organizations in what is today the building of the Jewish Community, where young people but also older ones would meet. I didn't belong to any association, just to the Maccabi.

My people were the kind of people that lived for democracy. They were definitely democrats. My father wasn't a member of any organization. My parents were for good will amongst people. That's how they lived and worked. They weren't that interested in politics so as to be active in it. They were interested only in culture. Before their wedding, they used to attend choirs and theaters together.

My mother was one of eight children. Her siblings lived in Romania with their families. We never met, and my mother didn't see them either. She kept in written contact only with her oldest brother, Osias.

My father had two siblings. His brother's name was Josef Michal. He worked as a journalist, but I don't remember where. During World War II he was arrested and ended up in a concentration camp. For political reasons, I think. At that time he already had a family of his own, a wife and daughter. They lived in Prague. The youngest of the siblings, Frantiska, survived the war and lived to a ripe old age, over 90. Her daughter is my only relative here in the Czech Republic. Frantiska never married. She apprenticed in a factory for pots and pans as a decorator. Back then they were manufacturing pots and pans decorated with flowers and various other ornaments. She was very clever and talented. She painted beautifully, which is why she had a very nice job up until the war. During the war everything changed. After the war she helped her daughter, who'd become a seamstress. They both sewed to make ends meet. She died in an old-age home.

My parents never went on vacation anywhere. In the summer, during the sports season, there was the most work. As superintendents of the Maccabi, there was no way they could go anywhere. When we were small, my parents never went anywhere without us. During the winter they'd take us to see children's plays. During the holidays we'd go to synagogue and to various events organized by the school and the Jewish Community. Our life was rich in events the whole year round, but our parents never went anywhere alone, only with us.

Observing the religious side of life was a simple matter for us. As I've already mentioned, my mother knew it all from home. During the High Holidays, we attended the large synagogue. We observed the Sabbath at home. That was Mother's task. She'd prepare a beautiful supper. She'd regularly bake barkhes, and would light candles. She'd serve roast poultry or veal au naturel. On Saturday we'd have shoulet. For the High Holidays we'd have goose. Everything was according to Jewish recipes. We didn't eat any pork. Everything was kosher, because meat was available in the kosher store. Poultry my father would slaughter at home.

As children, we liked all the holidays. One of our favorite holidays was Passover [Passover: commemorates the departure of the Israelites from Egyptian captivity and is characterized by many regulations and customs. The foremost is the prohibition of consuming anything containing yeast – Editor’s note]. For Passover we'd eat matzot and everything was beautiful. We'd buy large sacks of matzot. There was a bakery in Na Prikopech St. that baked matzot. For ten days, we ate only matzot. As children, we liked Chanukkah best [Chanukkah: the Festival of Lights, which also commemorates the Macabbees’ uprising and the re-consecration of the Temple in Jerusalem – Editor’s note], because we'd get gifts. Each evening, Mother would light candles. We'd pray daily, and the most festive food was served. She'd tell us about how it used to be at their house. All the holidays were beautiful, but these two stood out the most for us. Our mother's favorite was Yom Kippur [Yom Kippur: The Day of Atonement. The most celebrated event in the Jewish calendar. The day of "the cleansing of sins". Fasting is observed – Editor’s note]. At school we mainly looked forward to Purim [Purim: the holiday of joy. As is written in the Book of Ester, the holiday was decreed by Mordechai in memory of how God’s foresight saved the Jews of the Persian Empire from complete annihilation – Editor’s note]. It's the holiday of joy, and at that time we'd always play and have fun. I don't remember anymore exactly what games we played, but their intent was for us to not forget Jewish traditions.

Passover, Purim and Chanukkah celebrations took place in the building of the Jewish Community, which was located at 31 Legionarska St., today Trida Kapitana Jarose [Captain Jaros Avenue]. In the building next door, which had a huge hall, the Jewish Community and the rabbi organized holiday celebrations for children and adults. For Sukkot [Sukkot: Festival of Booths. A festive atmosphere reigns during the whole week that the holidays lasts, where  the most important is to be in the sukkah – Editor’s note] they'd always build a cabin [Sukkah: a tent used during the Sukkot festival – Editor's note], where people could pray, talk, drink wine and be merry. The tent wasn't very spacious, only a few people could fit inside, and the rest stayed outside. The tent was built out in the courtyard of the synagogue. This tradition has been maintained to this day. We children would get apples and candy. Unfortunately, my brother missed his bar mitzvah [bar mitzvah - “son of the Commandments”, a Jewish boy that has reached the age of thirteen. A ceremony, during which the boy is declared to be bar mitzvah, from this point on he must fulfil all commandments of the Torah – Editor’s note], because during the Holocaust it wasn't possible, and he had to be in hiding.

For Chanukkah, my father's sister Frantiska, who lived in Brno, would come visit during the holiday. She'd come visit us during Christmas, when we'd be observing Chanukkah. We had festive food and everything that belonged to the holidays. No one in my father's family expressed any objections. My aunt would come to see us at Maccabi along with her daughter, and they participated in everything with us. They all felt good in each other's company. During the holidays, they'd eat with us. Religion wasn't a barrier to anyone. Each respected the other.

It wasn't that difficult for us children to get used to going so far to the Jewish primary school, which was on Silingrovo namesti [Silingr Square]. We got used to it. My favorites were drawing, history and math. Maybe because I was good at these subjects. I can't say which subjects I didn't like. In primary school it was all good, but by high school, I didn't like physics and chemistry. I wasn't interested in that.

I had an excellent professor whose name I don't remember. He was our home room teacher, and liked me a lot. When I arrived at the concentration camp [ghetto] in Terezin 6, he'd been sent with a labor detail to Oslavany, to the mines. He heard from someone that I was alone in Terezin, and made contact with my parents, who were still in Brno. He told them that if they wanted to send me a letter or parcel, to send it to him. He, as a prisoner in Oslavany, was able to send things to Terezin. He supported me for a time, until he returned to Terezin. He wrote me that I should address him as "Mein Liebe Onkel", which meant that the letter was meant for my parents. And my parents really would get it.

We had only a few books at home. My mother liked German books. My father was a Czech. Our parents concentrated on us. They bought us story books and later for school. But as for books, not that they weren't interested, but there was absolutely no time nor money to expand the number of books. They were interested in everything, they tried to fit in, but I can't say that they were able to do something as far as education goes, neither time-wise nor money-wise.

Growing up

I was born in 1928 in Brno. My main memories are from back when I was four, when my brother Karel was born, which was my greatest joy. Beginning at that time, my memories are coherent. We had a beautiful childhood. Everything was for the children. Our parents didn't live very luxuriously, and didn't do much for themselves, but for us they did everything. They concentrated only on the children. If someone looked at it today, he'd say we were spoiled. They definitely gave us freedom and love. Maybe someone would even have misused it. Luckily, we tried to return it to them. They weren't strict, not at all, just in extreme situations, but mostly they trusted us. We could've misused it, we could've said we were in school and they wouldn't have checked up on us. Nor on our schoolwork. We were always something amazing for them, and it was a beautiful childhood.

I remember that when my brother was 5, he got lost. That was something awful. Some children were playing, and suddenly, when the neighborhood children were slowly returning home, my brother didn't return. The Svratka River ran by the Maccabi grounds. It was a beautiful place, you could play sports there, and be surrounded by gorgeous nature. My mother asked where Karlicek [Karel] was, and the other children said that they didn't know where he was. Well, so we started looking for him, and my mother was asking everyone if they hadn't seen him. We asked them to look for him too. They looked along the river and everywhere. An hour, two, but no one saw him. My mother was becoming utterly desperate. After a long time searching, the vegetable growers from the Bulgarian gardens [Bulgarian gardeners: Bulgarian gardeners assumed an important position in vegetable cultivation in all of Europe. Their migration began at the cusp of the 18th and 19th Centuries. They began arriving on Czech territory at the end of the 19th Century – Editor's note] joined the search party too. They knew Karlicek too, because he used to go there once in a while. When they found out what had happened, they left their work and searched. One woman gardener finally found my brother. He'd fallen asleep underneath a veranda where dry hay was stored. He'd hidden there during a game, and fallen asleep. It was an incident with a happy ending. A great danger was that he could have drowned, the river's banks were steep, and it really didn't take much for a tragedy to take place.

During the summer holidays, they regularly organized children's camps at Maccabi. Everything was very nice. When the summer was already drawing to a close, they'd organize a celebration with singing and dancing. Food was prepared, and plays were put on. The way it was at Maccabi was that the children would come there for the day. They didn't stay there overnight, only during the day. We used to go to Maccabi on a streetcar rented by the Jewish Community. The stop was by the old theater. The children would gather there at 7:30, and the streetcar would already be waiting there. The route led towards Pisarky. From Pisarky it took only a little while, as it was only a short walking distance from there. It was this little outing to Maccabi. When they arrived, a perfect breakfast would be waiting for them. After breakfast they'd play and study in various groups led by teachers and student volunteers. There'd be up to 80 children there. The Maccabi also had a kitchen, a dining room and one large room. There the children would gather when it was raining. After lunch at the camp, you had to lie down and rest a bit. In the afternoon, at around 4:00 p.m., it was time to go back to Pisarky to take the streetcar. The trip into town on the streetcar took about a half hour, and around 5:00 p.m. the parents would pick up their children. Everyone envied us the fact that we lived there and didn't have to go into town. The second [camp] session was already preparing to say goodbye to summer, to say thank you to the teachers and workers. The party took all month to prepare, along with an entertainment program. The parents and relatives that acted in it came too. Only Jewish children attended the camp. Only Jewish ones, because the Maccabi was Jewish.

We had a large dog, who was named Tiger because he looked exactly like a tiger. He was huge. He guarded us, but we had more dogs back then. They were all huge. When my brother was born, my parents showed him to him, that here's Karlicek, you've got to guard him. When my mother put the carriage in front of our building, he'd lie down there, and everyone had to give him a wide berth. He'd never let anyone even get close to him. To be on the safe side we gave him a muzzle, that had to be so that some sort of accident wouldn't happen. At night he was very important on those grounds, he'd signal if anyone wasn't wanting to climb over the fence. There were thieves, who only wanted fruit. There were large alleys of fruit trees there, cherries, apples and pears. My parents took care of them, because they were the superintendents. They fruit would be eaten at camp. Whoever in the camp wanted, could pick some, because everything was free.

My best friend at school was named Kitty. They lived in [the neighborhood of ] Hlinky. She and her family died in a concentration camp. We had a lot of common interests. At school we were interested in books and drawing. We liked going on outings. She attended Maccabi. My parents also supported our friendship. I used to go to their place but rarely. After school we'd do our homework together, and then she'd come to our place at Maccabi, and there we'd play with a shovel and so on. Then later I had another friend, Gustinka.

I exercised like all the children, but only in the gym. I never excelled at anything in particular. I liked swimming best, that's also stayed with me. I also had a bicycle; at that time I wasn't attending school yet. From the time he was little, my brother was interested in cars. This interest also saved his life. During the Holocaust he hid in an auto mechanics' workshop while my parents and I were in the prison camp. My brother liked soccer and skiing. We used to go skiing around Maccabi, because all around it were hills. My parents didn't do any sports, just my father would play a bit of soccer once in a while.

As a child I took violin lessons, but I wasn't very good at it. My father dreamt of us being able to play the violin, because he played the clarinet. He hoped that we'd play on better instruments than he. He was thinking of the violin and piano. And when even after three years I didn't make the kind of progress he'd assumed, he switched me to piano. Even though my brother was four years younger, he bought him an accordion. From the age of five he took lessons from this one teacher. The accordion was large, and my brother wasn't able to carry it, and so our father would bring it to the teacher's at the proper time. After the lesson, he'd come get it again. In the meantime, I was taking violin lessons with the Hlavacek family. Mr. Hlavacek was a violin teacher, and his son was preparing for the conservatory. I took lessons with this family. But I didn't do well enough for them to be satisfied with me. So it was decided that I'd take piano. For piano lessons, they sent me to the Mautner family, who were Jews. They Mautners lived in Krizova St. I took lessons there until they began preparing for the transport. At that time all the nice times ended, and that music was part of that too. Not only school was forbidden for us 7, but also interests like music and exercise 9. Thus all that was nice ended, and after the war I no longer had time for similar interests. My brother had real musical talent. My father played the clarinet, I the violin, and my brother the accordion. He tried to make a small band of us, so that we'd enjoy music too. He was always telling us to practice.

When we were later living in that temporary apartment in Hybesova St., beside us was an army command, not the Gestapo, but an army command. When we returned in 1945, the building was empty. As I was walking by, I heard someone playing the piano inside. I stopped and stood and listened to the beautiful music. When the music finished, I looked in, and saw my little brother sitting behind a piano. Right away I ran home to tell my mother to come have a look at how wonderfully Karlicek was playing. She stood there and wept. At that time my brother was 13. I don't know anymore what composition he was playing. When he left for Israel, he took his accordion with him, and eventually my father bought him another two.

We didn't often go to restaurants with our parents. Just once a year, we'd go for New Year's Eve. Our parents never went anywhere without us. This is why when they did go somewhere, it was only there where you could take children, and we'd return home early. So we used to go to the exhibition grounds. People entertained themselves in restaurants and at social events. At the House of Art they'd organize a New Year's party for the children before lunch, and in the afternoon there'd be a New Year's party for the adults. Our parents would go celebrate with us. We'd go home by 6:00 p.m. The other adults would leave later, they'd dance the night away. There was no way our parents would go somewhere alone, or leave without us.

They also used to send us on trips, we were able to go, but we made use of this opportunity only twice. In the summer we were in the Beskids [The Beskids; a nature reserve in Moravia – Editor's note] for 14 days. Once we were in Ivancice, near Brno, for a few days. This trip was organized for children by the Jewish Community. In Ivancice there was a building that had formerly been a sugar refinery, which belonged to a Jew. The building was abandoned. He put the entire grounds at the disposal of the Jewish Community, so that they could organize summer camps there. We were there twice. Once it was for boys, and once for girls, so we alternated. It was amazing in Ivancice, not only the place itself and historical buildings, but mainly its surroundings, nature, forests and water. That was a beautiful summer vacation there. For us, the stay also meant a change, that we weren't just at that Maccabi.

When I got to sit in a car, that was something new for me, because our parents didn't have one. Once in a while some family would take to Maccabi in a car when I was small. Besides that, I was lucky that I attended Jewish primary school on Silingr Square. My classmate Frantisek Tichy, who was from a rich Jewish family, sat beside me in school. They lived in Hlinky, and his mother would drive him to school, and also come pick him up. In the summer she'd ride in a red convertible, wearing a hat. She liked me very much. The way from Maccabi to Pisarky was in the same direction as Hlinky. A streetcar ran there, which I used to take to school on Silingr Square. Instead of Pisarky I'd go to Hlinky, and they'd already be waiting for me there, or I'd wait there for them. She always told me to come there. So I'd come to their building, and she'd come out or already be standing there. In the afternoon she'd drive me back, sometimes she'd drive me all the way to Maccabi. Those were the best experiences, I really was that spoiled by the Tichy family. Well, and Frantisek was a very talented, genial, cute boy. He attended school with me from Grade 1. Back then children didn't associate with each other, as far as girls and boys go, so he didn't talk to me. He sat beside me, but when he saw that I didn't have a green pencil crayon, he'd immediately give me one. He let me see everything he was writing, acted very friendly, but wouldn't let the other children see that he was talking to me, not at all. Imagine that it used to bother me, as I wanted to talk to him. That's stayed in me. He went from Grade 4 to high school. He was very smart, and so didn't attend Grade 5, but went directly into first year [of high school] 9. Only the smartest ones, whose parents had submitted an application and were accepted, only those got in. There were only a couple of them. They got into first year of high school right away, and when I started high school, they were already a year ahead. After that I didn't see him much. And then I saw him in Terezin, during roll call. He was standing across from me, and we were looking at each other. At that time I said to myself that maybe now he'd say a few words to me. He didn't. He looked at me across that distance, and didn't do anything to be able to talk to me. We never saw each other again, he left on a transport. His entire family perished.

When we were little, at that time we didn't experience any anti-Semitism. But when the war began, then we felt it. Our parents' friends even avoided them. We, as children, also went through our share, though we didn't really understand what was happening around us. Some children, but also adults, would try to humiliate us. On our way to school, a group of German boys threw stones at us and called out: "Jews, why don't you go to the Palestine?" My brother was relatively quite spunky. He wanted to retaliate. I had a hard time restraining him, because then it would have looked like he'd attacked them, when they were already turning things against Jews so badly. That happened right after 1939.

During the War

We had friends that used to go to the sports field. Not only people from the Jewish Community and Jews from Brno used to congregate there, but also Czechs and Germans. Before the war, there hadn't been any large differences. That was during the so-called depths of peace.  But the social side of things, I'd say that it was a very hard time for the poor. Games were played at the field, of course there were large tournaments and so also other teams came to play here, not only Jewish teams. There were mutual visits and relationships. Before the war I didn't feel any anti-Semitism, that wasn't until during the war. Back then, some sympathizers alas wanted to gain the favor of the Germans, which is why they behaved very unpleasantly toward us. On the other hand, there were also those that risked and helped Jews. They helped our family too.

When we left Maccabi, we lived in Pisarky. We had a little house, a garden, and beside us ran the river. We three, as Jews, got food coupons – my mother, my brother, and I. The coupons were very modest... just our father had full food coupons. Once, I don't know where anymore, he met one baker, who told him that he'd sell us bread and rolls even without coupons, but that I'd have to come to a certain place for them. The amount we could get with the food coupons wasn't enough for us. The place where I was supposed to wait for the baker was by a bridge in Pisarky. The baker was delivering bread at that time, and was carrying it on his back. He was supposed to come there at a certain time. He arrived, I paid him, he gave me the goods and I went home. But before I got home, I ran into one German citizen who lived near us, had seen me leaving, and so wanted to see where I was going. He'd followed me for a ways. He waited for me on a small footbridge over a wider stream. He spent his time informing on people. I already saw him from a distance, standing on the bridge that I had to cross; there was no other way home. I backtracked a bit. At that time it was the end of February. The ice was already thin, and the water was still ice-cold. I'd gotten to know that stream as a child, so I knew how deep it was in which parts. I put the bread, rolls and my shoes into a bag, which I held above my head, and crossed the stream like this. My coat and the rest of my clothes were wet, because the water reached almost to my shoulders. I didn't care at all that the water was icy and that half-melted chunks of ice were floating by me. That's how I got home. My mother was all upset. That person was waiting for me, he'd probably already lost patience, because there was only one way home there. So let him spot me. I went out into the garden, where he saw me. He was surprised that I'd gotten home. I don't know what he thought, he stopped and looked whether it was me. I'm sure that his enmity grew even worse.

Another thing happened to my brother and I when I was 12 and he was 8. Jews weren't allowed to go to parks and to walk in certain streets. Everything was forbidden for us. Even in the streetcar, we had to stand in a certain wagon. Life was so limited that all our parents would say was don't go anywhere, all you'll do is cause us trouble. They always watched over us. Despite the prohibitions, once on Sunday we went out for a bit. There was a movie for children being shown at the exhibition grounds. We didn't tell our parents where we were going. Each of us got 5 crowns in pocket money for when we went to see some other children. We went to the movie, I think they were showing Laurel and Hardy. We decided to go even despite the fact that there was: "No entry allowed to the cinema for Jews!" We bought tickets, they cost a crown, and sat down amongst the children and waited. The lights went out, and right then before the film began, one lady stood up and shouted: "Turn on the lights, there are Jewish children here!" They turned on the lights and asked her where they were. She pointed at us, and so they led us out of the theater. The usher didn't do anything, he just politely led us out and said: "Don't come here, so you don't have problems like today, and your parents too." So we learned a lesson. Some time later, someone told our mother about our adventure. She asked me why I hadn't told her about it. My answer was that I didn't want her to be upset.

Another incident, after this one, was when my brother was outside somewhere and wasn't coming home for lunch. So my mother started looking for him, and I did too. We asked everyone we ran into whether they hadn't seen my brother. These people immediately began helping and looking for him everywhere. In the streets, in yards, around the river. We were already afraid that he'd fallen in the river. We kept looking for him until the evening, and then one lady we knew that lived nearby brought him. We were grateful to her for it, because she'd heard him calling. There'd been a Czech soccer field there, which was then taken over by Germans; just like we had Maccabi, this was the Brno branch of Sokol 10. The superintendent was a German, named Siegel, who had three sons and a wife. He'd caught my brother before noon somewhere, and locked him up in a shed. He was showing him and telling him how his parents and sister were going to be tortured in Mauthausen 11. By then the war had already begun. My brother was locked up until late afternoon, when that lady had heard him shouting. She came to the soccer field, you could get there not only through the main entrance, but also from the side. She opened it and freed him. My mother was afraid of our father finding out, because he might have gone to have it out with him, and the entire family would've paid for that. My brother was in shock from this incident, and didn't even talk. It was only later that he told us how and what had gone on. He hadn't actually hurt him, he hadn't done anything to him, but just kept showing him how we'd be tortured in Mauthausen. He already knew about it. He caused that child to have a hard day.

Several times the Gestapo called my father in for interrogation. Luckily he always returned. It was a very dangerous time. The persecution was very hard, but even despite that we hoped that we'd see the end of the war, but it kept lasting and getting worse for us Jews.

The Maccabi field was taken over by the Germans during the war. They also used it for sports. We'd walk by and look. Already in 1938, when Austria was suddenly annexed 12, anti-Jewish sentiments began to increase noticeably, and enemies of Jews – Czech ones too, were already showing them that anti-Semitism had carved its path here. At that time we moved to Hybesova St. In 1938 I was 10, when we were evicted from Maccabi. We weren't that free there anymore, all that was still done by Czechs, up to 1938. So right away, my father bought an older house and had it enlarged, and that's where we moved. That took three months. We lived there until 1943, until the Gestapo chased us out of there.

When we left Maccabi, we had a house and garden. We had had to demolish the house and raze it during the war. In 1943 the Gestapo simply ordered us to raze our house within 14 days. My father called the neighbors to take it apart, some things also got buried. Unfortunately, he injured himself seriously during the demolition. He was on the roof, which he wanted to take apart. He was of course not an expert in this. Underneath the roof he also had taken something apart, so he flew through the roof and kitchen. On top of that, the cellar was open, and so he also fell down into the cellar, where he fell on his thigh. They had to operate on him. Within 14 days of that, I was already off to Terezin.

They summoned me to the transport of 7th April 1944. People designated for the transport were gathering by the Veletrzni Palac [Trade Fair Palace]. From there people went to Terezin, or elsewhere. On 9th April they moved us to the main station, where there was already a train waiting for 250 people from Brno and its surroundings. On this train they transported us to Terezin, to Bohusovice actually. At that time the tracks didn't lead directly into Terezin, those were built later. We walked from Bohusovice, where there were already people from Terezin waiting, and wagons onto which luggage was loaded. Everything was transported on these wagons, bread and corpses too.

As a replacement, my parents were given a pitiful, substandard apartment. Excuse me, not given, but my father found it, and that's where we moved. That was still in Hybesova St. We put our furniture into our coal warehouse. Because my brother was close to the workshop. So at night he could cross the street between the workshop and home. The apartment belonged to our former landlady, and was in the courtyard.

When my mother went into the transport in August 1944, she got a summons for my brother as well. At the Gestapo she said that she hadn't seen her child for a long time already. That he'd been lost during the bombing of the city. Despite that, the Gestapo was of course constantly searching for him. Luckily they didn't find him, because we had quite a lot of people that were helping him. They took Mother to Prague. She was jailed there for 6 months, guarded by the Gestapo. Then in February 1945 they transported the prisoners to Terezin, where I once again after a long time saw my mother. She worked in Terezin as well. We waited there for the end of the war. Liberation day was full of joy. But many people found out that their family members were no longer alive. Thus joy mixed with tears. We found out that my father had lost his legs, but that he was alive.

With the coming of Hitler, my father had to produce Aryan papers. Because he was of Aryan origin, he managed to arrange false documents. This is why he was able to keep running his warehouse until 1944. When my mother was arrested, they arrested him a month later. Before he was arrested, a custodian came and took over his business. They arrested him for having a Jewish wife. They notified him that he had to go into internment. They put him on a transport to the Postelberg labor camp, or Postoloprty in Czech. There he lost his legs. It was a labor camp for men that had Jewish wives. The camp was close to a German airport, where mostly prisoners worked. They worked two shifts. In March 1945, they were leaving after the night shift in the dark and in a blizzard, where you couldn't see a thing. The Allies were bombing airports, and the prisoners were repairing them. They worked through the day but also into the night, and would then go home. The roads weren't safe, because it was dark and you couldn't see. They walked close to some railroad tracks. Trains would pass by the airport, transporting everything that they needed. The prisoners were returning along the tracks, and a freight train was passing by, being pushed by a locomotive. There was a wagon in the front, and you couldn't hear or see the train. The prisoners were walking in single file along the tracks to the camp. One was calling to the next, look out, a train. My father was in front, they called to him: "Look out, a train!" My father heard something, and so jumped aside. But apparently he tripped, because among the large rails there were also small rails, for wagons for material. He tripped on these tracks, and then it hit him. His body fell alongside the tracks, and his legs stayed there. The train ran over both of them. This happened in March 1944. The railway workers were Czechs. They didn't see my father as a prisoner. They quickly took him and bandaged up his bleeding legs. They brought him to Most, to a German hospital. After the war, they operated on him. In the beginning, my father was very badly off, emotionally. We consoled him, up till then you'd taken care of us, now we're going to take care of you. The main thing is that you're alive! My father walked on prosthetics, and that's how he ran his store.

Now back to Terezin. As soon as we arrived in Bohusovice, they took our luggage, as the way to Terezin was relatively long. Terezin is actually brick ramparts, it's a fortress. Everything in the camp was numbered and had a name. New prisoners were registered and told to hand in money and valuables, and that then we wouldn't have any problems. Otherwise they'd liquidate the entire transport. If everything takes place properly, that they'll assign us work and we'll have a better life here than soldiers at the front. But if they find money on one of us, or gold, medicine, or something of value – contraband, then all 250 will go to Auschwitz. Immense stress ensued. I'd found out that we were going onto the transport only a short time beforehand. Two of my mother's lady friends came, because my mother had half-collapsed from it, and all night they sewed marks into my garter belt.

Between two layers of material – one outer one and one inner one, she sewed a few thousand marks. She also baked cookies and cakes, and told me what to wear. They put on me three sets of underwear, blouses and sweaters, leggings, a skirt, knee stockings plus a coat on top, even though it was already April. I couldn't even button the coat because of so many layers of clothing. She said: Tonicka, what you're wearing will most likely stay with you. With the suitcase it's worse, that can get lost. They filled my pockets with medicines, cotton balls, toothpaste and soap. They stuffed it all in so that I'd have these things to start with. I asked myself what would happen now, I've got thousands here, plus one silver ring. I hadn't taken any more than that. I handed it in. I saw my friend Edita Weiss, who lived in Zahradnicka St., how she took off a wide leather belt and cut it into pieces. The marks were falling out all over the place. She had marks sewn into that belt. I saw everything people were giving away in a crate that had been prepared, covered by a sheet. Nothing remained but for me to take off that belt of mine and throw it in there. No one dared to endanger others because of money.

Working in the Transportleitung was one young woman, a student, who came over to me: "You're Tonicka Michalova, remember me, I used to exercise at Maccabi. Where are your parents?" I answered that for the time being I was alone. "Well, you know what, if they ask you whether you've already found accommodations, tell them that you're going to the girls' home at L410, to No. 24, I know there's room there. After all you know how to work in gardens and fields, so apply for that. Apply for everything right away, voluntarily and on you own." When my turn came, they wrote us all down. Then we were searched, which was performed by female Gestapo members. That girl I knew kept an eye on me, and also brought me to the Mädchenheim, where there were 32 girls living. There were  three-story bunks built in the room.

I was weeping profusely. One girl came over to me, later she became my best friend, and said to me: "I don't know why you're crying. I'm here three months, and I haven't cried yet. And yet, when I look out the window, I can almost see Litomerice, where I was born and grew up. I can't go there, but despite that I didn't cry." At that point I was a bit ashamed. "You're lucky, once a week we get better food for going to the garden. You'll get some. You've very lucky to have gotten in here, and that you've got extra food rations." In the end we became such good friends that we shared everything. We got along very well. We helped each other, but unfortunately things were constantly changing. They were selecting for the transports, and girls were leaving with their parents. When I arrived there, they were already opening the barracks. Before that, children were separate, men separate, women separate. When I arrived we were able to get together, before that they couldn't even see each other. Not long after, mass transports began.

At first I worked on the ramparts. It was soil that hadn't been tilled since the times of Maria Theresa. First we had to weed out deep grass roots, and carry the weeds down on stretchers. I think the ramparts were about one story high, with roads on them. Later the roads disappeared, because compost was carried up onto them, into which plants were planted. Almost everything went to Gestapo families, and some of it also went into the ghetto kitchens. You also knew how to steal something from there. It was dangerous, but of course we took something, and something was also issued to us. Mainly during harvest time, then we'd eat our fill. We'd carry it home, and for example exchange it with old people for bread, as that was in short supply. Every fourth day we got 1.5 kg of bread for two of us for four days. We drew lines on the bread. We had two small slices per day, morning and evening. Every second day was only soup, one day there was only coffee. One slice – that wasn't enough.

There were various guards. There were also hired Protectorate 13 police, mostly also decent ones. They even helped us carry parcels when we were returning from work. When we were outside the ghetto, occasionally someone would throw a parcel into the bushes. The policemen would act like they didn't see anything. When the international inspections were supposed to come, all the "effects" were made. A major cleanup began, a café opened, money was printed, and everything had to be washed, even the sidewalks. At that time life in Terezin was grand. They came, inspected what they could, and left, satisfied. As soon as they left, the Calvary of thousands of people in transports began, and everything went straight into the gas. Everything was very cleverly disguised.

We were very careful with ourselves, as far as cleanliness went. Our surroundings too. Alas, despite our efforts, we were tormented by stink bugs and lice. Each day we battled for cleanliness. Once a week we could put our bed sheets into the laundry. The girls had various characters. Once one girl arrived, who from one day to the next learned everything, even though at home she'd been waited on hand and foot by cooks and maids. On the other hand, another one had the type of nature that she acted as if she'd never in her life changed the cover on a duvet. We told her that if you don't mind, your sheets aren't clean and don't smell nice, it bothers us, and you've got to change them. When she resisted, we were so nasty that we threw her things out the window into the mud. We didn't care if she cried, we just wanted her to learn the rules. When she didn't like it, she moved away from us. They moved her into accommodations full of old, pitiful dying grannies; there she realized how much worse off she was. We felt best when we were learning things. We didn't only learn school things, but also how to dance, poems, etc.

When I met my mother in Terezin, I was glad to see her. At the same time, I realized that I can no longer look out for just myself, and that I have to help her as much as I can. From that point on, I had to watch out that nothing happened to her. We were of course hoping the war would end soon. All of us wanted to live. We were afraid that if the Germans didn't manage to empty the camp in time, they'd slaughter us on the spot. That was what we were most afraid of, that they'd kill us right there.

We were preparing for the moment of liberation. We knew that at that point, chaos would ensue. This is why my mother and I agreed on which streets we'd walk down. She lived close to Hamburg [the Hamburg barracks – Editor's note], and I lived on the town square at L 410. Towards the end of the war, where before there had lived about 5,000 people, they'd now stuffed about 60,000 prisoners. That meant that the streets were full of people during the day. Not only in the morning and when they were returning from work, but they were mostly always completely full – on the sidewalks, on the streets, always. When you walked along one side, you couldn't see anyone on the other side. That's why I told her that she had to get to such and such a place. I walked along the route with her twice, and taught her the way. That was my greatest wish, for me to not lose my mother, or her me. That's why we agreed on this. When the Russians arrived in their tanks in the morning, they futilely called out to us. We were afraid to come out. Only when people we knew arrived, and said that they were Russians, did we come out. We knew that soldiers had arrived, cars and tanks, but we still didn't believe that the war was over, and that they were Russians.

After the War

As soon as the war ended, they notified us that trains to Prague were going to be organized. My mother and I said to each other, all right, let's go. Two of my friends also said that they'd go with me to Brno. I proposed that we had to get close to the station, because when the train arrives, there'll be a crush of people. At the station there was one building that was in ruins from the bombing. There, we set up camp on the courtyard gallery. The building was a couple of meters from the tracks. There was no guardrail there, but despite that, we camped out on the gallery for the night. My mother tied us to some metal post, I don't even know where she found the rope. We were on the first floor, and she was afraid that if we rolled over, we'd fall down. Squalid, but despite that, we got some sleep there. In the morning we went to the train. We managed to get only into open cattle wagons, but were on our way to Prague. On the way, people greeted us at each stop, we had baskets of cakes and food, they wept and embraced us, asked us about people, one about the other, whether there wasn't someone there. That's what our trip to Prague was like. In Prague they were already waiting for us, because when we left, they'd hoisted a yellow flag above Terezin. A yellow flag means heavy quarantine. Typhus had broken out. There was no more leaving Terezin. Some people were even under quarantine for two months, had no place to go, and were dying there.

In Prague the Red Cross caught us. They checked us thoroughly, as to whether we were healthy, whether we didn't have lice and scabies. They took everyone to the station at Masaryk [Train] Station. They didn't let anyone go, there was a whole army of them. It was something amazing, they were holding us out of fear that we were coming from the camp and were bringing epidemics and dirt with us. They held us for only a few hours. After the checkup we were allowed to get on the train again. The train traveled for a long, very long time. In all, the trip from Terezin lasted about three days.

We arrived in the evening at the station in Adamov. Adamov is about 25 km from Brno. The trains from Adamov to Brno weren't running, because the bridges had been destroyed. In Adamov, there was one lady waiting for us who had a grandson who'd also been in Terezin. She asked about him right away. We wanted to walk, but she offered that we could sleep over at her place. She had a house, a dairy. She was constantly asking about the boy. Her daughter had married a Jewish man, and they had a little boy. They'd taken him along with the husband. Several times she'd written me a letter, my father had given her my address in Terezin. I'd never seen the boy. She kept waiting for the transport from Terezin to arrive, which is why she'd found out about that train. She let us have a bath. She made coffee with milk and gave us something to eat. In the morning we went home on foot. We had an indescribable fear of what our home would look like. Here they were already saying that Brno had been bombed. We asked people as to how it looked on Hybesova St., we were afraid for Karlicek. We found out that not one building on Hybesova St. had remained standing. Our neighbor, Mrs. Jilkova, said that Karlicek was at Mrs. Ruprechtova's. Finally we met. He said: "See mommy, I always told you that Tonicka would return from the concentration camp, and here she is." They didn't bring Father until a week later, in a wheelchair. My mother wasn't able to push him around, her health was broken. My father was given a newsstand so that we could support ourselves, and I had the store. We'd gotten everything back, except for the fact that my father was an invalid.

When they'd arrested my mother, my father went to his friend's place. Mr. Sturza was the owner of an auto repair shop, and at the same time was a racer. My father was complaining to him, they took my wife away, and I'm just waiting that any minute I'll be going. Most of all, he was afraid for Karlik. Mr. Sturza, my father's friend, said no problem. Karlik will be in the shop, he visits here anyways. He'll get keys to the workshop and the office, and when he'll be in danger, he'll sleep there. I'll give him a pair of overalls, and he'll blend in, there's about eighteen apprentice auto mechanics anyways. The apprentices were Czechs. He said that this would be the best place for him to hide. Sturza wasn't allowed to repair civilians' cars, only German army, police and Gestapo ones. He wasn't allowed to even change a light bulb in a civilian car; everything was designated for the army. So my brother got a pair of coveralls. Mr. Sturza claimed that my brother was his best apprentice, and that they didn't have to ask him to anything twice. When they'd bring in a car for repairs, the hood had to be opened and they'd lay a blanket under the car, because the mechanic worked underneath the car. It wasn't like today, with all those machines. And then, when it was fixed, he went with them for a test drive, they had to test it out. That's how he survived. As far as the other boys go, they probably knew something. When one of them knew something, they all knew it. Some parents, when they were giving their boys snacks, also gave them one for Karlik. They were from the countryside, because those that lived in the city didn't have such resources. In the city, it was quite bad as far as food went. We also knew a butcher whose store we used to shop at, so they also knew that Karlicek was there. This family also supported him, and they used to send him a small pot with food. My father left him some money, so he could also buy food for himself. But he himself couldn't go to the store to buy something, he couldn't go outside. He always asked someone, who bought it for him. No, no one ever turned him in.

One lady, by the name of Jilkova, lived on the ground floor of that building where they'd moved us during the war. Her husband was doing forced war labor in Germany. They had three children. She knew that my brother was in hiding. Once they were looking for him there, who knows, perhaps even more than once. She said that the Gestapo had come and were asking about Karlicek, whether she ever saw him. No, she told them. And whether she doesn't know where he is, that they want him to come to see the Gestapo. They told her: look, it would be good for you to remember, you could pass on to him a summons to come to the Gestapo on a certain day. On top of that they then warned her that she's not in such a good situation, with her husband doing labor in Germany and she with three kids. So it'd be better for you to do what we want. She was quite frightened by that. My brother then told me that as he was sneaking through the hallway, she was waiting for him. Karlicek got a scare, who was that standing there, and it was Mrs. Jilkova. She was very kind to him. Karlicek, you know, I'm terribly sorry, but the Gestapo was here, and here's a summons. You've got to go there, I'm afraid for my husband and my children, if I didn't obey them and didn't give you this summons, they'd be in danger. Karlicek took the summons and said, don't worry Mrs. Jilkova, I'll go there. He took it, went home, packed his bags, taking some money, cards, photos and some clothes. He locked the apartment and walked across Brno. We had some friends in Vranov. He walked across all of Brno, through the forest. He arrived in Vranov before dawn. Those friends of ours took him in. He told them that at home the Gestapo were looking for him. Our friends had a house and garden in Vranov, even there he couldn't go outside, but at least he had everything that he needed. He was worried about our apartment, what if someone robbed it. He didn't last long there, and so he thanked them and after two weeks he went back. He was rarely in the apartment, and slept in the workshop. One other lady used to help him, who lived at 55 Hybesova St., Mrs. Ruprechtova. She was Jewish, and her husband was a Christian. They had three children. She and her daughter survived, one son, a student, was shot in Brno. They other son was married, they shipped him and his whole family, that is, his wife and child, to Terezin, I saw them there once. She knew that Karlicek was in that workshop across the street. She snuck over there and told him that on Friday evening, once it's dark, she'll leave the building unlocked and he can come over to her place and have a bath. And what was very important, and for him impossible, that he can also sleep over there, and leave in the morning. So he had Fridays there, on Friday evening Mrs. Ruprechtova would take him in. He had it very good there.

Alas, her son and his wife and six-year-old son were in Terezin for a very short time. They transported them to Auschwitz. Mrs. Ruprechtova stuck to me after the war, and I constantly had to tell her about what they'd been doing in Terezin, where they'd been, how they'd lived. She also asked whether they could still return; I said that they could, if one of them was ill, they'd still be in some sanatorium somewhere. She just kept hoping and hoping that her son's family would return. I constantly had to repeat the same story to her, what life in Terezin had been like, and when I'd last seen them. So this was the woman that used to bathe my brother, and in the morning fed him and gave him clean underwear. She put herself in danger, because taking care of a Jewish child equaled an immediate stay in a prison camp.

After the war, my brother was supposed to enter second year of council school. But he didn't know any of the material. That wasn't yet the biggest problem, that he hadn't attended school for three years. When I returned from the camp,  they brought me my father wrapped up, legless, from the camp, my mother's health was broken and she had heart problems. My brother hadn't been in school for three years, he'd just been hiding wherever he could, but on the other hand, he knew how to repair cars. All I saw was the problem that he was supposed to attend school. I was terribly worried. I was 17 at the time, right away I ran to the school board and there I asked whether they could advise me as to what I should do for my brother, that he was supposed to start school, but he'd be at the absolute bottom of the class, which would be terrible. At the school board they told me that over here, by the convent, is something like an orphanage. There were abandoned children there, being taken care of by the nuns. They said to me, if we give you a letter for reference for them, you could take your Karlicek there, and we'd ask them to take care of him every day, and prepare him for school. They'll do it, because there are child care workers there. Karlicek wasn't thrilled by this, because he was free, he'd managed to take care of himself even when the Gestapo had been looking for him. But I convinced him that this would be no good, and so I took him there. He always came home for one day. After two months, around the middle of August, he announced that he no longer wanted to stay there. He'd learned a few things, and then started attending first year of council school. It's true that he was supposed to start in second year. His education wasn't all that, three years were missing of course, well, he did what he could. He dreamt about leaving for the Palestine; he yearned for it terribly. At home, he attended the Hashomer movement 14, where he was preparing to leave for the Palestine. In 1948 he succeeded; he was 17 at the time.

No one we knew went with him. My mother was unhappy, she was afraid for him, that he'd be alone and without family. To this he said, don't worry, on the other hand I'll be free. And I don't want to listen to anyone maligning me any more, I won't stay here, Mother forgive me, but I'll come visit you, and you'll come visit me too. When he arrived in the Palestine, they put him up in Ramat Gan. In those days there weren't any cars there, all he wrote about was the sun. I asked him how are you, how are things going. So he wrote back, lots of sun and sand here.

My brother enlisted in the army right away. He served under the Jordan Hills, he didn't even go to sleep without his rifle, it was very dangerous. He was a big hero. He's not the type of person to complain and be unhappy. He said that it was good there, fine, we didn't do anything there, that's it. He was happy. He always returned to that kibbutz. When he was leaving in 1948, customs officials came to our place and checked what he was taking with him. He wanted to take his bicycle and accordion along. He played the accordion very well. The customs officials didn't allow him to take the harmonica, nor the bike. I said, just take what you want, and see what happens at the border. Well, so he packed those things up as well. The border guards didn't check the wagons, whether it had all passed through customs. My mother and I went with him to Breclav, where the customs people were. In Breclav, the trains were switched towards Austria. It was very sad at the station. I told my brother that when the customs officials arrive, to start playing some Czech folk songs on the accordion. When he began playing, everyone was thrilled by it. They just looked at his papers, but not his bags, because they were in the freight cars. He played, and they liked it. The train was about to start, it had already moved a bit, to connect to an Austrian locomotive, at which time we said, hey, we'll go to Austria. My brother agreed, and we got on. Then my mother said: And what about Dad? And so we began banging on the doors, to the guards, and so  they stopped the train, and we said goodbye. We had the chance to leave. Later he reproached us for it in letters. You're always writing me that you're sad, you should have all come at once, but you can still come to Israel. My father was worried about how he'd make a living there and all. In the end we found out that my father would have gotten post-war compensation, that even we would have been able to live off it. I wasn't scared of work. My mother was no longer able to work, as she had a weak heart. Living in a kibbutz, that wouldn't have even been a question for me. My brother used to say, I'm leaving with a light heart because I know that Tonicka [Antonie] won't abandon you. If I wouldn't have been here, he wouldn't have done it. My mother was very unhappy, but my father always said that he saw him as a great hero, and if that's what he wants, let him go his own way.

When my brother arrived in Israel, it was of course a big change for him, one he wasn't expecting. He went to the Haogen kibbutz. There were a couple of Czech boys there. So he began learning how to farm. They put him, who'd studied to be an auto mechanic, to work doing irrigation, they had to reclaim the desert. There were patrols there too, because the Arabs were stealing cattle from them at night. So it wasn't an easy life there. Collective live wasn't all that ideal either. He was young, and so began to miss certain freedoms, and the idea of only working, and not having even a penny, only for food and clothing, that happiness didn't last long. He had an accordion with him, and that was all as far as culture went. There were no cinemas, no theater, they had to put on all the plays themselves. On one such occasion he first met his wife.

He's still in Israel. He worked for two or three big companies. At first he worked for an Italian company, and then as a manager for Volkswagen. Later he built his own workshop, and employed auto mechanics. He himself was an excellent mechanic. He studied at Volkswagen and also repaired Japanese cars. Later, he unfortunately lost a leg. Now he's paralyzed. Despite his handicap, he comes here every year; they put him on the plane in a wheelchair, and I pick him up from the plane, and so we see each other every year. I used to go there often before.

My sister-in-law was studying education in Tel Aviv at the time. She was still living with her parents. Once a girlfriend of hers invited her to a celebration at a kibbutz. She saw my brother playing there, and was very attracted to him. She complimented him on the nice music, and said that she'd like to learn to play the accordion. They came to an agreement, and in the end she invited him over. He was also in the army for another three years, he went from that kibbutz straight into the army. When he returned, he got married. He was 21. My sister-in-law's name is Nica Cvi, her surname is Michalova now. They had a daughter, Shani. Alas, my brother is seriously ill, he's a paraplegic and is missing one leg. They had to amputate it. On top of that, he then had a stroke.

Shani ended up getting married, to an Israeli. After the wedding, her husband said that he had an uncle in America, and that they could take over his store for a year. That they could make more money there than in Israel. She loved him, and so agreed. They stayed there for about a year, but then he didn't want to return. Shani wanted to return at all costs, because she has friends and her parents only in Israel. She didn't feel at home there, and didn't want to stay there for any amount of money. It was a big battle, my sister-in-law had to go to America. It took three months until Shani got divorced and could return home. Her ex-husband stayed there, and after the divorce he married some Jewish girl. He thus became an American citizen, as she was an American. A year later he divorced again, returned to Israel, and wanted Shani back. But at that time he revealed his reasons, that he'd wanted to get American citizenship. Shani's ex-husband had a worldly nature, he wanted to travel all over, to be free. Shani told him that he'd disappointed her once, and that she no longer trusted him, and that she'd rather be alone. So now she takes care of her ill parents. She also has work that interests her. At first she worked for a large company. Besides that, she studied at the Faculty of Science. Then she started her own business, flower arranging. She arranges for weddings, decorates theaters and ballrooms. She started her own garden on the roof of the house. She works as a landscape architect. She's happy. She takes care of her father every day, helps wash and dress him, and then runs off to work.

When Mom and I returned from Terezin, it wasn't easy to start living everyday life again. It's true that we were all alive. My brother had survived too, people helped him. As for my father, they brought him without legs. We'd all lived in very tough conditions, but we'd managed to escape with our lives. My father was terribly unhappy that he was no longer of any use, now that he had no legs. We consoled him, up to now you took care of us, now we'll take care of you. Right away we asked for a newsstand, which they also granted us. My father also got a wheelchair. We opened the newsstand right away. I used to take my father there. My father sat behind the counter, with the goods around him, and served people. In the evening we'd go home. The newsstand was on the other side of town, we were far away from it. Each time, people had to help me onto the streetcar with the wheelchair, and then off again. Four people had their work cut out for them to lift him up. There weren't any streetcars with access for the handicapped, but one could get by. At the age of 17, I had to care of my invalid father and the newsstand. My mother was at home, she was very weak, and so couldn't work. She was glad when she managed to cook a light meal. We had a large garden, we'd gotten it back. My father worked alone in that newsstand up to the age of 78. I used to go there with him almost every day. After 1948 15 the Communists limited sales 16, but it was enough for him to make a living. Mainly he was satisfied, that he was working, that he'd remained in contact with people, and that he was supporting himself. He died in 1983, at the age of 83. Despite not having legs, he was physically and mentally healthy. My mother was only ever at home, she had a seriously ill heart, and died at the age of 59.

We couldn't get our house back, as we'd lost it. We'd had to raze it. After the war, we returned to our pitiful apartment. My mother immediately began looking for someplace for us to move into. Someone told us that in the building just around the corner, on the ground floor, there was a vacant three-room apartment that had been abandoned by a family that had left for Germany. So we went to the National Committee, which of course immediately issued it to us. We were also given another option, but my father had that wheelchair, so we could only live on the ground floor. So we began living again, began working, and were happy.

My brother was associating with young Jewish people, and studying. He wanted to leave for Israel, and was systematically preparing for it. He said that he doesn't want to listen to someone call him "Jew". He wants to be in our country, and doesn't believe that the Germans won't return. As a child, he overcame something that he can't forget. He survived bombing, queues, he can't forget that there were dead horses lying on the corner, and people were cutting meat off them. He didn't want to live here. Our Mom was distraught over it. When he was born, he'd meant the whole world to her. Our father on the other hand, said that it's heroic of him, you've got to support him. Karlicek left when he was 17.

I couldn't abandon my parents. It was out of the question, it wasn't at all to be considered. My brother said: "After all, you've got Tonicka, otherwise I wouldn't leave, if you were here alone. She won't abandon you." But now even he says that despite that, we should've all gone, because even so, they assigned him to a kibbutz. If we would've gone to the kibbutz too, we would of course have lived and worked there, just like here. Even though our father didn't have legs, he was very capable, he had a head and hands, and would have made a living there too.

We had friends that left too. We admired them, because they were, after all, going off into the unknown. Even though it was our country, it's not that easy to arrive somewhere with just some bags. You can never know how it'll be and what'll be. The desire to be free was the strongest thing for them. Not everyone was satisfied to be "accepted" in Bohemia. I can't say that we're oppressed here, but here and there an anti-Semitic remarks comes along. Personally, I think that anti-Semitism is just envy. I even convinced some people otherwise. "Hey, you're a Jew? Aren't you ashamed of it?"

"Why should I be ashamed? I've never hurt anyone, and neither did my parents, nor our ancestors, so I don't know why I should be ashamed. Imagine, I'm even proud of it. Why do you think I should be ashamed of it? Why don't you like Jews, should everyone who's a Jew be ashamed of it now?"

"My mother told me that she worked as a servant for Jews, and they didn't treat her well. When we were little, and were learning about religion, they told us that the Jews killed Christ."

"It really is sad that they oppressed your mother. It's too bad she didn't leave such a family. But do you think that it couldn't have happened that she'd have worked for Christians, and would also have experienced injustice? I unfortunately can't defend those people, if they weren't good to your mother, but she should definitely have left them. That wasn't because they were Jews, that was because they perhaps didn't have good character. There are only two things in the world: good and evil. And what else do you want to blame Jews for? Do you think it's our fault that we're of the Jewish religion? We're just as much Czechs as you, we just have a different religion. We were born here, just in Jewish families. We inherit the religion and traditions of our ancestors, but that doesn't mean that we're bad. Of course, in each nation and each country, there are good and bad people. And so it is also among citizens of the Jewish religion. Is it someone's fault that he's oppressed and doesn't know why? Is when, to whom and where you were born your fault? Is it your fault? And what if you wouldn't been born into a Jewish family? Think about it, and try to put yourself into this situation. Maybe you wouldn't even been happier than you are today. You wouldn't have been led to hate. They would've only taught you to believe in God, in good. They would have led you to education. You're still young, you can still learn, so that you'll realize that you can't let yourself be influenced. As far as Jesus Christ goes, the Jewish didn't crucify Jesus. I can tell you that. The Romans decided about it, and also executed the verdict."

This hate seems to be endless. Today priests come to us and ask for forgiveness, that this hate towards Jews had been there since it's been mentioned in books. That nation was persecuted for it didn't do, and Hitler took advantage of this thought, which was very bad. This lady then apologized to me, I told her: "It's not your fault that they led you to hate like this." One blames another for what's not his fault, and on top of that tries to crush him, he wants to eliminate him and kill him.

I met my husband, Ladislava Militky, at the spa in Lipova in 1956. At first we wrote each other letters, then he invited me over to his parents' place. I also invited him to mine, and in September, in 1957, we got married. He moved to Brno. I was undergoing treatment, I'd had frostbitten toes from Terezin, when we used to go outside. In Terezin we didn't work just in the fields, but they also sent us to do construction work. They were organizing the building new barracks for the prisoners. There was water and ice everywhere. The Germans also made use of us during hunting. We served as beaters for pheasants and rabbits. They selected several beaters from our group. When they took us with them, our shoes got soaked. It was cold, below freezing. Our shoes didn't have time to dry properly by morning. Actually, they almost never dried out. That's how I got my frostbite. I was treated for it for several years. When I was getting married in 1957, I still had it. It was over ten years that I suffered from it. One friend of mine, who was in Bergen Belsen 17, got such frostbitten feet during the march 18 that her toes fell off. She also died right away. My husband had some sort of eczema, which is why he was at the spa. That's where we met, and in the end got married. I always wanted to marry a boy that was educated, handsome and from a good family. Which is also what happened. We were happy. We had a boy. He makes us happy.

My husband, Ladislav Militky, was born on 12th January 1929 in the town of Litovel, in the Hana region of Morava, near Olomouc. His father worked for an agricultural savings bank. He prospered there, they even built a villa. They did well, for ten years he was an only child, until his sister was born. My husband isn't a Jew. I got along very well with his family. They got along well with Jewish families, in fact, not only did they know them socially, but also visited the baths with Jewish families. One of my husband's best friends is also from a Jewish family. There wasn't even a hint of anti-Semitism amongst them.

My husband worked in construction, and worked in various jobs. After he moved to our place in Brno after the wedding, also completed hotel school. He worked in a student cafeteria and in various recreational facilities. That was all fine. But a crisis took place in our lives. His social life took on an unfortunate direction. In his youth he did various sports, after the wedding he participated in sports only passively, and liked very much to attend games and various contests. Unfortunately, this hobby caused him to be more interested in it that than the everyday life of his family – his wife and son [Ladislav Militky, familiarly Ladicek – Editor's note]. So the spent less and less time with his family – later women that wanted him also came along. In the end we got divorced, because he literally abandoned his family.

We were divorced in 1978. After the divorce he moved in with one woman that lived out in the country, who'd been chasing after him for three years. He used to claim that he was thinking about us, even out there. After a year and a half he wanted to return. Living with this woman, he had to make a living with manual labor, to which he had an adversity. In response to that, I said to him: "That's what you wanted, so go ahead and see it through." My husband was always educating himself, he understood, read and studied everything. He knew a lot. He was like a dictionary. But work around the house – like the car or yard – that he disliked. We also had a cottage. The way he saw it was that we didn't need all that, because maintaining it requires work, which was my invention. He always said that we didn't have so much work that needed to be done, that it was just I who was inventing it. For him, the household was a launch pad, when he left, he also returned. Although he died last year, and did love us, he didn't know how to show his love the way it should be done. To just say I love you and give you some money, that's not enough. Love has to be proven through sacrifice and work. If you don't prove it, then it's not a true relationship. When he returned, he claimed that something has to be fixed. Of course, nothing was fixed, just troubles arrived. Personally, I was never able to tell him that I no longer wanted him there. So he stayed. He got a weak stroke, and a heart attack. We were still divorced, but lived together for another 25 years. People kept asking me, why don't you get rid of him and move out.

I never took my husband's keys from our apartment away from him. Our son was studying in Ostrava, and came home from the dormitory regularly. When our son was at home, my ex-husband also used to come for a visit. We also used to go on smaller trips together. I think that despite our divorce, my husband was unable to cut himself free of his family. My life focused on the life and future of our son. Under those conditions it was no longer so simple. Luckily I still had my father. I always felt that the most important thing was that we had a son together. He grew up. He got married, and they had three children. Today they're all studying and working, and everything's fine. I never remarried, even though I could have.

When my son was in Grade 2, they notified us that he'd been selected for a newly opened elementary school. The school started with Grade 3. Each school was supposed to select two of its Grade 2 students. Our son was also one of them. I agreed, so did my son. We were supposed to decide which class he was to go into. I wanted him to go into an English one, while my husband wanted our son to go into the French one, because he'd also graduated in French, in which he was fluent. I asked him why he'd chosen French. He said because then he'd be able to help him study. I told him that I didn't think that he'd help him study. English opens up the world. Already back then, in 1966, I was saying that. He retorted, no, no, French. To this I replied: "Yes, before the war, but English is useful absolutely everywhere. He can go wherever, a everywhere he'll be able to speak and study." I'd also taken English for two years, I'd also taken courses and so on. So I said to myself that in the beginning I can help him, and then we'll see. In the end my son did go to an English school, though it was at the other end of town. I was extremely concerned and afraid for him. He was little, going to Grade 3 on a streetcar, and had to transfer in busy places. Despite that he did well, they took everything in English, and the only thing they took in Czech was Czech. Already after one year he knew how to speak English. In the beginning they learned through playing and songs, which he didn't even know how to translate, but knew what they were about. Within a year he could communicate in English. When we went to Israel, he spoke English on the boat. At that time he was 9. He translated everything for me. My brother was amazing, and left money for us with the captain, so that we could enjoy ourselves on the ship. We were there for two days, as back then you could still travel by steamship. We stayed in Israel for two months. It was good there, my brother was still healthy. He had work, he was an auto racer and had a beautiful life.

Ladicek applied for a school of foreign trade. When he returned from the entrance exams, he was excited that he'd known it all, and that he had the questions answered as they were writing them on the blackboard. A week later a letter arrived, I don't remember exactly what it said, but something to the effect that they weren't accepting him for political reasons. So I carefully explained to him that even despite the fact that he knew everything, not everything we strive for always works out. Ladicek was of course miserable because of it. I called some high schools to find out whether they still had room. My son was always very good at drawing, so I also called vocational schools, so that if they took him as a house painter, he could, if he was still interested in studying, get into tech school later. I went to see the economics school principal, and asked him for the reasons they hadn't accepted him, when he'd been one of the best in the entrance exams. And why are they punishing children and taking away their future, when nothing's their fault? Then the principal asked me if we'd be satisfied if they accepted Ladicek into general economics. That it may not be foreign trade, but that's a narrow specialization, and if he didn't manage to find work with some company doing foreign trade, he'd have to learn and work in general economics anyways. He explained it beautifully to me. At home I asked Ladicek whether he'd be satisfied if they accepted him into general economics. Of course, of course, he said. He did well in school, he won a shorthand contest. Once his teacher called me in and said that during the four years she was teaching him, there was no better student. After the graduation exams, his teacher turned to the teaching staff and proclaimed: "Don't forget that his student was accepted here on appeal."

After high school he applied to Economics University in Ostrava. There he met his wife, Venuska. After first year, their son, Zdenecek [Zdenek] was born. When they were graduating, and coming to the front for their diplomas, Zdenecek was already nodding to them, and saying "Aha, mom and dad." They eventually had another two children, Michaela and Jiri. We helped them, during the day we took care of the kids and they attended school, and during the evening they studied together.

Zdenek did artistic facades and stuccoes on castles. He also knew how to draw very well. After high school he'd wanted to attend civil engineering, but he didn't pass his math exams. He got a job with one company that was in the roofing material business. He's supplementing his studies with night business courses at university. Michaela is studying to be a teacher. Jiri is still in high school. During the school year, I see my grandchildren less, but we call each other relatively often. When the grandchildren were small, they spent a lot of time at my place.

Our boy attended university in Ostrava. There was no economics school here, and that's what he wanted. He also played competitive badminton for one club. Despite the fact that he played a lot of sports as a boy, I used to take him to hockey, to the arena. He was already on the ice at 5:00 a.m. About three times a week, we'd get up at 4:00 a.m., sometime with tears, too. In the meantime, there was soccer too, but he came to like badminton best. He  traveled, competed, and liked it very much.

After the war, I at first helped my father run the newsstand. Later I worked at a machine works, where I stayed for 20 years. They put me into the computing center. We put together production reports for the finance department. We put together calculations for the accounting department for parts production, for which we issued salaries for workers and experts. I did that for 20 years. Technology advanced during that time. I liked this work, on the whole. After some time, I switched jobs and went to the computing center of a railway construction firm, where I was manager for four years. Sixteen girls worked there. We worked for all of Moravia. The head office was in Bratislava. From there I retired. In 1986 they called me from the Jewish Community, which was under the leadership of Mr. Arnost Neufeld. His secretary was leaving, and they asked me whether I couldn't take her place. I was a bit afraid to take the job, as I didn't want to commit myself. I could've been someplace else, where there was money to be made, because at that time you worked for the Community almost for free. Sometimes a person wants to do something good, which may not be paid so well, but is all the more useful.

I still work for the Jewish Community today, the difference just being that I only visit people that want it, or to be more precise need it, or I take them to the doctor, as the case may be. I just do social visits, or when there's some sort of event. Before that I was a social worker and was also in charge of the secretariat. We established contact with old people that needed it, who were for the most part alone.  Every decent family, when they have a grandma or grandpa, takes care of them in all respects. And when people who were alone needed to be taken to the doctor, or to be brought or taken somewhere, to be accompanied to the synagogue or outside, whatever, we did it. Then this activity developed to the point that if a woman was living alone, volunteers from us would come and help her out. Sometimes we arranged nursing services, or for example she'd need to call a plumber, get something fixed or painted, so we organized all that. Simply put, we kept in touch with those people that asked for help.

My colleagues at the railway construction firm didn't express anything related to me being Jewish. Perhaps they might have had certain anti-Semitic thoughts, but luckily they didn't express them. When I started there, there was comparatively harsh political vetting. The strictest conditions were for someone who was applying to the army, to the police, and then to the railways. At that time, the political officer that was interviewing me told me that he liked the fact that I'd told him everything, that I had a brother and friends in Israel. "Well, Mrs. Militka, I like that you're telling me everything openly like this. We've also got employees that deny everything. So we're looking forward to you working here." I didn't have problems. And I told him, why should I try keep it a secret, maybe you knew about it even before I arrived. In my preceding job, every time I arrived back from a trip abroad, they'd call me into the political department. They wanted to know whom I'd met with and so on. There were unfortunately people there whose work consisted in monitoring other, according to them suspicious people. Once I said to them: "I don't have the education nor the personality to move about in these spheres that you're asking about. When I went to Israel, I went to see my brother, his wife and daughter and my girlfriends, and to see the country. I got to know its history and historical sites, and relaxed by the sea. And nothing else... and I was happy that I was with my brother, because every day with him is valuable to me. The Germans robbed us of a lot of time, when we weren't able to be together. Now we again can't be together, though we've not done anything to anyone, and despite that we're not allowed to be brother and sister, neither here nor there. " To which he replied: "Would you like to live there?" I said: "Not for now."

"And why?"

"It's very hot there." They saw that they won't budge with me.

Especially in Communist countries, people tried to avoid work and made up various excuses and stories. I can't claim it for sure, as I didn't see it around me. I just know that there were those that informed on each other. That was unpleasant. Otherwise they didn't avoid work. Informers were also paid for their work.

I was happy when I got my pension. I'd already been making plans how we were going to do and enjoy everything when I'll have the time. Everyone who's healthy looks forward to that. But I retired right after a gall bladder operation, and was weak. Then I realized that with each day a person gets older, and has to battle against it. Despite the fact that I like my apartment and household, I miss having people around. That's why I said to myself that I had to get well and get out among people.

My son has a positive relationship with Judaism. When he was little, he used to go to the synagogue with me. We observed holidays, and didn't eat what was forbidden. For Passover we'd make food from matzot. Even to this day, I make stuffed fish, which I like very much, and bake barches, roast meat. Because my husband wasn't a Jew, I tried to prepare their holidays for him. We used to observe those too.

My grandsons are also interested in Judaism. They read books and study literature. They weren't brought up in any faith, as their mother wasn't religious either. My grandsons aren't registered at any Community. Venuska is afraid that what happened to us could happen again, that someone could come, take the register and would then have them.

My parents observed Jewish traditions. Not as much as before the war, of course. They didn't eat kosher anymore, but they didn't eat what was forbidden. My parents are buried at the Jewish cemetery. Karlicek managed to get permission to come to our mother's funeral, but alas when it came to our father's, he wasn't successful. He wanted to arrange permission in Israel, but they [the Czech Communist government] wouldn't give it to him. He also tried it through the Swedish embassy, he even got to Vienna, but no further. He had to fly back to Sweden. Because of him, we postponed the funeral by ten days. Back then the times were such that they didn't allow siblings to see each other, for a son to come for his own father's funeral. They didn't respect people at all.

I told my son about what took place during the Holocaust. I was very careful, just fragments, so he had to put it together himself. It wasn't like now, when we're sitting here and I'm telling you everything. I wanted to protect him, because it's been proven that the fear gets passed on up to the second generation, that even his children would still have been afraid... I wanted to protect him from that. My son is registered at the Community, but his children aren't. Venuska is afraid that what happened to us could happen again, that they'll take the records and would then have them, too.

I always liked to read. Even now, my apartment is full of books. My son's books that he didn't take with him are still here. They've also got a lot of books at home. I concentrated mainly on literature for my son. He was always interested in history, so we used to buy him books on world history. When newspapers were still cheap, my husband used to subscribe to all the dailies. He always read a lot, and was like a walking encyclopedia; it's just too bad that he never shared his knowledge with anyone. He never asked me what he could do so that I'd read more. He claimed that there wasn't that much work, that I was making the work up.

We used to go on vacations to Romania, and to Yugoslavia. We also had a cottage, where we spent our free time. My father never understood why we used to go on vacations, when it was so beautiful at our cottage. He always used to say, the sun, mountains, beautiful nature, what else could you wish for. But we used to go because of people, in each place there were different people, different customs. Once we managed to meet up with my brother in Romania. It was, how would I put it, neutral territory. He came from Israel, and I from Czechoslovakia.

Before 1989, my brother was in Czechoslovakia for our mother's funeral. Once a trip from Israel was organized for those that had family in Czechoslovakia. I think that an ad came out in the papers. My brother also applied. The trip was through a travel agency. He was with us for a while, and then he joined a tour group and they traveled to beautiful places in Bohemia – Karlovy Vary and so on. That was a year before our father's death. They then didn't let him come for the funeral. The tour was advantageous for the state, because it put foreign currency into the state treasury. Lately, my brother has been coming every year. In Israel they put him on a plane, and I then pick him up. Alas, now he's a paraplegic, but despite that he comes here regularly.

I didn't have a lot of time for friendships, because I devoted my entire life to my son. Ladicek was a very active child. He used to play hockey, soccer, and I don't even know what else. Besides that, I worked, and every day I visited my invalid father.

The year 1948, the arrival of Communism, meant almost nothing to me. I was taking care of my parents. Right after the war, my father got a newsstand. After Communism arrived, various prohibitions and limitations were issued, what you could and couldn't sell. He wasn't allowed to sell tobacco and tobacco products. He could only sell newspapers, magazines and some smokers' accessories. And even that was left to him only so that they wouldn't limit the life of an invalid that had returned from a prison camp. So that he wouldn't lose his customers, my father used to buy cigarettes for the full price, and then would sell them for the same price. He'd noticed that while buying magazines, people would also buy cigarettes.

The worst thing about Communism was that people weren't free. Everyone was monitored. You couldn't travel freely. There was constant harassment by the authorities. Once, I traveled illegally to Israel without my passport – you see, you could persuade the customs people to not stamp your passport. The way we did it was that I went to Frankfurt to visit a girlfriend, and from there secretly to Israel. Upon my return, the StB 20 was waiting for me. Someone had seen me at the airport in Frankfurt. I told them, that's possible, my friend took me to see so many places, it seems to me that we'd passed a couple of airports. I don't know Frankfurt, how should I know that it's an airport? After a few hours of interrogation and intimidation, they finally released me, because they realized that they wouldn't get any further with me. It was quite unpleasant, because they kept using phrases like "we'll prove it", "we know everything about you." and so on.

In 1968 the Soviets arrived 21. My son was at a Pioneer summer camp, and I was terribly afraid for him. I wanted to go see him. I went to see someone I knew, to borrow his motorcycle. He was persuading me in all manner of ways to not go there, that it's nothing but tanks on the road now, and that it's dangerous, but the children are definitely in a safe place. Finally he succeeded in changing my mind. Ladicek returned home after a few days; camp had ended early. At work they were assuring us that they'd hung a Red Cross flag in front of the camp.

When the state of Israel was created, we were happy, that those people would finally have a home. When a person has a home, he becomes stronger. I always admired people that set out into the unknown. Even Karlicek, when he left, said that for him it would be enough to get something to eat and to have a place to sleep. I felt very proud at the time.

My brother and I wrote each other. We were allowed to send letters, and also got them from him. Occasionally it happened that they were opened, but we got them. During the wars I was afraid for my brother. At the same time, I was proud that such a small country managed to defend itself against so many Arabs. In a figurative sense, it was like for example a small country like Slovakia defending itself against surrounding countries. That pride, that a handful of Jews managed to defend themselves. I just never understood why they called Israel an aggressor, when it was the Arabs that attacked.

I've been in Israel countless many times. I liked everything, especially the people, their character. Many compare them to a cactus. On the surface they've got dense thorns that prevent access to them. Inside them is sweet milk. They maintain a certain distance from foreigners, I guess it stems from the fact that no one behaves considerately towards them. They can't expect help and understanding from anyone. But when they see that you're honestly interested in them, they open up. Few nations have a heart like they do. They have an amazing patriotism. Here, young people avoid military service, but there everyone tries to fulfill his patriotic duty. In the beginning I didn't like that reserve of theirs.

Glossary:

Grigory Gendler
St. Petersburg
Russia
Interviewer: Vera Postavinskaya
Date of interview: August 2006

Grigory Haimovich Gendler is a vivid personality.

He is 86 years old, but remembers well the smallest details of his colorful biography and speaks about himself and about his family with pleasure.

He articulates distinctly, his voice is a clear voice of professional lecturer. It seems that he carefully threads time-ordered details of his narration.

When you listen to him, you realize that it is not simply a story of a person about his life, but a well-edited work of fiction.

Grigory Haimovich lives in a large apartment in one of the new districts of St. Petersburg.

His family is large: he has a daughter, a son-in-law (husband of his daughter), a granddaughter and another son-in-law (husband of his granddaughter).

In the room of Grigory Haimovich there are a lot of shelves with books on economics and a big writing-table at the window.

Grigory Haimovich still works:he supervises research activities of postgraduate students.

Memory of Grigory Gendler keeps a lot of information not only about pre-war time and military operations, but also about present-day realities.

He is a very good company. 

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

• My family background

I know nothing about my great-grandparents. My paternal grandfather was born in the middle of the 19th century; I do not remember the exact date of his birth. His name was Shaye. I remember him to be rather strong man. Before the revolution of 1917 he lived in Kiev [capital of Ukraine]. My parents lived there, too. There (in Kiev) I was born in 1921. My grandfather owned a wood-store in Kiev and was well-to-do, in contrast to the family of my parents: they were rather poor. In Kiev we lived in the same street. Sometimes my grandfather rendered me assistance: he gave me presents. In the 1920s grandfather decided to leave his wood-store (as time went on, things began to change and he understood it) and managed to master the profession of bookbinder. As far as I remember, he was a success and performed a lot of orders for binding books. In 1927 our family moved from Kiev to Moscow, but when I visited Kiev, I always came to see my grandfather. He loved me very much, and I loved him, too. 

My grandfather had got several sons and daughters. One of his sons was a very handsome young man (a little bit older than me); under the Soviet regime he managed a shop in Kiev. We were good friends. He liked to court ladies (I often watched him doing it). My grandfather reached a great age (he died at the age of 90 in 1970s). I cannot tell much about my paternal grandmother: she died early in life (before the war). I do not remember her name. After her death grandfather married another woman and I remember her face better.

Among the children of my paternal grandfather I remember his daughter Klara, the youngest child. Klara became a widow early in her life. Her daughter Tanya is still alive. When after the end of the war we appeared in Leningrad, we invited her to live with us. She lived in our apartment for 6 years as a student at the Refrigeration College. After graduation, she left for Kiev.

Her first marriage was unhappy: she fell in love with a very handsome man, an athlete, but his mental faculties were much worse than his physical ones. Therefore she parted from him and got married for the second time. Later she left for America together with her mother Klara. It happened about 15 years ago, after the Chernobyl disaster. [The Chernobyl disaster was a major accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on April 26, 1986. An explosion at the plant was followed by radioactive contamination of the surrounding geographic area.] I don’t know where they are now. I think Tanya works as an engineer of refrigerating equipment.

My paternal grandfather and my father were religious people, they observed all traditions. In Kiev on the opposite side of the street there was a synagogue. They visited it sometimes. I remember Jews in the synagogue dancing with greenish velvet Torah scrolls and singing. Most probably it was Simchat Torah. I do not remember, but I guess my grandfather prayed. He attended the synagogue. He finished cheder and taught children arithmetic at a Jewish school. In our family we spoke mostly Russian, and sometimes Yiddish. My Yiddish is poor.

I remember appearance of my maternal grandmother and grandfather. They also lived in Kiev. Sorry, I do not remember their names. Probably my maternal grandfather’s name was Hirsh, because my mother's patronymic was Georgievna. My maternal grandfather was an employee: he worked in a large firm engaged in manufacture and sales of leather products; he was a great expert in that sphere. Mom had got 5 sisters, no brothers. After the end of the war (for the most part after Chernobyl disaster) some of her sisters moved to America and Canada. We were close friends with Rachel, mother's younger sister who was married to an interesting person. His surname was Byuk, he was an expert in communication service. Vova Byuk, their son and my cousin was my friend: we were brought up together. At present Vova Byuk lives in Israel.

In Kiev we lived in the stone house; synagogue was situated across the street. I remember a large room on the 2nd or the 3rd floor. My parents took care of me: I was their only child.

My father Haim Shayevich (Efim Issaevich) Gendler was born in 1897 in Ukraine (in Korosten of Kiev province, 200 km from Kiev). He moved to Kiev approximately in 1920, there he worked as a math teacher. Later he became a handicraftman. He had got a knitting machine, and knitted caps. Later he lost his job, and in 1926 parents moved from Kiev to Moscow searching for work.

My Mom Berta Georgievna Smyk was born in 1903 in Korets (in Poland) and in 1920s she moved to Kiev. Mom was afraid to talk about the place where she was born. She was very nervous, because she suffered much. Mom told me that when she was young and not married, she lived on the 2nd floor of a wooden house in Kiev, near a monastery. During the Civil War 1 gangs under the command of Petliura 2 occupied Kiev and arranged pogroms 3. They tried to catch my mother, therefore she was forced to jump down from the 2nd floor, escaping from Petliura’s soldiers. Unfortunately it affected her mind detrimentally.

• Growing up

In Kiev she did not work, at that time I was a baby. Parents observed Tradition partly: they were not deeply religious and did not observe kashrut.

In 1927 our family moved to Moscow. At first we rented a small room in Lossinoostrovsk (suburb of Moscow). I remember that in Lossinoostrovsk our samovar fell down accidentally and burned my leg. Parents took me to a doctor in a sledge.

Later we moved to the center of Moscow. Our room was situated in a cellar. Father worked as an accountant, later he became a bokkeeper, and his last 20 years he worked as a warehouse manager at the Ministry of Chemical Industry. During the war father was in evacuation with his warehouse in Kirovochepetsk (a city in Kirov region). A chemical industrial complex was situated there. Father died in 1961 in Moscow. Mom helped Daddy at his warehouse and worked there as a packer. Later (after the end of the war) she sold newspapers in a kiosk in the center of Moscow. Later we moved to a room on the 3rd floor (12 square meters) near the Kiev railway station. 

At school I had got a friend Tolya Myagkich, later he became an actor. His father was a member of the Moscow CPSU committee. But soon he was expelled from the CPSU, and worked as a roofer.

Mom’s brother Tsale Smyk lived in Vinnitsa (Ukraine). In 1916 Tsale was a CPSU member, worked as an economic manager. He frequently visited us in Moscow, and economics occupied my attention.

In 1937 Tsale was arrested and declared a Polish spy. He was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment with confiscation and exile (it was equivalent to execution). His wife and his son were deported to Kazakhstan. During the war his son perished in the Battle of Stalingrad 4, and his wife Sonya was rehabilitated in 1953.

My parents read much, but never subscribed to newspapers. In Moscow my parents often visited the Jewish theatre of Mikhoels 5. Parents were not CPSU members. Their wedding ceremony was carried out according Tradition.

In 1939 I finished my school. I usually spent summer vacations in Moscow, and sometimes went to pioneer summer camps in suburbs of Moscow. Before the school I did not attend kindergarten.

At school I came across no manifestations of anti-Semitism and till the 8th class did not know my nationality. My parents never spoke about it. I was an excellent pupil; I liked to study very much. Every subject was easy for me: literature, mathematics, etc. I used to take part in different contests for schoolchildren. I remember that one day my teacher of Russian language Antonina Ivanovna said that in her opinion I should become a professor in the future. Our teacher of physics was a very interesting person, he was elegant in dress. I remember that our teacher of biology Bella (I do not remember her patronymic), a Jewess pronounced the word myasso (meat) in a very funny manner. In my early childhood when we got to Moscow, my parents bought a violin for me, but my studies lasted not long: my family could not afford my lessons. I remember that in 1930 (when people suffered from starvation) my parents sold their wedding rings and bought tasty meals in Torgsin store 6.

During my school years I was engaged in amateur art activities, an actor Yemelyanov from the Vakhtangov theatre taught us. We put on the stage “Gypsies” by Pushkin 7. I read the narrator’s text, and my friend Tolya played the role of the old gipsy. I also recited the poem To The Sea by Pushkin, and got a diploma for it.

When I was a pupil of the 8th and 9th form, I studied at a glider school. There I learned to make short climbs, but did not fly. I remember the opening ceremony of the Palace of Pioneers in 1937 or 1938.  N. Khrushchev 8 was present at it (at that time he was a secretary of the Moscow CPSU committee). I was an active pioneer.

I visited Yumashev [Andrey Yumashev was a test pilot, a member of the Gromov’s crew - participant of the flight over the North Pole in 1937] and Krestinsky [Nikolay Krestinsky was a Soviet CPSU and statesman, in 1930-1938 he was a USSR deputy people's commissar of foreign affairs] to invite them to our school. Yumashev did not come, and Krestinsky came and gave us a lecture.

In my childhood I was lucky to see Chkalov 9 and his son in Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. I heard that his son said to him ‘Daddy, look! Here is your portrait’.

At school I was the chairman of the group pioneer organization. Kanina, our school director was an Honored Worker of Education; she was always nice to me. I had got a schoolmate Boris Goldin, who became an outstanding architect later.

After school (in 1939) I entered college without entrance examinations (because my school leaving certificate was full of excellent marks). My parents did not interfere and I chose the Moscow College of Philosophy, History and Literature named after Chernyshevsky (philosophical faculty). I studied 3 months and a half, and was called up for military service. Later my parents helped me to transfer to the correspondence department of the Moscow State University (by the way, during the war the Moscow College of Philosophy, History and Literature was liquidated).

From the recruiting center they took us somewhere by train (in a heated goods van) and made us get off at Shepetovka (a town in Khmelnitsk region of Ukraine) railway station. There I studied at a special training platoon; they prepared me to become an anti-aircraft gunner. There I studied 9 months, and then we were moved to Stanislav (now Ivano-Frankovsk, a city in Ukraine) to the 15th tank division under command of general Feklenko. There they decided to appoint me a political worker, because I was a student of the College of Philosophy. So I started writing articles for the division newspaper The Soviet Patriot. I wrote much, and they invited me to become an instructor. I lived in barracks. Arkady Raskov, the former correspondent of Pravda newspaper and Yastreb, an assistant of Katukov worked together with me. Later I remained alone, visited different military units and described soldier’s life. Twice they let me go to Moscow to pass through the next in turn examinations at my college.

At the Moscow College of Philosophy, History and Literature named after Chernyshevsky there were well-known teachers, outstanding representatives of philosophical science, higher mathematics, physics, and biology. Among them there were professor Avdeev and academician Zavadsky. I often attended meetings of poetry fans at the Polytechnical Museum. I was present at performances of Sergey Mikhalkov and Nikolay Osseev (they were well-known Soviet poets), listened to public debate on Mayakovsky’s poetry.

I remember that in 1941 I came to Moscow to pass through exams. I took a taxi and I remember that the taxi driver did not switch on the taximeter. After the trip he demanded more money than it was necessary.

At that time I spent 2 days at home: 2 first days of the war. Together with other people I listened to Molotov’s speech 10 on the radio.

• During the War

Having learned about the beginning of the war, I hastened to the Kiev railway station. When I arrived to Kiev, I met there my cousin Sasha Feldbeim (later he became an outstanding architect) in the break between my trains. We had a talk with Sasha, and I left for Ivano-Frankovsk [Ivano-Frankivsk at present, a city in south-western Ukraine]. There at my editorial office I got to know that everybody left for Chernovtsy (a city in Ukraine). In Chernovtsy I got up to the 15th tank division and my office. Fascists bombed the division and gradually encircled it. We were divided into 2 parts: tanks fought their way towards Kiev, and trucks under command of colonel Ryabov moved through woods towards railway station Peryatin, where we joined the rest of tank battalions.

It was in July 1941 when we got aboard the train and moved to the East for re-formation. We stopped near Stalingrad. Commission from the General Staff arrived there and selected 2 tank brigades. I got into the 4th Tank Brigade. Later it became known as the 1st Guards Tank Brigade. As the newspaper had been liquidated by that time, I asked for permission to serve in the anti-aircraft division, but Ivan Derevyankin, the chief of our political department suggested me to edit a local tabloid (for the 4th Tank Brigade). So I was sent to Stalingrad to take equipment for printing. I managed to bring not only the equipment, but also several water-melons from a melon plantation. 

In September 1941 Colonel Katukov became the commander of the 4th Tank Brigade. He was a skilled officer, later he became a Tank Marshal. Our Brigade moved to the western front by train (towards Moscow). Our tanks were detrained at Kubinka railway station. At that time high-powered tank armada of fascists under the command of well-known general Heinz Guderian moved towards Tula [a city to the south of Moscow]. That armada contained 2 mechanized and 1 tank division, a lot of artillery, mortars, infantry, etc. Our Brigade had to stop that tank group of enemies on their way to Tula and Moscow. Therefore immediately from Kubinka advanced divisions of our brigade were brought into action near Orel [a city to the south of Tula], which was occupied by German divisions on October 1, 1941. Near Orel they gave a great battle. In that battle our brigade followed interesting tactical scheme: tanks took their places along the front line, blocking the way of German tanks. Our tanks waited in ambushes together with motorized infantry. Tanks were positioned 100-150 meters apart within the range of vision and hearing. Germans tried to cut their way through in different directions, but they met our tanks everywhere.

Germans had several times more tanks: they brought a tank army against 1 tank brigade (we had got only 70 tanks and 1,000 soldiers). During the fights near Orel I had to collect information about feats of arms of tankmen, infantrymen and other soldiers of our brigade, so that they could exchange fighting experience and morally support each other. I had to do it on the firing line: I crept from one tank ambush to another, talked to tankmen, and watched the battle episodes near Orel. Having collected necessary information for the newspaper, I came back to our place and together with my comrades Roskov, Yastreb and Shumilov we used to run off several hundreds copies on a mimeograph. After that I took that pile of copies and went back to the firing line to distribute them among soldiers.

It happened in the beginning of October 1941. We took part in defensive actions near Orel and Mzensk [a town near Orel], getting over from one firing line to another, and blunting attacks of superior forces of Germans. In our tabloid we described Ivan Lyubushkin's feat in details. He became the first hero of the USSR in our Brigade. Ivan blew up 9 tanks. Later central newspapers wrote about it, and the whole country got to know about his feat. Of course our moving to tank ambushes and back was noticed by Germans. But during those actions we (reporters) did not have to shoot, because our tankmen operated skillfully and handled enemies roughly. About 2 weeks our Brigade blunted the attack of the tank army and provided conditions for approach of additional forces.

So we successfully accomplished a difficult task, our losses were not heavy. Unexpectedly for us, we received the order signed by comrade Stalin, the National Commissioner of Defense, about renaming of our 4th Tank Brigade. We were named the 1st Guards Tank Brigade. Colonel Katukov, our commander was given the rank of major-general of tank armies. Actions near Orel (Russian territory from time immemorial) inspired soldiers of our brigade.

After the actions near Orel and Mzensk I addressed the command with a request to transfer me to a fighting unit: I was tired of describing feats of my comrades and wanted to take part in fights myself. By that time there appeared a vacant place of a Komsomol 11 leader of antiaircraft battalion. My drill was connected with antiaircraft artillery, therefore I became an officer. Before that I was in the rank of sergeant-major. I understood that it was a great danger for a Jew to be a political worker in the army, therefore for me it served as an additional stimulus never to yield myself prisoner. We knew that among captured soldiers Germans chose and shot commissars and Jews first of all.

Commander of the battalion captain Afanassenko met me suspiciously. In order to try my abilities he sent me together with Korsakov, a senior sergeant on the scout. Our task was to reconnoiter the firing line, to plot firing points of enemies and give a report. We both crossed the front line and got deeper towards the Germans. Between 2 firing lines we found small deserted villages. Passing an izba [a traditional Russian log house], we heard a girl cry. We got in and saw a wounded girl lying there. Her leg was bleeding. We took her with us, carrying her on our shoulders.

When we were coming back, we got under blanketing fire of our Katyushas. [Katyusha was an informal name of the Soviet rocket launchers which played very important role during military operations in 1941-1945.] We waited through bombardment in entrenchments, and then got back to the brigade. We carried the girl to our medical and sanitary battalion and gave a report on our results. After that raid, Afanassenko changed his attitude to me and the battalion commander immediately included me into the merit list (to give me the first officer rank of lieutenant).

The battalion fought defensive actions: Germans tried to cut their way through to Moscow from Volokolamsk. On their way there were infantry and tank units, including our brigade. Near to our position there stood on the defensive a division of General Panfilov (that was the time when 28 guardsmen of that division accomplished their well-known feat) [On November 11, 1941 28 General Panfilov’s guardsmen went into action near Volokolamsk defending Moscow. During 4 hours they knocked out 18 German tanks. Most of them were killed in that action, but they managed to stand the enemy off.] The mounted detachment of general Dovator was also near to our brigade.

I especially remembered our fight in October 1941. Germans tried to burst through and came across the battery of our antiaircraft battalion. We took part in repulsing of tank attacks. We used tracer shells which made great impression on Germans (terribly frightened them), especially at night. Germans suspected us to have invented some new variant of Katyusha. One of our batteries we even had to bring the anti-tank grenades into play, because Germans came too near.

Germans managed to push aside our units in Volokolamsk direction and approached Moscow. We stopped in Kriukovo settlement near Moscow (32 km from Moscow). There we stood several days. It was a lull in the fighting and I was sent to Moscow to Lenin's museum, because I was asked to bring the facts about feats of arms of tankmen. At the Lenin's museum I met the former rector of my college where I studied before the war. Her surname was Karpova; she was an old Bolshevik 12. By that time our College was affiliated to the Moscow State University and she became a director of the Lenin’s museum. She gave me a warm welcome.

Naturally I found a minute and came to the house of my parents in Dragomilovskaya Street. I entered the four-storied stone house, went up the stairs to the 3rd floor, but unfortunately nobody opened the door: the apartment was empty. On the stairs I met a neighbor, who told me that my parents had been evacuated somewhere to the Urals region. So I bowed low to the house and went back to my brigade. Later in autumn of 1941, I got to know that my parents were evacuated to Kirovochepetsk, where father worked at the chemical industrial complex. He also was sent to do tree cutting. There in Kirovochepetsk they received my first postcard and got to know that I was in the brigade of Katukov. It was possible for them to keep their eye on my moving in Europe according to information from newspapers. Since that time we kept in touch with my parents by correspondence. I still keep some letters from them.

In the beginning of December the Western front under the command of Zhukov 13 (including our brigade) began counterattack. We liberated Istra and moved towards Volokolamsk. On December 19, 1941 our brigade entered Volokolamsk by force, having made good execution to Germans. After the recapture of Volokolamsk we spent a quiet night in the basement of the local school. There we found a gramophone record with Klavdiya Shulzhenko's song Zapiska (Note). We listened to it times without number.

In the central square of the city we found 8 local Komsomol members hanged by fascists. Two years later during the Kursk campaign there happened the following episode: actors arrived, and among them there was Klavdiya Shulzhenko [a popular Soviet singer]. It was a great concert for the whole tank army. During the concert I sent to Klavdiya Shulzhenko a note with the request to sing a song Note. I also described in short that unforgettable night when we listened to her song in Volokolamsk. Unfortunately my note did not reach Shulzhenko or possibly she had different plans. So till now I consider her to be a debtor to me! After the end of the war being present at concerts of wartime songs, I always asked to sing a song Note. At one concert they asked me about the reason and I told them about that night episode with the gramophone record in Volokolamsk.

The territory we liberated (Istra, the Novoierusalimsky monastery - places near Moscow) looked very sad: a great number of dead German soldiers, broken German cars, ashes, big fires, smell of putrefaction, people wandering around, exhausted women meeting us in liberated settlements and cities. Our brigade was the first to rush into Volokolamsk. We saw terrible scenes of our infantrymen tearing off fingers of dead German soldiers together with their rings. It was very unpleasant, but it took place really. Near Volokolamsk I saw dead German soldiers bolted up in blocks as logs: terrible sight.

We left Volokolamsk and during 2 months tried to break further, to overcome the Volokolamsk firing line. But there were several hills we could not force. Infantrymen attacked in the very old manner and we had a task only to support them (we had no self-dependent tasks). Therefore both infantrymen and our brigade suffered heavy losses during those frontal attacks. Till now I remember Gudina hill covered with dead infantrymen (not only ours, but also marines from Siberia).

After the end of the war veterans-marines recollected at the meetings that they were about 500, and only a few dozens survived. You see, in the beginning of the war we lost enormous number of soldiers because of lack of skill: we did not know how to fight.

After all, in March 1942 we managed to step forward. I also remember that in March there happened another joyful event: trucks equipped with shower-baths appeared in our brigade and we managed at last to take a bath, because we were full of lice (it was terrible!). During the first 6 months of war all of us had lice. We tried to make fun of it, but that was no help. That shower was a real help. It was served by special sanitary detachment, which moved from one military unit to another.

Since that time we moved to the West, dislodging enemies. Our full-scale offensive was slowed down after defeat of Germans near Moscow. Many Germans were taken prisoners. At last in April our brigade was taken out from the front line for re-forming to Zheltikovo village near Kalinin (now Tver). There we had a rest, received new tanks and fresh forces, prepared for new actions. We spent there about a month and a half. Germans reached us by air raids there, too.

In the summer of 1942 we were moved to the Bryansk front. At that time German armies assumed the offensive: broke our line through near Rostov and moved towards Stalingrad. In order to draw Germans from Stalingrad, our brigade (together with others) was sent to strengthen the Bryansk front. There we immediately went into action near Voronezh. Fights were very tough. On our way there near Livny about 100 German bombers attacked and bombed us, they even dived down on our positions. It was terrible, but I had got a flasket with diluted alcohol with me for distressing.

Ivan Shelushkin, the first hero of the Soviet Union perished during those actions (he destroyed 8 German tanks near Orel). At that time I was appointed a Komsomol assistant to the chief political department. It meant for me the following military rank: a captain. I was a captain up to the end of the war, except the last months when I was appointed an instructor of the political department.

Step by step I got used to tanks: I mastered driving tanks, firing a gun and tank machine gun. Step by step I became an anti-aircraft tankman.

I remember the following episode. In 1942 near Voronezh I walked from one place to another and a Messerschmitt aircraft noticed me and chose to be his target for some reason. It went down periodically and fired at me from its machine gun. I tried to dash right and left to avoid its fire. It repeated attempts several times, but fortunately I managed to reach a ravine safe. I remember that very well, because it was June 30 - my birthday. As a matter of fact that day I felt a new man.

At the end of 1942 we got to Kalininsky front. We participated in actions near Rzhev. We had a task to break through towards Leningrad front and participate in break of blockade of Leningrad. But unfortunately we did not manage, because tanks sank in the very deep snow of that region. We had to dig into the snow to sleep. Sometimes we slept in trucks, where it was warmer. Sometimes we spent nights in dugouts equipped with stoves. We did not manage to meet soldiers of the Leningrad front. We were very close (near the Ilmen Lake), but had to turn back. 

At that time headquarters formed large tank units, and basing upon our brigade they created the 8th mechanized corps under the command of Katukov, our brigade commander. Later it was transformed into the 1st Guards Tank Army. The army was moved to Kursk region (near Belgorod). It happened in summer of 1943. First of all near Kursk we mastered new technical equipment (new advanced tanks with longer guns). We lived in villages nearby.

At that time reporters from Moscow arrived to our brigade. Among them there were 2 photographers and a well-known sportscaster and reporter Vadim Sinyavsky. During the war he often came to front lines (for instance he was in Sevastopol during its defense, where he was wounded). I was ordered to assist Vadim Sinyavsky in searching for participants of actions near Moscow and recording stories of tankmen about their fights. He recorded the story of Katukov about actions near Orel. Sinyavsky brought special equipment for recording; he had got everything necessary for that work. He wanted to record stories of tankmen accompanied by singing of famous Kursk nightingales. I found a small shady grove, where I supposed nightingales would sing at night and at dawn. So we went there early in the morning and managed to hear and record energetic singing of nightingales.

I was asked to read the soldier’s oath. Our tankmen lined up repeated the words and Sinyavsky recorded it. Later I asked him to record my message to my parents, but unfortunately they did not receive it for unknown reason. And another message I sent to Moscow to my schoolmate Olga Pashuk (she is still alive). She received the record, but later lost it. Many years later I got a letter from my brother-soldier Guryev, where he informed me that he knew about 75 extant sound recordings with my voice reading the Guards oath. Those records were stored in a Moscow archive. The archive workers got in touch with me and I told them about that episode of my biography in details.

In the beginning of July 1943 Germans passed to the offensive near Belgorod. The peak of approach of Germans was on July 3 and 4, 1943. At that time Orel was in hands of Germans, and we were to the north of it. Germans were going to smash our armies near Kursk and make another attempt to occupy Moscow. For that purpose Germans moved several armies from the Western front to Kursk region. Our tanks occupied positions in tank ambushes according to our favorite tactics. Of course soldiers were different (during 2 years of actions the brigade suffered heavy losses), but our people were perfect, they were chosen. It was me who told new soldiers about our actions, traditions, about heroes of our Brigade. I also told them about weak spots of new German tanks Tigers and Ferdinands. You see, I was a Komsomol leader!

On July 5 or 6 we went into action. I was at the observation post of the brigade commander Gorelov, a Hero of the Soviet Union. Together with him and his tank crew I fought near Kursk. After the battle of Kursk 14 he put me forward for a decoration. Unfortunately, he was killed because of an accidental discharge: a drunken ratfink from infantry fired a shot. Our observation post served as a communication center. Our tanks were 300-400 meters away from it. The post was camouflaged with rye ears. 

The soldiers, who already participated in the Battle of Stalingrad, said that the Battle of Kursk was much more stern. We fought day and night. At night German bombers dropped parachute flares highlighting battlefield: battle did not stop. It lasted 3 days and 3 nights. Then we fell back several kilometers and occupied new positions. 2 weeks we fought losing our tanks and destroying German ones. When our tanks became few in number, the brigade was moved away for reforming.

Later there happened the famous tank battle of Prokhorovka where 800 German and Soviet tanks met in an end-on collision. We did not participate in it, because we were down to our last tanks. By the way, several years ago Prokhorovka collective-farm field was bought by Elena Baturina, the wife of the Mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov. Probably she decided to exploit iron ore or to be engaged in agribusiness. I got to know about it from newspapers.

Our brigade was often visited by well-known journalists, photographers, and actors. For example, we met Yury Zhukov [a Soviet journalist from the Pravda newspaper] and Levitan [a famous radio announcer and the only newsreader in 1941-1945].

After the crushing defeat of Germans near Kursk we went forward and participated in liberating of several cities and villages of the Kharkov, Belgorod, and Sumy regions. We crossed the border of Ukraine in July 1943 during the full-scale offensive. I moved together with Gorelov's observation post on our tanks. One day in the morning we rushed into Lutovka village. German garrison soldiers ran every which way and left a German airplane.

We moved to the West, crossed the Dnieper River. By that time the Dnieper had been already recaptured. In November Kiev was liberated, but without us: we were moved to Vinnitsa and Zhitomir regions. There fights were not so stern, but nevertheless Germans stood up. By the end of 1943 we passed by Korosten, a town where my father was born.

In Kazatin we found a German warehouse full of chocolate. I liked chocolate very much, and there I saw lots and lots of chocolate bars. So I filled my suitcase with it and put it in the tank. Till now my relatives played a joke on me saying that my diabetes came from Kazatin.

Later we moved towards Ternopol and then to the South (to the Dniester River). In spring of 1944 we participated in forced crossing of the Dniester. Our tanks waded the river. Then we liberated Chertkov town, and our Brigade was named after it.

Some days we spent in Chertkov, fighting not only with Germans, but also with Hungarians. We forced them back to foothills of Carpathian Mountains. We participated in liberation of many cities: Nadvirno, Ivano-Frankovsk, the most beautiful small town Kolomya on the Dniester River. It was in April 1944. Approximately in May we crossed the border of the Soviet Union.

Later we took part in liberation of Lvov. Then we moved towards Poland and recaptured Sandomirsky jumping-off place. In the beginning of 1945 Soviet armies started its full-scale offensive in Poland. We had a task to occupy vodka distilleries and warehouses so that infantrymen could not get drunk. Infantrymen were inclined to get drunk.

We found Poland to be not as ruinous as Istra. Later we moved towards Warsaw (from the South). There we crossed the Vistula River.

One day I was walking together with a group of transport trucks, motor-infantry and artillery. Suddenly several armored troop-carriers rushed out from the forest and fired at our column. Immediately we turned our guns and fired back. Germans jumped off the troop-carriers, we caught them and took prisoners. It turned out that there I was the superior officer (a captain) and they brought prisoners to me. One of them was from SS troops. I got to know about it from his documents. I took his documents, medals and photos. He took those photos in Krasnogvardeysk (now Gatchina near St. Petersburg). 

Later we approached the Oder River near Frankfurt-on-Oder. We crossed the border of Germany, moved to Berlin, and then came to the Baltic Sea near Rostok. Later we joined the Rokossovsky front near Gdynia (Gdansk, or Danzig). After that we turned back to Oder and approached Berlin.

Boyko and Boyarsky were my commanders. Our Brigade operated in reserve of the army. The most serious fights fell to the share of the 1st Guards Tank Brigade under the command of Abram Temnik, the Hero of the Soviet Union, a Jew by nationality. On our way to Berlin there were a lot of field fortification, but by the end of April we managed to cross the Spree River and appeared in the streets of the city.Every brigade got its own direction towards the center of Berlin.

Infantrymen moved first and cleared neighboring buildings. After that tanks moved forward. On the 2nd of May actions in Berlin were finished, Germans capitulated. We ran to Reichstag: took photographs and left inscriptions on its walls. We watched the destroyed Berlin. I was encharged with a task to read the text of victorious communiqué: I read it standing on the truck. Later we moved to Dresden region and formed a part of occupational armies.  

During the capture of Berlin Abram Temnik was killed by a shell splinter.  We walked much around Berlin, one night I spent in the American Commandant's office. It happened because I wasted time visiting markets where Americans sold their watches. Americans differed much from our soldiers in appearance: they all were tall and well-nourished.

• After the War and later life

I started peaceful life, though in the army. We studied military equipment and communicated with Germans. Staff of the Katukov’s army was situated in Dresden. I served in Germany till November 1945. And then there came an order to send soldiers for studies at the Leningrad Military Pedagogical College named after Kalinin.

Here an episode came to my mind. After liberation of Chertkov we also received a similar order and the chief of our political department offered to send me, because I wanted to study and was at war from the very beginning. I went to the front staff to collect documents, but the political department asked me to wait for their decision. 20 minutes later they informed me that they did not permit me to leave for studies and ordered to get back to my military unit. I did not ask about the reason, because I had nothing against military career. Later I got to know that there was an order not to permit Jews - political workers to leave front lines. I guess it was a manifestation of anti-Semitism.

So I got a permission to study in Leningrad only in November 1945. It was possible to choose a faculty. When I arrived in Leningrad, they took into consideration my pre-war study at the Moscow College of Philosophy, History and Literature named after Chernyshevsky. Therefore I became a student of the 2nd course (economic faculty) without entrance exams. That college prepared teachers of social sciences, philosophy, political economy, etc for military academies. By the way, at the end of the 1950s that college was liquidated. Major-general Afanassyev was the college chief. He was present at my interview and liked my answers. It was him who made the decision to invite me to the 2nd course, but at that moment the personnel manager asked me about my subjected to repression uncle. I flew into a passion, and Afanassyev said ‘Stop bothering the front-line soldier!’ So I became a student and graduated with honors in 1949. At the College I was promoted to the rank of major. In 1947 (being a student) I got married. 

My friend Vigdorchik Boris (he also arrived from Germany) acquainted me with my future wife. He married a beautiful girl Mipha and introduced me to her friend. It happened at the dancing session (at the Marble Hall of the Palace of Culture named after Kirov). I started courting her. Her name was Rebecca Mironovna Slavina. She was born in 1925. She studied at the Pediatric College. Later I was introduced to her parents and they agreed to our marrying. By that time my parents returned from evacuation and agreed, too. I visited them in Moscow several times before marriage.

Having arrived from Germany, I visited my parents first of all. Before my departure from Germany I visited them in June of 1945: I got a leave for the victory in shooting (TT pistol) competition. Parents lived in the same room, wherefrom I was called up for military service (near the hotel UKRAINE).    

My son Semen was born in 1950. He entered the College of Mines (evening faculty of thermophysics). At the same time he worked as a selector of stones. He studied perfectly and was transferred to the day time faculty. He graduated and passed through the kandidat nauk 15 exams (under my pressure). But he refused to enter the postgraduate course: he learned his lesson during the entrance examinations, when they did not permit him to become a day time student. I guess it happened because of his nationality.

In 1949 I graduated from the College and was assigned to Pushkin (to Radio-locating School), where I taught political economy for five years. Then I was transferred to the Leningrad advanced training courses for political workers of tank armies. There I taught political economy and other subjects for about ten years. Then the courses were liquidated. I decided to defend my kandidat nauk dissertation. I did it at my former Military Pedagogical College in 1956. My topic was Forms of Wages in the Industry of the USSR. When I tried to become a postgraduate student (in 1949), I was explained that people of my nationality could not become postgraduate students.

My former co-worker became a faculty head at the Military Academy named after Mozhaysky. He invited me to teach political economy at his Academy. For that purpose it was necessary to be demobilized urgently. I managed. At that time I was 35 years old. They gave me a small retiring pension (my time-in-service was 23 years, including years of war counted 1 for 3). So I came to the Academy as a civilian person. And later (as you know) I defended my kandidat nauk dissertation in 1956.

At the Academy I worked 17 years, everybody was nice to me. There I became an assistant professor, then full professor (I got a doctor's degree). Lieutenant-general Vassilyev, the Academy chief did not hate Jews. He used to send me on business trips to different secret establishments, entrusted me with secret research topics. I wrote books and articles. When I brought my doctor’s certificate to Vassilyev, he suggested me to move to a new apartment (from our communal one 16). That was the 1st separate apartment in our life (it happened in 1980). Later (when my children grew up and got their own families) I aimed at buying a large cooperative apartment.

I managed and we moved to that new apartment together with my wife and the family of my daughter.

In 1975 I started working at the Financial and Economic College. I worked both at the Academy and at the College. It was hard and could not last long. I decided to leave the Academy. So by now I have been working at the Financial and Economic College more than 30 years. I am a professor of the faculty of Personnel Management. My daughter works at the faculty of Sociology and Personnel Management. My granddaughter refused to become a college teacher and works at a bank.

I am a member of the Jewish Organization of War Veterans, headed by Zhuravin. There are about 3,000 members. Several times I was elected their council member. Several years ago I was entrusted to head the scientific conference devoted to the 60th anniversary of the Victory in WWII. We invited foreign guests from Jewish organizations from Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, and France. At that conference I was a key speaker and gave a report on the role of Jews in the Great Patriotic War. My report was a great success, theses were published in Israel. Zhuravin has got the text of my report.

Unfortunately my sight is failing gradually, therefore I visit that Jewish organization rarely. But I consider its activities to be very useful. To tell the truth, religious events are alien to me, because I was brought up in the atheistic environment.

At the end of 1980s my life changed, because I became older and my health became worse. Perestroika did not affect my life.

My daughter married a Jew, and my son’s wife is Russian. His wife did not change her Russian surname and my granddaughter’s nationality is registered Russian. My granddaughter is a gynecologist; she works in a maternity hospital.

I guess if I were not Jewish, my position would have been much higher: I could become a faculty head. My Jewish origin disfigured my career. My father died in 1961, and Mom died 20 years ago. Father is buried in Moscow on the Jewish cemetery. And mother is buried on the Jewish cemetery here in St. Petersburg.

In 2004 according to the decree of the President I was awarded the honorary title of the Honored Worker of the Higher School of Russian Federation. I was also awarded an Israeli medal (as a WWII participant). But I’ve never been to Israel.

• Glossary:

1 Civil War (1918-1920): The Civil War between the Reds (the Bolsheviks) and the Whites (the anti-Bolsheviks), which broke out in early 1918, ravaged Russia until 1920. The Whites represented all shades of anti-communist groups – Russian army units from World War I, led by anti-Bolshevik officers, by anti-Bolshevik volunteers and some Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Several of their leaders favored setting up a military dictatorship, but few were outspoken tsarists. Atrocities were committed throughout the Civil War by both sides. The Civil War ended with Bolshevik military victory, thanks to the lack of cooperation among the various White commanders and to the reorganization of the Red forces after Trotsky became commissar for war. It was won, however, only at the price of immense sacrifice; by 1920 Russia was ruined and devastated. In 1920 industrial production was reduced to 14% and agriculture to 50% as compared to 1913.

2 Petliura, Simon (1879-1926): Ukrainian politician, member of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Working Party, one of the leaders of Centralnaya Rada (Central Council), the national government of Ukraine (1917-1918). Military units under his command killed Jews during the Civil War in Ukraine. In the Soviet-Polish war he was on the side of Poland; in 1920 he emigrated. He was killed in Paris by the Jewish nationalist Schwarzbard in revenge for the pogroms against Jews in Ukraine.

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 Stalingrad Battle: 17th July 1942 – 2nd February 1943. The South-Western and Don Fronts stopped the advance of German armies in the vicinity of Stalingrad. On 19th and 20th November 1942 the Soviet troops undertook an offensive and encircled 22 German divisions (330,000 people) and eliminated them. On 31st January 1943 the remains of the 6th German army headed by General Field Marshal Paulus surrendered (91,000 people). The victory in the Stalingrad battle was of huge political, strategic and international significance.

5 Mikhoels, Solomon (1890-1948) (born Vovsi): Great Soviet actor, producer and pedagogue. He worked in the Moscow State Jewish Theater (and was its art director from 1929). He directed philosophical, vivid and monumental works. Mikhoels was murdered by order of the State Security Ministry

6 Torgsin stores: Special retail stores, which were established in larger Russian cities in the 1920s with the purpose of selling goods to foreigners. Torgsins sold commodities that were in short supply for hard currency or exchanged them for gold and jewelry, accepting old coins as well. The real aim of this economic experiment that lasted for two years was to swindle out all gold and valuables from the population for the industrial development of the country.

7 Pushkin, Alexandr (1799-1837): Russian poet and prose writer, among the foremost figures in Russian literature. Pushkin established the modern poetic language of Russia, using Russian history for the basis of many of his works. His masterpiece is Eugene Onegin, a novel in verse about mutually rejected love. The work also contains witty and perceptive descriptions of Russian society of the period. Pushkin died in a duel.

8 Khrushchev, Nikita (1894-1971): Soviet communist leader. After Stalin’s death in 1953, he became first secretary of the Central Committee, in effect the head of the Communist Party of the USSR. In 1956, during the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev took an unprecedented step and denounced Stalin and his methods. He was deposed as premier and party head in October 1964. In 1966 he was dropped from the Party's Central Committee.

9 Chkalov, Valery (1904-1938): Russian test pilot, and hero of the Soviet Union. He developed several advanced aerobatic moves. In 1936-37 he conducted continuous, no-land flights between Moscow and Udd island (the Far East) and Moscow – North Pole – Vancouver (US). His plane crashed during a test flight.

10 Molotov, V. P. (1890-1986): Statesman and member of the Communist Party leadership. From 1939, Minister of Foreign Affairs. On June 22, 1941 he announced the German attack on the USSR on the radio. He and Eden also worked out the percentages agreement after the war, about Soviet and western spheres of influence in the new Europe.

11 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.

12 Bolsheviks: Members of the movement led by Lenin. The name ‘Bolshevik’ was coined in 1903 and denoted the group that emerged in elections to the key bodies in the Social Democratic Party (SDPRR) considering itself in the majority (Rus. bolshynstvo) within the party. It dubbed its opponents the minority (Rus. menshynstvo, the Mensheviks). Until 1906 the two groups formed one party. The Bolsheviks first gained popularity and support in society during the 1905-07 Revolution. During the February Revolution in 1917 the Bolsheviks were initially in the opposition to the Menshevik and SR (‘Sotsialrevolyutsionyery’, Socialist Revolutionaries) delegates who controlled the Soviets (councils). When Lenin returned from emigration (16 April) they proclaimed his program of action (the April theses) and under the slogan ‘All power to the Soviets’ began to Bolshevize the Soviets and prepare for a proletariat revolution. Agitation proceeded on a vast scale, especially in the army. The Bolsheviks set about creating their own armed forces, the Red Guard. Having overthrown the Provisional Government, they created a government with the support of the II Congress of Soviets (the October Revolution), to which they admitted some left-wing SRs in order to gain the support of the peasantry. In 1952 the Bolshevik party was renamed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

13 Zhukov, Georgy (1896-1974): Soviet Commander, Marshal of the Soviet Union, Hero of the Soviet Union. Georgy Zhukov was the most important Soviet military commander during World War II.

14 Kursk battle: The greatest tank battle in the history of World War II, which began on 5th July 1943 and ended eight days later. The biggest tank fight, involving almost 1,200 tanks and mobile cannon units on both sides, took place in Prokhorovka on 12th July and ended with the defeat of the German tank unit.

15 Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees: Graduate school in the Soviet Union (aspirantura, or ordinatura for medical students), which usually took about 3 years and resulted in a dissertation. Students who passed were awarded a 'kandidat nauk' (lit. candidate of sciences) degree. If a person wanted to proceed with his or her research, the next step would be to apply for a doctorate degree (doktarontura). To be awarded a doctorate degree, the person had to be involved in the academia, publish consistently, and write an original dissertation. In the end he/she would be awarded a 'doctor nauk' (lit. doctor of sciences) degree.

16 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.

St. Petersburg 
Russia 
Interviewer: Sofia Shifrina 
Date of interview: November 2004 

Sofia Ayzikovna Furman is a very amiable, agreeable person without any pomp.

My general impression from our meeting was very light and joyful, though we talked about hard and even tragic times in her family life. 

Her neat, light and sunny apartment, where she lives alone, adds to this pleasant impression. 

Her son often visits her.

Sofia Furman was prepared for our meeting very seriously – she had written down all dates, names and events, which had any relation to the history of her family – in order to miss or forget nothing. Her librarian background was evident. 

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

• My family background

My name is Sofia Furman; I was born on 21st June 1935 in Leningrad [today St. Petersburg], into the family of a professional soldier, though my parents came from Belarus. 

My father’s father, Mendel Zalmanovich Furman, was born probably at the beginning of the 1870s and lived in Belarus. From 1931-1935 my grandfather worked in the ‘Komintern’ kolkhoz 1 as an accountant. I don’t know exactly when he was born, and he died during the siege of Leningrad in 1942 2. Since 1934 he lived in Leningrad, on Vassilyevsky Island and being already elderly, he depended upon his children. He had four children: sons Ayzik – my father – Efim and Mikhail and the younger daughter Bassya, who was adopted by my maternal grandfather’s family. Mendel settled on Vassilyevsky Island, one of the oldest Petersburg districts, a big island in the mouth of the Neva River; in the 1920s-1930s there was a sort of a ‘Jewish center’ of the city.

I remember Grandfather’s apartment on Vassilyevsky Island. Grandfather Mendel had only one big room in that apartment, but it was always full of people. Grandfather, my father Ayzik and his brother Efim lived in it. When my parents got married, they lived in that room too for some time. I also lived there for the first two years of my life [1935-1937]. Since I was very small, I remember that room only sketchily. There was a big wooden plank bed to the left of the entrance, on which one slept at night and sat at daytime. I always played on it. There was either a stove or a fireplace behind the bed. There was also a table and a wardrobe and no other furniture. Right opposite the entrance there was a huge window. I also remember that the ceiling in the room was very high. Beside Grandfather’s room there were two or three other rooms in that apartment, where the families of our neighbors lived 3. All doors to the rooms led to a wide but not long corridor. Our door was the first to the left in the corridor. The common kitchen was to the right of the entrance to the apartment. Recently my son Mikhail visited that apartment. He said that it had changed a lot after modernization.

Ayzik Mendelevich Furman, my father, was born in 1909 in Belarus. Until 1929 he lived in the village of Verkudy in Belarus [40 km north of Lepel, Vitebsk region – at present it doesn’t exist], two years he studied at a Jewish school, later he lived for a while in the village of Ulla – he worked there in a fishing cooperative association. His younger brother Mikhail worked there too, he also perished in Belarus during the war. In the 1930s my father came to Leningrad. In October 1931 he was drafted into the army. He kept studying all the time, finished military signalmen courses in the army and was involved in political studies based on the politprosvet 4 system. As a result Father stayed in the army as a staff officer and a signalman and was in command of a special communication company. He even mastered parachute jumping and participated in demonstrations of parachute jumping. He was one of the first who was parachuting over our city.

As a professional soldier he served in Osinovaya Roscha [suburb of Leningrad] in a signal battalion. He was a political adviser to the battalion commander, participated in the war with Finland 5 and was awarded the order of [the Combat] Red Banner 6 for this military campaign, I have a photo of him with it. He perished in 1941 – approximately in September – his last letter was dated from August 1941. He was killed at the front, in the battle of Leningrad.

The second son of my grandfather Mendel was Efim Furman, born in 1893. At the end of the 1920s he came to Leningrad, worked at the ‘Hydraulics’ factory, he graduated from an institute and before the war worked in Estonia 7. At the beginning of the war 8, during evacuation of ships from Tallinn, their ship was taken down, and Efim perished, but there was no official information about his death. I only know that he was married, his wife most probably also died in the war, and they had no children. I have a photograph showing Efim together with his friends.

The person in the center of the photo – our countryman visited my aunts Ghita and Zita after the end of the war – he was a member of the initiative group, which collected money for the monument [later it was erected in Kamyen on the grave of Jews executed by shooting]. All his family was also shot there. And I remember him very well; I only don’t remember his name and surname. He went through the war and after it he wanted very much to immortalize the memory of the murdered Jews, notwithstanding the general attitude to Jews that time. And he succeeded: at present this monument stands on the place of execution.

My father’s mother, my grandmother, married Mendel Zalmanovich, gave birth to four children and died, when the youngest child was one-and-a-half years old. She died in 1915, and unfortunately I don’t know her name. All her sons – three of them – perished during the war, including my daddy, and the youngest child – the girl [Bassya Furman] survived the war. 

Grandfather Mendel had no other women in his family and he didn’t remarry, so he gave Bassya to the family of his wife’s brother – my mother’s father. In that family there were many girls and Bassya was brought up with them, they considered her to be their daughter [it was the family of Avraham Shukhman]. Bassya got married before the war. When Bassya Furman got married, she changed her surname to Vassilevskaya – she was the wife of Uncle Mikhail Vassilevsky. Uncle Mikhail survived the war; he visited us after the end of the war. He died approximately ten years ago.

And when the war broke out and Germans attacked the territory of Belarus, Bassya managed to escape. Together with her children – two sons and a daughter – she ran away right before the Germans came, and they reached Gorky region. We were also evacuated there. After liberation of Belarus, she went back and worked in Vitebsk district as a teacher at an elementary school. She gave birth to five children – three sons: Valery, Vladimir and Viktor and two daughters: Larissa and Svetlana; they all are alive to date. Her daughters followed in their mother’s footsteps and became teachers. 

Her elder daughter Larissa was born in 1937. She lives in Minsk [today capital of Belarus] now and we are great friends. She married a former army officer. Larissa worked as a teacher of biology all her life. Now, as a pensioner, she continues to work and took a job in a company which sells oriental herbs. She has two children, Oksana and Andrey, who also have children already. Oksana is a manager at a plant. As far as I know, she has a son. Andrey served in the army and now works as a communication engineer.   

Svetlana started to work as a teacher at an elementary school and later continued as a teacher of biology in a boarding school for children sick with tuberculosis – near Vitebsk, in a village called Bolshiye Lettsy. They still live there. Svetlana’s husband is also a teacher, he teaches history at the same boarding school.

The younger son, Viktor, worked at the ‘Hydraulics’ factory as an engineer, later he finished a pilot school, served in Transbaikalia [Russian Far East], and retired on a pension in the rank of colonel. All children of Bassya Vassilevskaya live in Belarus.

My mother’s father, Avraham Shukhman, was born in 1876, and on 17th September 1941 in the shtetl of Kamyen [Vitebsk region, Lepel district] Fascists shot all the Jewish population including my grandfather. Now on this place there is a monument in honor of 177 Jews shot by the Germans. They said that my grandfather had a large house, he was a partisans’ messenger during the war and they used his house as a safe house. The Germans arrested him and tortured him terribly. They said, the Germans had torn out hair from his long beard and then shot him. He didn’t leave the village before the occupation as Bassya did – probably he was too old by that time. 

Before World War II my grandfather was an excellent shoemaker. I know that he worked in a co-operative and he was doing well. He had many [seven] children. They kept chickens, four cows and geese too. Every child had his own responsibility: one took care of the cows, the other took care of the geese and turkeys. There were no assistants except for the children. The elder children helped to bring up the small ones. Avraham’s wife [Mikhlya Shukhman] died during the intervention, during the Polish invasion. [In April 1920 Poland entered the war against Soviet Russia.

In 1921 according to peace negotiations in Riga, Poland received a significant part of Ukraine and Belarus. The final event of the war was a defeat of the interventionists.] I don’t know the year of her birth, and neither do my cousins. She died in 1919 of typhus. My mom told me that she cried a lot, but nobody could help her. They were hiding from Poles and from intervention. At that time Germans and Poles came there in turns. All of them plundered their place, and nobody could help.

My grandmother died, when my mom was nine years old, and her younger brother was six. My mom was the next to last child in my grandfather’s family. My grandparents spoke only Yiddish. Grandmother Mikhlya was the last person in our family who spoke only Yiddish, all the rest knew Russian. Grandfather didn’t get married for a second time: he loved his children very much and devoted his life to them.

• Growing up

My grandfather Avraham Shukhman was very religious. I remember 21st June 1941 – it was my birthday – I was born in 1935, hence in 1941 I was going to be six years old – it was Saturday. And all our relatives gathered at our place to celebrate my birthday on Sunday, the 22nd of June 1941 – the day when the war broke out. All our relatives came. At that time we lived in Osinovaya Roscha [suburb of St. Petersburg], my daddy served there in a military camp. My two grandfathers came too.

One of them – Avraham – underwent surgery a short time before; I remember very distinctly that his hand and shoulder were bandaged. I remember him eating. My mom prepared kosher food especially for him: staying in hospital, he didn’t eat hospital meals, his daughters brought him food especially. Mom told me that in Belarus [Kamyen shtetl] there was a synagogue near his house, and my grandfather used to be a synagogue warden. On holidays he invited everybody to visit his place – it means that they were rather well-to-do, because he had a lot of children and everyone in his family worked. My grandfather was a very hardworking person.

My birthday was celebrated by all our relatives. All our relatives came from Belarus and other places. We all gathered round the festive table. I had a separate children’s table, where I was sitting together with my cousin. I remember my both grandfathers and my aunts on that day – my grandmothers had already passed away by that time. But we were all very much worried after the information we had heard on the radio about Germany’s attack. Father was summoned to his military unit right from the celebration. Next day all our guests left for their homes, all around the country. Almost all of those, who went home to Belarus, perished. The Germans burnt and shot everyone.  

My first aunt was Lubov, my mom’s sister. Her surname after marriage was Nemtsova. She was born in 1895 and died in 1955. Lubov with her family and grandfather Abram [Avraham] lived in Belarus, in Kamyen. They had three children: sons Mikhail and Zinovy and daughter Sofia. Lubov’s husband, Samuil, was a men’s tailor. I remember how Mother told us that Grandfather accepted him into the family and she helped him to sew. He taught her the tailor’s trade. Later it was her profession, which allowed her to earn money. When in 1941 the Germans approached Kamyen, Aunt Lubov escaped with her children. She simply took them and ran. She arrived in Gorky region, where we were already living. Her husband Samuil was at the front and died right after the end of the war. She spoke poor Russian, mainly Yiddish.

I remember Efim Shukhman, my mom’s eldest brother. He was the first to move to Leningrad at the end of 1920. He worked as a shoemaker in a co-operative in Leningrad, and he was a very good shoemaker. It was Efim who contributed greatly to the subsequent moving of his sisters and younger brother Naum to Leningrad. He perished at Nevsky Pyatachok on the approaches to Leningrad on 15th January 1943. [Nevskaya Dubrovka is a settlement on the right bank of the Neva river, where the troops of the Leningrad front twice (in September 1941 and in September 1942) forced a crossing over the Neva river and captured the beach-head on its left bank (the so-called Nevsky Pyatachok, meaning ‘a very small plot of land near the Neva river’). They held their positions for about 400 days and participated in bloody battles.] I still keep the notification about his death. He served as a sniper.

After Daddy’s death, my mom received only one letter from Efim, where he consoled her. He wrote that she shouldn’t be afraid, because he would be helping her – she was his beloved little sister. It was he who gave the money for her wedding. Uncle Efim loved my mother very much, she was his favorite. She was the youngest and he was the eldest in the family. Uncle Efim sent my mother a parcel with food products and wrote a note saying that he would never leave her and help her to bring up her children. Mother wrote a reply to Efim, but soon we received a notification about his death. Thus Mother was left alone without any support. Uncle Efim is included in the electronic Memory Book [Terminal of the Electronic Memory Book can be found inside the Monument of Victory (it is a branch of the City Historical Museum) in St. Petersburg. Everyone, who perished during the battles of Leningrad, was put into the electronic data base. And everyone can come there, name a lost person and get a printed document. Sofia Furman has this sort of document regarding Efim, who perished near the Sinyavinskye Vysoty, in Tartolovo settlement]. Grandfather Mendel, who starved to death in besieged Leningrad in the winter of 1941-1942, is also included in that Book.

My mom had another sister, Sofia Shukhman, but I know very little about her. I only know that she died on the day of her wedding. Mikhlya Shukhman – the wife of Avraham Shukhman – the mother of all these children had died early, in 1919. Her eldest daughter Lubov got married even earlier, and Sofia took care of all the younger children; she was a mother to them. Preparing to marry, Sofia felt very anxious about her younger sisters and brother – who would take care of them? She was thinking it over all the time: how would they manage without her? They all were little at that time, and she suffered from heart disease. Therefore on the day of her wedding she died, I don’t know the details. I was named in her honor.

My mother’s youngest brother was Naum; I have a photo of him taken before the war. During the war he was a pilot. Their squadron flew to bomb Berlin during the war. After the end of the war he served in the Far East – Kamchatka and Sakhalin – of the USSR.

Rita Shukhman was a disabled child. She had difficulties moving her hand and leg; she received medical treatment and lived here in Leningrad on Lermontovsky Prospect. Her sister Zlata Shukhman – everybody called her Zinaida – lived with her.

My mother Rosa Furman [nee Shukhman] was the sixth child, as Naum was the youngest. My mom died in 2000, and she was one month younger than 90. During the last eight years of her life she was bed-ridden – she couldn’t walk.

The story of my parents’ acquaintance was very simple. Actually, they were related to each other. Avraham Shukhman, my mother’s father, had a sister, who was the wife of Mendel [Furman] and the mother of my father. That means my father’s mother was a sister of Avraham Shukhman, my mother’s father. As a girl, she – my father’s mother – also was Shukhman. They also became related the following way: Bassya, my father’s sister, was brought up in the family of my mother’s father. And certainly, brothers often visited their sister Bassya in that family, they all were like relatives. And so my father, visiting his sister Bassya, fell in love with my mom, and so did my mom; and their relatives couldn’t dissuade them from this. So against all dissuasions, they decided to get married. By that time my daddy was already a professional soldier, and they went to Belarus to get married. I keep their marriage certificate. It happened in 1934, and I was born in 1935. I don’t know if they had a real Jewish wedding or if the wedding was secular. As far as I remember, my parents weren’t religious and didn’t stick to Jewish traditions. In the 1930s the traditional way of life became history 9, especially in families of Red Army commanders.

Before her marriage, Mother worked as a seamstress and after her marriage Father made her stay at home, because the salary of an officer allowed it. Father served in Levashevo [a village in the northern suburbs of Leningrad] at that time. Mother had only elementary education and finished seamstress courses, but being the wife of a commander, she was considered a ‘woman-commander’ in the military unit. She was involved in public affairs and was always busy. I remember how they often left me alone when I was small, and I even remember how I cried. They locked me in my room, I cried for some time and fell asleep.

Having got married, my parents lived in Osinovaya Roscha. We lived there happily. There were four of us: my mother and father, my brother Mikhail, who was born on 20th December 1939, and I. We moved to Osinovaya Roscha almost before the others, the military camp was under construction at that time, and the house was still damp, when we moved in. Our family occupied two rooms in one of the apartments. There was also a small room near the kitchen, where Father’s aide-de-camp lived. We also had two neighbors, also military men, but I know nothing about them. And in this house we lived until 1941, when the war broke out.

• During the War

When the war broke out, Father left for the frontline with his unit on the first day. His unit was already mobilized and left Osinovaya Roscha. They moved towards the border with Finland which fought against the USSR together with Germany. We stayed in Leningrad, in Osinovaya Roscha. In July 1941 my father’s unit was transferred from one location to another and Father managed to visit us together with his privates. People were already being evacuated from Leningrad. The Germans were quite close to the city at that time and the last trains were leaving. Father managed to evacuate us to the Gorky region [region in the basin of the Volga river with a center in the town of Gorky, 1,000 km south-east of Leningrad], where his aide-de-camp’s mother lived.

We left for evacuation in July by the last train, on our way Germans destroyed the train by bombing at some station. I remember my mom getting over the rails. My mom took care of me – at that time I was six years old – my little brother, and she also took the daughter of her sister Zinaida [Zlata] with her, because Zinaida worked at a secret factory and they hadn’t permitted her to leave Leningrad. So Zinaida entrusted my mom with her daughter, who was five months older than me. Her name was Inna Nikitina. So my mom with three children left Leningrad by a freight train. The process of our departure was frightful – it is engraved in my memory. Probably, we better remember the terrible moments of our life. I remember how we got into the car through the windows, there were a lot of people, the station was overcrowded, and soldiers stood between plank beds and lifted us over through the windows. Daddy forwarded some luggage to us, but it was lost somewhere. I still keep his last letter, which he sent us from the frontline, in which he wrote that he was worried about us, because we had left without any belongings and without warm clothes. We had only one suitcase with us, where we found nothing at all. So we appeared in Gorky region hungry and undressed, and we had to get settled somehow.

We came to the relatives of my father’s adjutant near the village of Vad in Gorky region. But that place seemed to my mom to be very much out of the way, because there was no place to live and she couldn’t get a job. We couldn’t even understand the dialect people spoke! They added the word ‘chai’ [Russian for ‘probably’] after almost each word, when they said something, ‘Would you probably go there? Or would you probably not?’ I remember how Mother laughed after the war, sometimes saying, ‘Would you probably go there?’ There were few people there. Only an elementary school was available. Then Mom got registered at the local military enlistment office, and the local commander sent us to Vad – a more civilized place, the center of the district.

At first Mother worked at the collective farm, doing temp work, and then a military hospital evacuated from Ukraine appeared in Vad. And my mom went there for work. At first she was a nurse – she had no special medical education – later she was taken to the operating-room – my mother was a very sociable and clever woman. An old professor – I don’t remember his surname – was very nice to her and took care of her. He knew that she had three little children, who suffered from hunger. At the hospital they gave her some food, and she did her best to bring it to us, the children. And that professor saw that she was hungry and shared his ration 10 with her – and so did his wife. I remember that Mother brought home used bandages from the bandaging room. He gave it to her, advised her to boil them thoroughly. Mom used them to make clothes. He also tried to give her a glass or a spoon when an opportunity arose.

Some time later the hospital left for a place nearer to the front, and my mom had no opportunity to follow them because of her children. By that time my cousin [Inna Nikitina], who was in evacuation together with us, had died. It happened that we all – the three of us – got ill with measles, and she didn’t recover, because her stomach was out of order. My brother and I had the eruptive stage, I remember, and Inna didn’t, even her temperature was normal. But when I woke up one morning – we slept embracing one another – I found her dead. We had been good friends.

In evacuation, my mom received letters from the frontline from my daddy – the last letter came in August 1942. I keep it as a family relic, because it’s the last piece of news from my father. It was written in pencil on a small sheet of paper. Having written that letter, he got lost, and we didn’t receive any more letters from him and knew nothing about him. Time passed and we got to know that he’d perished.

In evacuation, my aunt Lubov – my mother’s eldest sister – and Bassya – my mother’s cousin – spoke mainly Yiddish, though they weren’t as religious, as their father – Avraham Shukhman. My mom and my aunts from Leningrad – Ghita and Zlata – also spoke Yiddish. When we lived in Gorky region, they mainly spoke Yiddish to each other and I also learned this language involuntarily. In September 1943 I went to school in Vad and finished the 1st grade before returning to Leningrad. I remember only one thing about the village school. I tried to speak Yiddish there. But the village children started to tease me because of it! I became shy and very quickly lost my knowledge of the language. Completely.

Mom and Daddy also spoke Yiddish. But Daddy was a professional soldier, and among them they never put a premium on it. All my subsequent adult life also discouraged me of that knowledge. The only thing that connected us to Jewish traditions was that my mom cooked traditional Jewish food very well; Jewish cuisine was very famous at that time. Now I like cooking very much, but I live alone and there is nobody to cook for, maybe just on holidays or for my son.

We returned to Leningrad in 1944, as soon as the siege was lifted. We were among the first to get back to Leningrad from evacuation. Mother’s sister Ghita Abramovna lived on the corner of Lermontovsky Prospect and Soyuza Pechatnikov Street. She stayed in Leningrad all the time of the siege. Her husband worked at a military headquarters, and he sent an invitation 11 for my mom – because she was the wife of a military man.

Ghita Abramovna survived the war and the siege of Leningrad, she died only in 1969. She felt unhappy. One day when she was at home, a shell demolished a corner of her house, but she remained alive, she was only pushed strongly by an air-wave. In 1944 after the end of the war we assisted her in the reconstruction of her apartment. I remember that time [1944] in Leningrad. When I walked along the streets of Leningrad, I was surprised to see that the city, so ruthlessly destroyed, didn’t make such an impression. I saw a lot of windows, drawn on a cardboard and fragments of houses assembled like shields. Probably it was done to hide the destroyed houses; it was a sort of camouflage. So, here you go, look from a distance – it looks like a house, and when you come closer you can see only ruins. There were a lot of badly destroyed buildings, and if you looked from aside they looked as repaired and camouflaged, the authorities kept an eye on it. In January the siege was lifted, and in April we arrived in Leningrad. I remember that when we reached home, there was no snow any more.

Zlata Shukhman – we called her aunt Zina – who sent her daughter Inna in evacuation with us, where she died – arrived in Gorky region –they permitted her to leave Leningrad, when the siege was already lifted –and buried her daughter. Up to the last day she cried over her loss. All her life she cried and didn’t remarry. Each year she visited her daughter’s grave. When she became incapable of doing it, Aunt Zlata brought some soil from Inna’s grave to Leningrad and buried it in a common grave, where Aunt Ghita was already buried – at an ordinary cemetery, where there were Jewish zones 12. Later I buried Aunt Zlata and my mom there too.

Before the war the husband of Aunt Zlata Shukhman was subjected to repression and exiled 13. Her husband was a Pole by nationality, probably a Polish Jew. They both graduated from Moscow University. She even worked as an instructor at a District Committee of the Communist Party, and he was a teacher in Sverdlovsk Institute. Later he was arrested on the grounds of some made-up charges and released only after the end of the war. After her husband’s arrest Aunt Zina escaped together with her girl. She left all her documents, she left everything. At first she worked at laundries, did hard work during the war, i.e. she went into hiding, she was afraid of arrest. And then she started working in LENENERGO [Leningrad Energy Organization] as an inspector. She retired at the age of 60. After the end of the war, I know that she sent her husband many parcels, but I don’t know what happened to him later. Probably he married, or maybe he died. In our family it was a forbidden topic, I wasn’t grown-up yet and I couldn’t speak about it.

• After the War

When in spring of 1944 we returned from evacuation to Leningrad, I remember that we went to Ozerki [suburb of Leningrad] by tram, and then walked to Osinovaya Roscha – where we’d lived before the war in the military camp. It was a long way, and my brother Misha and I were little children. I remember that we often stopped and had a rest on our way. When we reached our place, we found our apartment plundered. Before evacuation we handed over a part of our belongings to the Municipal Operational Military Unit, which was situated in Levashevo, and we got them back. But it was small potatoes. When we came back, we had an absolutely empty room, a brick embrasure as a window, soldier’s rack and soldier’s bed without a mattress in the corner. And nothing else. We lived there at the very least till 1967, in any case my mom and my brother did. As for me, I left our home for some time.

After the end of the war my younger brother Misha was five years old. In evacuation I finished the first grade. When we arrived in Leningrad, we found out that in Osinovaya Roscha there was no school, and I went to school in Levashevo. It was one-and-a-half kilometers away from our house. There was no transport, and I went to school on foot. I remember that the school was situated across the railroad. I left home at seven in the morning and went to school on foot. I had to walk through the forest along a scary road. Would parents let their child walk such a way nowadays? But my mother worked. I liked to come first to the classroom, when there was no one there yet. I came in and switched on the light. That was my nature. I remained like that all my life, and later when I was a grownup, I was the first to come to work.

I walked in the school corridor and heard behind my back, ‘Jewess!’ Some people treated us very well and some said, ‘These so-and-so came and ate all our food!’ But in general I was treated well for some reason. I was always a naughty child, like a boy. I had a friend, a Jewish girl. She was always teased, though she was half-Russian. The teachers were no anti-Semites. Our primary grades’ teacher always protected me and scolded my little torturers. She even told me, ‘Don’t tell anyone that you are a Jewess.’ Some children, especially from uneducated families, could say something bad. Especially when we were in the junior grades. I remember how boys from our class fought with other boys, defending me, if someone had offended me. Mother always tried to smoothen such conflicts and told me not to pay attention. We had a big communal apartment, so we tried not to focus on the Jewish issue. But sometimes I thought to myself, ‘I will never marry a Jew, I don’t want my children to suffer.’ I cried so much when I was a little girl! Later when I grew up, I didn’t feel this children’s anti-Semitism, people treated me well.

I finished four grades in that school and continued my education in a seven-year school near the railroad, which was one kilometer closer to our home, also in Levashevo. I finished seven grades there without bad marks, I was a good pupil. My friends were children with whom I went to school. We played different games; I liked sport games very much, like volleyball, soccer. We liked the swing too and reached the high tree branches, when swinging! I could play outside for hours! Only once I went to a pioneer 14 camp on summer holidays. The camp was located in the village of Pesochnoye [a settlement on the northern outskirts of Leningrad, near Levashevo and Osinovaya Roscha]. Later only my brother was sent to pioneer camps. We weren’t a rich family. That is why mostly my brother got new toys, skis and a bicycle. I remember, when I was in the 8th grade, Aunt Zinaida and Aunt Ghita arranged wonderful holidays for me. They lived together at that time and I stayed with them for my winter holidays. I went to Mariinsky Theater every day. At that time it was called the Kirov Opera and Ballet Theater. I have seen its whole repertoire, all operas.

Mikhail attended a kindergarten. Later, when he grew up he went to school in Osinovaya Roscha – it was already opened by that time. I was already in the sixth or seventh grade, when he went to school. In Mikhail’s school I was a leader of Octobrists 15, and later right in his class. After seven years in Osinovaya Roscha School, he studied in Pargolovo School. Misha participated in the construction of that school, boys worked there as masons – the authorities stimulated their interest. After I finished seven grades, I then moved to Pargolovo high school and finished ten grades there.

I remember very well the day of Stalin’s death – 6th March 1953. [Joseph Stalin died on 5th March 1953.] I was a schoolgirl at that time. We didn’t know anything about his evil deeds at the time. We cried the whole lesson, like fools. All girls sat in the classroom and cried. We disrupted all lessons on that day. But we didn’t cry because we were sorry. We cried because we wanted to disrupt the lessons, we did that on purpose. When I found out later what Stalin wanted to do with the Jews 16, I understood everything. But when he died we didn’t know anything. Who could have told us?

One day Mother’s brother Naum visited us, at that time he served in Chita; he was a second in command – a pilot-scout. He came together with his wife and invited me to go with him. We lived in need, and he told me that it would be easier for me to enter an institute [university] there, than in Leningrad. At that time I dreamed to become a teacher, a teacher of history.

In Leningrad it was really difficult to enter an institute, and we had nothing to live on, therefore I decided to leave for Chita, to follow Uncle Naum’s advice. There I entered the Pedagogical Institute – History Faculty, later we were merged with the Foreign Languages Faculty, and later – with the Literary Faculty. So I graduated from the History and Philology Faculty in 1959. There was obligatory assignment for graduates at that time 17, and I went to Uletovsky district [120 kilometers away from Chita] according to my appointment. The village was called Ulety – 120 kilometers away from the railway station. There was only one well in the village.

That village was situated in Siberia. It was such wilderness, that people who lived there, had never seen the railroad in their lives. Many had never left the village. There was no radio, nothing. I was placed on the premises of an old deserted school. I shared a room with the teacher of mathematics. It was dangerous for a young girl to live alone in Balzoy [Chita region (Transbaikalia) was a place, where a lot of exiled persons and geologists lived, who were often drunk and were able to force their way into her house.

Houses in the settlement stood far apart, and there was nobody to help. And she was a very young girl, a recent graduate, 22 years old] and it wasn’t possible to go out at night. A geological group was stationed in the village. The workers drank, shouted, enjoyed themselves and made a lot of noise. We shut the door and trembled with fear the whole night, we were scared that drunken men would rush into the house. I was very much afraid to live there.
I was afraid of everything: of men, of dogs, of cows and bulls. 

On my way home from school in the evening, I was very nervous, I was scared to walk in the village. Bulls and cows walked right along the streets. When a herd approached me, I didn’t know what to do. I was a city girl and could not get used to the village life. I needed protection.

• Marriage, children and later life

Of course, I married there quickly and gave birth to my dear son Mikhail. My husband was a mechanic and later he went to Chita to study at the Agricultural Technical School. He finished it. Then in Irkutsk [city in Siberia] he graduated from the Agricultural Institute. Our family life was a failure. At the school I worked in two shifts and there were no day nursery or kindergarten or nannies in Balzoy. My mother-in-law couldn’t stay with my son, as she was busy with her own household. Who to leave my little son with?

I submitted an application asking to release me from administrative obligations and continued to work as a teacher of Russian language, literature and history only. When I went to work, I left my son with a woman who lived across the street and visited her during the working day to feed my baby. Certainly there was no due care for the baby. Once a pig almost bit off his arm, then when he started walking he got hit by a horse, luckily, he wasn’t hurt then. I shouldn’t have lived like that with a baby. I quit my job, basing my decision upon my family circumstances.

It happened in 1961 and I returned to Leningrad. Later my husband visited me twice in Leningrad and urged me to return, but I refused. I wasn’t able to get a divorce, because he didn’t agree for a long time to divorce me. Only in 1964 I persuaded him with great difficulty and we got divorced.

On my arrival in Leningrad new complications appeared – they refused to register me 18 at my mom’s room, where from I had left before the institute. Actually, they didn’t permit me to live there – go where you want! And I had to get a job – my acquaintances assisted me –in the settlement of Roschino as a pioneer leader at the eight-year school. I worked there and rented a room for some time. I was hard up – it was necessary to pay a nurse, to pay for the room, though a part of this sum was paid by the school.

I placed my son in the kindergarten in Osinovaya Roscha. The kindergarten was far away from home, in the forest. I had to drag him there early in the morning and run to school in order to be on time for the lessons which started at nine in the morning. A lot of things were done in the kindergarten on a voluntary basis and children’s parents helped the kindergarten teachers. Mikhail’s kindergarten teacher told me, ‘Don’t just come and work yourself, bring your children from school.’ We cleaned the big site, removed the leaves, helped to conduct the children’s celebrations. All in all, Mikhail’s teacher treated me very well. My son was brought up there in good conditions.

Later I managed to get a job in Osinovaya Roscha School. Teachers who had taught me, still worked there and they knew me very well. All positions of teachers were occupied and I got a job as a pioneer leader. Later my school manager moved me to Pargolovo School, where I got a very small salary: I gave few lessons – I taught history. But unfortunately the headmaster of that school gave this place to another one, who was a teacher of history too, and he took away my lessons of history and foisted pioneer work upon me.

My mom worked at the Commander-in-Chief’s; on the whole she had a sort of hush-hush work, something like housekeeping at the Commander-in-Chief’s. Soldiers were subordinated to her informally and assisted her. As she worked all her life in the military camp, she also took the military oath. In 1968 my mom retired, and the military camp she worked for gave her an apartment in Leningrad, near Chernaya Rechka, where I live now. And as we moved from Pargolovo together with my mom and it was a long way to get to my work – to the school, I managed to get a job at the Public Library. When I came there, it turned out that according to secret laws they didn’t give jobs to Jews.

They gave me a job only in the department of newspapers and only because its manager was Jewish – she had been working there for a long time – during the siege of Leningrad too. Her name was Tatyana Solomonovna Grigoryan, and it was she who gave me work. Her department lacked people and it was very hard physical work – to carry large volumes of newspapers ‘Pravda,’ ‘Leningradskaya Pravda,’ volumes of several months. So we carried them from place to place, and sometimes it was required to file newspapers for a period of 30 years! Imagine shelves five meters high! So we used step-ladders and carriages – it was a very hard job.

I worked during the daytime and attended higher library courses in the evening for a year. In fact I obtained a second university education, as I passed all exams under the program of the Library Institute. I finished the courses and began to work as a librarian, then as a senior librarian and later as a senior editor. I worked at the division of cataloging, described and annotated newspaper funds. I retired in 1990 from the position of chief librarian. I had been working at the Public Library for 22 years. I was awarded medals for valorous labor.

The team at the Public Library was intending to accept me to the Communist Party. The Communist organization at the Library was big. Each department or group of departments had its own Party nucleus. I was rather active in public work out of my school habits. I worked as an agitator and a political informer. Once a fortnight I gathered all employees of our department and instructed them on what was going on in the cultural life of our city and country and issues of the state’s internal policy – issues of foreign policy were introduced by another person. I drew information for my reports from newspapers, summarized it and told people with my own comments. During the pre-election campaign I worked as an electioneering agent.

Our Party nucleus actively pushed me through to the Party. Everybody told me, ‘A historian should be a member of the Party.’ They had been ‘pushing me through’ there for three years. I wanted to affiliate with the Party very much, but Jews were admitted very reluctantly. I was educated in the sphere of history and literature, and working at school, I confronted the fact that teaching of history in senior grades – I mean History of the USSR – was entrusted only to party members, i.e. to specially approved persons. I know – they told me – that at party meetings of our unit they discussed my nomination several times: they decided whether I deserve their recommendation or not. So I was a candidate for the Party from 1969 till 1970 – more than a year. I

n 1975 I joined the Party. In a year I was elected secretary of the primary party organization, which united Communists of three departments: the newspaper department, the oriental studies’ department, the department of national literature in the languages of the USSR peoples. Besides my direct job I had to manage the party organization, make speeches at meetings and work with personnel. Before retirement, I had been working for twelve years in the party organization. I left home early in the morning at 7.30 and came back home late at night. I had no free time. I had friends only at work.

I didn’t experience any oppression on the basis of anti-Semitism, though sometimes unpleasant feelings related to my nationality arose. Sometimes I even felt uneasy at work. For example, when I sat at the meeting of political informers at the Party District Committee, devoted to the newspapers overview, and the instructor explained to us, what one was allowed to say about Jews and what had to be held back. I sat in front of him and avoided his stare. It was certainly awful. I also faced problems when looking for a job. My patronymic is Ayzikovna. My father’s name was Ayzik and it was in his documents too. But when I worked at school, everybody called me Arkadyevna 19. Even the Head of the District National Education advised me, ‘If people distort your patronymic, say that it is Arkadyevna.’ When I returned to Leningrad and was looking for a job, I also had problems. My real patronymic – Ayzikovna – is written in all my documents.

My son Mikhail was born in 1960, on 4th December. I named him Mikhail in honor of my brother. When my brother was born – and I was a child at that time – it was I who gave him his name Mikhail. It happened because Bassya’s husband was Mikhail, and I liked him very much, though I was a girl then – he seemed very handsome to me. And I tried to persuade my parents to name my brother Mikhail.

But I lived with my son and my mother, who was an old woman by that time. When I began to work at the Public Library, Mikhail went to school. At first he stayed at the extended day group for the whole day. Later, when Mother retired in 1967, she stayed with him after lessons and took care of him. Before retirement Mother was provided with an apartment in Leningrad. We moved to the center of the city. Mikhail studied in the eight-year school located on Serdobolskaya Street and finished it with good marks. He was the favorite pupil of the teacher of literature and wrote good compositions. Since I worked at the library she always used me and asked me to talk to her pupils about books. I often went to their school and gave lectures about various pieces of literature.

After the 8th grade my son tried to enter Suvorov College, which trains officers. He passed all exams but wasn’t accepted. His documents, which he submitted to the entrance examination commission, stated, ‘Mother is a Jewess’ 20. Mikhail decided to enter the Suvorov Military College, though we knew that they didn’t accept Jews: a secret rule everyone knew about. The formal reason for refusal was his poor eyesight. Mikhail wanted to become a professional soldier very much – like his grandfather and my father: I told him a lot about my father. He continued to study in high school at the mathematical department. However, he was in a bad mood the whole year. He simply didn’t want to study. I cried a lot during that time. He said that it didn’t make any sense because he wouldn’t be accepted to any place. He was in a really bad mood, he was very much offended. However, he finished the ten-year school in 1977 with good marks and entered the Higher Military Engineering College of Communication – at present it is called the Academy of Communication.

While my son studied there, he lived in barracks. During the first two or three years cadets were allowed to leave their barracks only at weekends – but not every weekend. I would be sticking around the entrance of the college together with mothers of other cadets for five years. We quarreled, but dragged bags full of food for our sons, as they were always hungry, especially during the first year, until they got used to the army rules. In senior courses he spent nights at home more often.

Being not indifferent to the destiny of his grandfather – my father – he searched for information about him. He also got information about Efim, my mother’s brother, who perished in Kirovsky district and was buried there. It was Mikhail who pressed the regional military registration and enlistment office for his burial.

While Mikhail studied at the military college, he faced anti-Semitism all the time. I think that people do this because of lack of good breeding. Why should I be ashamed of my nationality? Mikhail thought the same. I told him, ‘I’d better not come to your college, so that you won’t be teased.’ But he took me by the hand and proudly stalked along the cadets. He said he didn’t care about their tricks and about what they said. He said that he wouldn’t be ashamed of his mother. He was really very proud of me. He graduated from the college in 1982 in the rank of an engineer-lieutenant and was assigned to serve at the practice military unit in Pereyaslavl –Zalessky [an ancient Russian town near Moscow]. He was the platoon commander at first and later taught military disciplines at the soldiers’ school and obtained the rank of senior lieutenant.

In 1987 he was assigned to the town of Aleysk in Altay [a mountainous region in the south of Western Siberia, 3,500 km east of St. Petersburg]. He served there in rocket forces and stayed in an underground bunker. He got his rank of a captain there. Soon he returned to Pereyaslavl-Zalessky and married a Russian woman. Her name was Olga, she worked – and works to date – at school as a teacher of English language. In 1991 his son, Alexey, was born and in 1996 Mikhail got transferred to St. Petersburg, but his wife refused to join him. They got divorced. The child stayed with the mother, she never let her son anywhere away from her. He is a very good boy and loves his father very much. He said, ‘Dad, let’s run away from Mother, she may stay where she wants.’ Mikhail calls him every week, visits him on his birthdays and other holidays. He visited St. Petersburg every year with his mother, but not this year [2002].

Mikhail worked at the city military registration and enlistment office. Later he was given a promotion and the rank of a major and was assigned to the town of Volodga. He worked there for a year and several months. It was the economic crisis period, when the officers didn’t get paid and had no apartments. He lived there alone. He got demobilized in 2002 after 20 years of service and got a small pension. Certainly he wasn’t going to retire but it was a terrible time. Reduction of the army started and he quit. He was looking for a job for a long time and tried many jobs. He took courses of drivers a long time ago, took security guards’ courses and obtained a license for security guarding, but still it wasn’t easy to find a proper job. He tried to get a job as a security guard, of an agent in a travel agency and a manager in a small company. His friends also tried to help him and offered him a position at some warehouse, but he refused and said, ‘I shall not work there, there’s nothing to do.’ Thus my son wasn’t needed by anyone after 20 years of service for his Motherland. He also took courses of marketing and found a job related to real estate. He has been working in this field for two years already. I think he likes it. Though he grumbles, it seems that he loves his job, because he is responsible for many things – he has to check everything, find out information and make arrangements with people.

I sometimes thought about immigrating to Israel, but my life developed in such a way that I couldn’t leave, though in fact it was possible. While Mikhail worked in Altay, I got married for the second time in 1988, when I was 53 years old already. My husband’s name was Vladimir Libin, he was a Jew. He was a very nice man. His first wife died a long time ago when he was a young man. She was ill for a long time, she had cancer. Vladimir took care of her and brought up their son, he was both a mother and a father. His son’s name is Mikhail too. He has grown up and works now as a doctor at the ambulance. He is a good doctor. His wife is also a doctor and they have two children.

At the end of the 1980s Mikhail’s family suddenly decided to leave for Israel. They got packed quickly and in several months left for the town of Ashkelon. They wrote letters to his father asking him to come. They even took offence at me, though I didn’t hold him back. Certainly Vladimir was torn between me and them. I told him that I couldn’t leave. My mother was more than 80 years old, she was sick and senile and lived until her 90th birthday. She spent the last six years of her life in bed and didn’t get up. Besides, my son Mikhail served in the Soviet army. If I had left, he would have been dismissed from the army 21. How could I have left? I couldn’t have left my mother alone.

My husband Vladimir left alone after long hesitation. He was waiting for me for two years in Israel and continued to ask me to come, but I didn’t go. He even wanted to return to St. Petersburg, but I talked him out of it, telling him, ‘You will keep striving to go back.’ His children and grandchildren lived there. I understood him but cried. We corresponded after that. If he had left some time later, I would have gone with him. My mother died in 2000 – she was buried at the Jewish cemetery in the same grave as her sister – and my son retired from the army in 2002. My main problems were gone and I was ready to join my husband in Israel. However, Vladimir died in 1999. So I never visited Israel, but dreamed about it all my life.

Besides my mother and son Mikhail the closest person to me was my younger brother Mikhail. When we returned to Leningrad after evacuation he was five years old. There was no kindergarten in our military settlement and I stayed with him at home all the time. The kindergarten was arranged a year after, and Mikhail attended it for a year. When I went to school in Levashevo, Mikhail went to elementary school, which was opened in Osinovaya Roscha in 1947. I took care of him as I was the pioneer leader in that school. Later he went to Pargolovo School. My brother was very clever and got only excellent marks. As a pupil of senior grades he worked in addition at a construction site, but still managed to finish the ten-year school with excellent marks. In 1957 he entered the Military Mechanical Institute and graduated from it with excellent results too. They wanted him to stay at the post-graduate department, but the subfaculty preferred a different student. Mikhail was assigned to work at the machinery construction plant in the town of Kremenchug [today Ukraine]. It was 1962, if I am not mistaken. He left and in a month received a telegram from the institute about a vacancy at the subfaculty and an invitation to the post-graduate department. But he was offended and refused to go back. So he stayed in Kremenchug.

He worked at that plant, which produced machinery for road construction, from the beginning of his assignment term until retirement. At first he worked as a shop engineer, later at the SCB [Special Construction Bureau], then he was appointed Manager of the SCB and received the honorary title of ‘Best inventor of the USSR Ministry of Engineering Industry.’ He studied at the post-graduate department by correspondence for four years, wrote a dissertation on road pavements, but failed to defend it. Key specialists from Leningrad and Moscow had a quarrel with Kremenchug and his dissertation was ‘killed.’ He had a nervous breakdown and fell sick with diabetes. He was sick for many years and complications began. He underwent an operation in Kremenchug and his leg was amputated. He returned to the plant but in 1996 he was forced to retire based on disablement at the age of 56. It was a real blow for him. He died a year after that, in 1997. 

My brother’s wife Polina is a Ukrainian Jewess. My brother met her in Kremenchug, I don’t know any details of their encounter. Polina’s mother and father were religious people, they spoke good Yiddish and observed Jewish Tradition for certain, but I visited them in Kremenchug only once and have only a rough idea about it. In any case, Polina also knew Yiddish and brought the tradition to her family. I know little about it, because we saw each other once a year, when they came to visit us. She finished a library school, later graduated from the Library Institute and still works. She holds the position of Regional Library Department Head in Kremenchug. She is a very nice and active woman and people treat her well.

They had two children: son Alexander and daughter Galina. Alexander was born in 1967 and finished the ten-year school in Kremenchug. Later he studied at the Machinery Construction Institute in Moscow and lived in a dormitory. He served in the army for two years. He returned to Kremenchug and worked at the plant where his father worked. When Mikhail became disabled, Alexander took him to the plant in a wheelchair. After Mikhail was fired, Alexander was so much worried about his father that he quit his job too. He found a job in a private company and still works there as an assistant. He earns a good salary. The company specializes in computers and various office equipment. Alexander married a girl he went to school with. His wife’s name is Marina. Her family came to Kremenchug from Estonia before she was born. I know almost nothing about her family, but the fact that her father worked at the network of railway lines. Alexander and Marina have no children. Marina works at a machinery construction plant. Alexander has been sick for the last years. He was exposed to radioactive irradiation when he served in the army. Now he has problems with his liver and kidneys and he’s gained a lot of extra weight. 

In 1980 my brother and his wife Polina had another baby, a daughter Galina. She was a late child and her father’s favorite. Polina gave birth to stillborn children several times. But then Galina was born. She got only excellent marks at school and was the best pupil. She finished the school with a medal [distinction]. Later she studied in Kremenchug at the Machinery Construction Institute and obtained the profession of a machinery construction engineer. She is a very clever girl and has always been a leader in the KVN [‘The Club of Jolly and Smart,’ a popular entertainment contest in the USSR] at the institute and their team even appeared on stage representing Kremenchug. She is very fond of artistic knitting. She helped her mother to earn some additional money with it when she was a student. All in all, she is a smart girl. It’s not possible to find a job in her professional field in Kremenchug now; she took accountants’ courses and works as an accountant now. Galina is married to a Ukrainian, his name is Vitaly; I don’t remember his last name. They have a good family, they both work and recently their daughter was born. 

• Glossary:

Yvonne Capuano-Molho
Athens
Greece
Interviewer: Vivian Karagouni
Date of interview: May 2006

Mrs. Yvonne Capuano is a particularly intelligent and active woman. She is a microbiologist and her private practice is located on the same floor as the apartment she is living in.

It is located in the center of Athens, at the “Pedio tou Areos” and there she lived for many years with her husband, who passed away in 2003, and her son, who now is married. Today she is living in this apartment with a lady-companion - a house manager.

Mrs. Yvonne Capuano is a tall, impressive and chic lady who obviously is taking good care of herself. She is a modern lady with many abilities.

On top of being a successful professional, she possesses a wider education and high intellect. Her home is decorated by herself with an impressive classic taste.

Among other things in her home one can find framed embroidery, knitted by Mrs. Capuano herself, and even chairs the upholstery of which has also been knitted by her in complex and particularly difficult designs.

She is very polite and attentive and kept on asking me if I was feeling alright or if I needed anything. When we were looking at old photographs I was very impressed with the difficulty and effort she was putting in because as she said, “These are not photographs but cemeteries.”

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

• My family background

I am descended from the Spanish Jewish families that came to Thessaloniki in 1492 following their expulsion by Isabella and Ferdinand 1. This was Isabella the Catholic, who was full of hatred and this is why the expulsion started in Spain and continued in Portugal and other countries.

Our Jewish race has always been persecuted. I believe that in every period there is a thorn, every time there is a different excuse, they will always find something. It does not matter, we fly away and we are always back, we are here and we will always be.

I don’t know any stories of myths about my ancestors, what I know is that when they arrived in Greece, which was part of the Ottoman Empire at that period, they adapted to the Turkish way of life.

When the Jews went to Kastoria, which was a big fur center, they learned all about furs; it is said that the treatment of furs first came to Thessaloniki with the Jews. Many of them established their shops in the Copper place, and learned from the local craftsmen the processing of copper-braze.

They also say that when the Jews went to Istanbul to serve the sultan, as accountants, lawyers, doctors etc., the sultan said, ‘I considered Ferdinand and Isabella intelligent and couldn’t imagine that they would expel such an element from their country.’

My fathers’ father, Joseph Molho, worked for the Turks. He was responsible of a big agricultural exploitation [tsiflikas]. The same applied to my father, Raphael Molho. When my grandfather was working for the Turks he was buying a lot of jewelry for my grandmother Esther, nee Ergas.

They even told me that when Grandfather Molho died, my grandmother, who had six sons said, ‘Whichever bride will give birth to the young Joseph will have all my jewelry.’ Well my mother had two daughters, my aunt four daughters, the next aunt two daughters, the other aunt one – only daughters. It was the youngest of all, Uncle Alberto, when he returned from the concentration camps, who got married and had a son, and young Joseph was born. But Joseph came too late.

I remember my grandfather being dressed in beautiful European clothes. He was wearing a frock-coat. Grandmother Esther was also wearing European clothes, I remember she had the lob of her ear torn because once, as she was wearing earrings a young Turk grabbed it and ran away, and thus her ear was torn.

I don’t know to which school my grandfather Molho went but he spoke French, I don’t know whether he also knew how to write it.

One of my grandfather’s brothers was a very educated man. He had attended the rabbinical school [yeshivah] in Istanbul and, I think, also in Vienna. Later he became the rabbi of Kavala.

When the first racist legislation against the Jews was ordered by the Nazis, as there were also Bulgarians and Germans 2 there, they shouted for the Jews to come out and sweep the city. This uncle, the rabbi, was the first that took a broom and started sweeping.

My grandfather had many brothers, but I was very young at the time. I knew some of them but I don’t remember anything else about them.

My grandparents of the Molho side of the family, since my grandfather worked for the Turks, were always living in Turkish houses. The house I remember was located close to ‘Kamara,’ the Arch of Galerius, where many Turkish houses were situated. It had running water and a fountain in the yard, exactly as the Turks used to have.

Within the yard was a heart-shaped pond and water was coming out of it. It also had the Turkish balcony which is a covered balcony extending out of the house. That is where the women were sitting. They were not going out of the house but sitting around on this balcony where they could see what was going on in the street without being seen.

The house had two stories and I remember a big iron door at the entrance. Inside the floor was made of big marble slabs and the furniture was heavy and massive. It had also many square tables with heavy legs and many sideboards. That was what the furniture looked liked in that period. I found the same kind of furniture in the house of my mother-in-law too.

These Turkish houses had the hall and the dining room in one piece and all around were the bedrooms. When a son got married, he didn’t leave the house. He was given a bedroom of his own, and this is how the brides were living in the same house with their mothers-in-law.

My mother was living with her parents, but I remember one aunt that was living with my Molho grandparents. The other aunt was not living with her mother because her parents had left for Israel, then still Palestine.

I don’t remember if the Molho grandparents ever left Thessaloniki to go on vacation or to travel. I remember them already old. All of their children were married and had their own families.

When my grandfather Molho died in 1930, my grandmother with her daughter, Gracia, and her son-in-law went to live in an apartment in the center of the city, on Pavlou Mela Street. They were staying on the third floor; next to the place the Moskov family 3 was living.

My mother’s parents were Leon Moshe and Bienvenida, nee Florentin. My grandmother’s name means ‘welcome’ in Spanish. There were many names like that at that time.

These grandparents were also living in Thessaloniki, but they were traveling a lot. It was due to my grandfather’s job. I heard that in the beginning he had a factory producing wooden door frames, but later, because he got tired, he got a big shop selling wood and stopped producing it. It wasn’t construction wood but a specialist shop selling wood for furniture, and part of his job was to travel and visit exhibitions.

Despite the fact that he had no formal education he was very avant-garde. He was telling us that when he was young he went to school at the synagogue where they were taught to read and write not Hebrew but Ladino 4, or Judeo-Espanol, and writing in Rashi 5. I call this type of writing ‘little pieces of wood.’ At that period all the people in Thessaloniki were speaking Judeo-Espanol, it was our mother tongue.

My grandmother also knew how to write in Rashi, not with the European alphabet. When her daughter, Sylvia, went to live with her husband in Spain – they got married in 1927 and left in 1930 – my grandmother forced herself to learn also the Latin alphabet in order to be able to write letters to her daughter, who was of course speaking Judeo-Espanol, but didn’t know the Rashi writing.

My grandfather, Leon Moshe, didn’t come from a rich family, but he was a hard working man. He was telling me that when he was a boy he did many jobs and he also worked at the railways 6. I don’t know what exactly he was doing there, I never understood.

Anyhow, his supervisor was an Italian and Grandfather learned very well the Italian language. After that, and knowing Italian, he worked in a wooden frames factory belonging to an Italian and this is how he learned this business. At that period Thessaloniki was an ‘open port,’ a free trading zone, and many different nationalities were gathered there with many Italian and French businessmen.

This grandfather was fat when he was young but later this changed. I remember his eyes…  When he looked at you, you were finished…

He was always dressed elegantly. He wore European clothes and so did my grandmother. She was very coquette and fatty as was in fashion at the time. Her dresses were all embroidered and her hats had feathers. My grandfather was wearing a bow-tie and later he walked with a walking-stick. All my family wore European clothes as they were rather progressive. The only person I remember wearing traditional clothes when she left the house was the mother-in-law of the brother of my grandmother, who was visiting wearing a Kofya, a traditional headgear for Jewish women, which was all knitted with pearls.

What my mother told me is that when she was young every Passover, Pesach, and every New Year’s Eve, Rosh Hashanah, my grandfather bought for each of the kids a fez 7. Thessaloniki was the last city to be liberated from the Turks in 1913. When I see on television the recent Turkish series’ and when I visit Turkey I hear many Turkish words that I am familiar with. Words I heard from my grandfather and my father because they lived in the Ottoman Empire. For example, the word ‘kavgas’ which means fight, I thought it was a Hebrew word and recently I realized it is Turkish.

My grandfather Leon Moshe was very hard working and extremely strict. Jews were men dedicated to their family. My grandfather was the leader of his, a real ‘pater familias.’ I was watching this Turkish series on television and saying to myself, ‘This is Memik? That’s the name of the strict traditional grandfather in the series. Well, that’s my grandfather.’ Oh, he was really strict.

My grandmother Bienvenida was very good and open-hearted but also collected in front of the strict grandfather, yet it is impressive how she always managed to do what she herself wanted. My mother would say, ‘Grandmother asked to go to Spain to see Aunt Sylvia. Grandfather will never say yes.’ But of course they went to visit Sylvia in Spain.

Also, every year they went to France. You know, Thessaloniki was a cosmopolitan city, a small Paris, and it was also the Jews that were offering a particular flair to it. All Jews were civilized people; they had not lived in villages. Since they had no country of their own, as Israel didn’t exist then, they always lived in big cities. They had the particular radiation of the big cities.

• Growing up

I always happen to hear from friends, co-students etc., ‘I will go to my village.’ My village! Thessaloniki and later Athens were the only places I knew. And the Jews in Thessaloniki were more numerous compared to the Christian Greeks, a balance, which, of course, later changed. Thessaloniki was a city that shone. For example my grandfather and my grandmother would never go to Athens; they would go to Paris or to Vienna.

My aunt Sylvia, my mother’s sister, suffered from poliomyelitis and was handicapped. My grandfather would do whatever the doctors would tell him. One of them said, ‘Go, early in the morning, to the slaughter house and get the gall-bladder of a cow that’s just been slaughtered.

Bring it home and put the foot of the girl in it.’ They thought that this would make the nerves to operate again. And so Grandfather would take his carriage with the horses, bring the gall-bladder and put it, as a compress, on his daughter’s foot. Later, in 1914, he took her to Vienna to be treated, imagine, to Vienna in that period!

Even grandmother would go for her gynecological problems to Paris every year. Also, Grandfather would always be the first to go to the wood fairs, to Paris, to Germany etc.; he would also take my mother with him since she spoke French.

In our house, all the tapestry had been ordered by grandfather in Vienna. First came the fabric and then the walls were painted in the same color with golden leaves in blue enamel paint.

None of my grandfathers had gone to the army. It was the Turkish army and neither the Jews nor the Christians would go to the Turkish army. They would even tell the following anecdote: When children were born they would say to the local priest, ‘Father, the child is born; shall I declare it younger or older?

If I declare it older it will be too old and will not be taken to the army, if I declare it to young it will be too young to be taken to the army.’ ‘And why don’t declare the exact birth?’ ‘Is that true, can I do that?’

Or, if necessary, they would let the boys attend, for a couple of months, a priest school so that they wouldn’t be called to the army. This, of course, was valid for the Christians only, not for us. Anyhow, neither my grandfathers nor my father went to the army.

The number of Jews in Thessaloniki was quite high, sixty thousands. Jewish people were quite closely connected among themselves. During the very old days, the ones when I didn’t exist yet, the Jews were quite isolated and kept all the religious traditions, despite the fact that they were in the Diaspora. When they left Spain they locked their houses and took the key with them, as they thought they would return.

When Juan Carlos 8 came to Thessaloniki, the president of the Jewish community welcomed him in Spanish and said, ‘We speak your language, which we carried from that time and we still have our keys of those houses of ours in Spain.’

[‘Hablamos vuestra lingua que trajimos con mosotros cuanto mos huimos de España, i dainda tenemos las llaves de muestras cazas ay.’] Even today in Spain there are many names like our Jewish names as we also brought them with us from there.

Before the war, it was a world somehow secluded. Not that we didn’t have contacts with the Christians. On the contrary. You could see partnerships with one Jewish and on Christian name, and at school we were all together. In conclusion, it was a perfect adaptation.

They would even tell me, ‘Yvonne, you know our festivities better than us, and they would add, ‘Dominique, who knows when her name day may be?’ And I would answer, ‘On the 8th of January.’

Schools were closed during the Christian festivities and not ours. In conclusion, the assimilation was exceptionally high. Not that I forgot our own religion, not at all. Even if I wanted to there were my father, my mother, my grandmother etc.

• During the war

In that period there were many synagogues 9 in Thessaloniki. I remember our synagogue, the Beit Saoul 10. It was located one bus stop away from home. It was a very beautiful synagogue on the main street, but to enter it you had to walk a long narrow yard with trees and flowers on the left and on the right side of it, and when you reached the end of this yard you entered the synagogue.

All these synagogues were destroyed during the war and now there is only one synagogue left, the ‘big synagogue’ as we call it, the ‘Monastirioton’ 11. It is the only one that wasn’t destroyed as it became a Red Cross depot. Today, this synagogue, the ‘big synagogue’ opens only for special events, however in the Modiano market there is the ‘small synagogue’ [the ‘Yad Lezicaron’] which operates normally every day.

Before the war there were many Jewish organizations. I remember the Mizrachi Club 12, which was opposite our house on Cyprus Street. They even had a football team. In its localities they organized marriages, bar mitzvahs and it operated during the big festivities.

I remember the brides, the poor ones, coming, and upon the arrival of the bride by car, and while the people were waiting, one would say, ‘Aide take the bride for another ride with the car, for who knows when will be her next use of a car.’ You see, they were poor girls, servants etc.

Marriages were also held at the Matanot Laevionim 13, which means ‘presents for the poor.’ This was a charitable center that had been erected by my uncle Jacques, my mother’s brother. In the basement they were offering, every day, free meals to the poor children, on the first floor marriages were held.

At this place the engagement ceremony as well as the marriage of my uncle Jacques took place. A very nice marriage with live music, an orchestra and all kind of things…

I don’t know what this place is used for today. However, I remember that even during the occupation, they were offering free meals to the poor people. It was close to the Mizrachi Club. During that time there also existed a mikveh but I cannot recall where it was.

There were also many Jewish schools. There was the Alliance 14, the Talmud Torah for the less wealthy, I think, and also there were the ‘Lycée’ and the private Jewish schools of Altzeh, Gatenio, and Madame Yehode. The Jews were also going to the American College 15, the German school and the Greek private schools of Schina and Valagianni. I don’t remember any other schools.

There was the ‘Association des Anciens Elèves de l’ Alliance Francaise Universelle.’

Also there were many Jewish women welfare organizations because we had a lot of poverty. There were big areas of the city occupied by poor, very poor families. Usually our servants, who were sleeping in our house, came from those areas.

We were very many Jews living in the city, spread all over it. There were no exclusive Jewish quarters. Only the very poor neighborhoods were exclusively Jewish like the ‘151’ 16, the ‘7’… The ‘151’ was located higher than Harilaou, the other was close to the First Army Camps that is higher than Vasilissis Olgas, which was a central avenue.

On top of it was the Army Avenue and higher was an area called ‘koulibas,’ which means huts. Then there was another area next to the railway station [the Baron Hirsch], which during the occupation became the transport center for the trains that took the Jews to Auschwitz. In conclusion, there were many poor Jewish neighborhoods.

One poor Jewish neighborhood called ‘Campbell’ [where approximately 220 poor Jewish families lived] had been attacked by the ‘EEE’ or ‘3E’ 17. I remember that all were scared and it was the only subject of discussion. It was a wave of anti-Semitism.

When Venizelos 18 came, he brought with him anti-Semitism to Thessaloniki. The organization ‘EEE,’ which stands for National Union Hellas, had set the neighborhood on fire 19. They all said that Venizelos was behind it.

I don’t know, but I think that in a country and city where Jews live, giving them an element of civilization, they normally should be well taken care of. Hate is not good. Hate creates hate and violence brings violence. Being soft and good with people brings positive results.

If you behave well towards someone, he will certainly behave well towards you too. We are all together in it. When people are shouting, and someone wants to say something, if he speaks in low tone, immediately the others get silent in order to listen to him. What I mean to say is that people are copying and mimicking what the majority is doing.

The Jews of Thessaloniki covered all possible professions. Many were merchants, others tanners. They were so honest among themselves that it was said they were not asking for receipts. Their word was the receipt. This was said to me by an acquaintance, Mr. Noah, who was a merchant of cotton and wool.

Until once arrived someone who cheated him a big sum, and following this negative experience, he started asking for receipts. He said, ‘I didn’t want to take receipts, it was the others that forced me to.’

Also the Jews were the ones operating the port of Thessaloniki. They worked as porters, loaders, unloaders, etc. and these are the same people that set up the operation of the Haifa port. They had a particular pack-saddle on which they loaded what they transported. They were divided in different specializations. Specialists for carrying strong boxes, others for lighter loads, and specialists for weights over a hundred and fifty kilograms

I have seen pictures of these porters in the book of Yiannis Megas, ‘Memories of the life of Jewish community of Thessaloniki 1897-1917, editions Capon, Athens 1993.’ There you can see this particular saddle they were wearing, as also the traditional dress they used [antari]. I also remember house removals executed by using a long thin cart, very big. All the house furniture was loaded on this cart and it was pulled by one or two work-horses.

I remember that there were a number of cars in the city, not many private cars as compared to the taxis. Many taxis. And tram also, for public transport. And many cobbled streets. The big avenue, Vassilisis Olgas, was cobbled. And as the tram was passing on it, it made a huge noise. There were many other cobbled streets as well as many with earth and mud.

My father, Raphael Molho, was the first of ten siblings. Second was Saoul, who was very intelligent and had a lot of humor. When there was an engagement or marriage they would all gather at the grandparents’ house. Saoul was the clown of the family.

He survived Auschwitz because he behaved the same way with the Germans. He might have said to them, “Count on me on whatever you want,’ etc. He was very funny. He would say to his mother, ‘Mama sew me a button, please.’ ‘Amen, I will sew it, go and get married.’ ‘Mother, should I get married for a single button?’ Saoul got married but left his wife and child in Auschwitz. When he returned to Thessaloniki he remarried.

Then there was Gracia who died in Auschwitz, and so did her husband. They had no children.

The fourth child was Jacques. Jacques got married before the war, to a very beautiful girl called Daisy, and went to live in France. He worked in Grenoble, and they had a daughter.

Then there was Charles who lived in Belgium before World War II. He survived Auschwitz and returned to Belgium. He had no children.

The sixth child was Dario who stayed in Thessaloniki, and was deported and murdered in Auschwitz.

Then came the twins, Lisa and Bella. Lisa died in Auschwitz with her two children, while Bella had left earlier for Israel, then Palestine. She died there in 1980.

The youngest brother, Alberto, survived Auschwitz but left there his wife and two daughters. When he returned he remarried and had a son called Joseph.

There was also Mois, who had committed suicide for romantic reasons, but I know nothing more about him.

Both my father and his brothers and sisters graduated from the German School of Thessaloniki, which was a private school. Out of my uncles four came back from the concentration camps in Germany, because they knew the German language.

Before the war, the Jews of Thessaloniki were very fond of Germany. Most families would get a ‘Schwester,’ that is, a sister/governess, in their houses from Germany. Of course this changed later….

My mother is Erietta, nee Moshe. In her family there were two sisters and two brothers, Jacques, Mario, Erietta and Sylvia. One of my uncles, Jacques Moshe, was very well known as he was the best engineer in Greece. My grandfather had brought to his home a ‘Schwester’ – Gelda was her name I believe – whose husband had died in World War I in 1914, and she was the teacher of the children at my mother’s house.

If there is a reason that my mother got out of the Haidari camp, a prison in Athens – because she was caught – as well as my grandfather, my grandmother and Uncle Jacques, it was because of the knowledge of the German language.

My mother had gone to school at the Alliance. I think that schooling lasted three years at the time. They were taught sewing, housekeeping, and then they arranged to get them married.

My mother was friends with the twin sisters of my father, Lisa and Bella. This is how she got to know my father. My father was working with his own father, and he also had his own big land, ‘tsiflic,’ from the Turks.

My grandfather constructed for my mother’s marriage in 1917 a set of very good furniture. And then came the big fire of Thessaloniki in 1917 20 and all was burned. Of course the marriage wasn’t postponed. So after the marriage my grandfather made new furniture for his daughter.

When they got married they first bought an apartment overlooking the sea like in Venice. Right in front of it, the waters were deep, so my mother used to put us in a rowboat and we were going opposite to Alexander the Great, where the waters were shallow and people were swimming, and we would also swim with our mother.

I was born in the month of June and when I was two months old, Mother must have taken me into the sea to swim. Later both my sister and myself, when we had whooping cough, and as they said that the sea would be good for us, my mother kept on taking us swimming with the boat. At this particular house there was a common yard that we shared with the apartment next door. Jews, very good people. They do not exist any more.

Also, on the other side lived Sonia Petridou, whose origins were from Russia, divorced with two children, who wasn’t on speaking terms with us. I’m not sure whether she was divorced or not, but we never saw a husband. One evening she was very sick, so her daughter Milia, who was the same age as my sister, came to us and called in the night, ‘Mrs. Errieti, Mrs. Errieti, please come.’

And my mother called the doctor and stayed next to her continuously for two days until she got well. After that Sonia told her, ‘I never thought that you Jews were like that.’ She came from Russia and it seems they had anti-Semitism there. Anyhow, after that incident they became good friends.

We left this house when I was six years old because it was very cold and my mother suffered from rheumatism. I remember we didn’t have parquet, that is wooden flooring but tarpaulin, and as the wind, the northern wind of Thessaloniki called Vardaris, was blowing, we could see the tarpaulin pieces moving. So we left that place and went to live at my grandmother’s.

Their house was also close to the sea. First there was the sea, then Queen Olga Avenue, and right after it was Cyprus Street and the Archaeological Museum Street perpendicular to Cyprus Street and Queen Olga Avenue.

The street where we lived started at Archaeological Museum Street and ended at Karaiskaki Street. The area was called ‘Pate – Phaliro’ and where it was situated, I could get out of the house, on the balcony, and see the sea right in front of me.

Cyprus Street was not a big street. It was a residential street. It had nine or ten houses, and in every house on each floor lived one family. In the house next door, which had three floors, lived three families. Only in our house, on two floors, it was just us, while normally it could have accommodated two families. We stayed in this house quite a long time, almost all our life.

The house was facing Cyprus Street, but its back part, the garage where Uncle Jacques was parking his car, was facing the street in the back, Broufa Street. In the front was the good big door, which was the door we used to enter.

However, there was another door, a smaller one, with a corridor that led to the kitchen. This is the door that the grocer used when he was bringing us our shopping.

A characteristic of this house was the quantity of honeysuckle. Honeysuckle covered the two pillars on which the door was hanging, and there was so much that sometimes we had difficulties to fully open this door. The house was dubbed ‘the house with the honeysuckle.’ In the morning, when I was leaving for school, it smelled so intensely and from such a distance that I kept its smell in my nostrils all day long.

Upon entering there was a straight surface, on the left a small garden and the marble escalator with its handrail covered with honeysuckle. The house was full of its smell. One bedroom was facing this small garden and the other two bedrooms were looking at the back port. The kitchen was facing the yard where there was also honeysuckle.

Next to the garage there was a house where some friends of ours lived. They were Jews that lived in the city of Kavala. The father was a tobacco merchant and they would come for a few days and stay at his mother’s house in Thessaloniki. I met these people later in Athens and we became good friends.

With the older brother of this family – he does not live anymore – we were playing together. He died in a car accident. Back then we were playing ball. It was not usual at all, playing ball from balcony to balcony, we could have broken window-panes, of course, so the parents would shout at us, but it was fun.

Also, this home of ours shared a common wall with the home of my grandmother’s brother, which was also a two-story house. Inside our house on the wall, next to the escalator, we had opened a big hole in the wall, like a door, and we could come and go from our home to the home of my mother’s uncle and aunt.

The uncle was called Jacob Florentin, but we called him ‘Pasha,’ which is a Turkish word, because he was very handsome. His wife was Aunt Esterina and they had five children, two boys and three girls. The oldest one, Sylvia got married at the age of 14 in Paris. She only died three years ago.

I loved her very much. The oldest son, Mevo, went to the army and the other son, Leon, was sent to Israel [then Palestine] when he was very young, to the first farm school, during the British Mandate, that was around 1933.

The second daughter, Jeanne, was the same age as my older sister. They were also sharing the same milk as both mothers took turns in breast feeding the two girls. The youngest one, Dolly, was two or three years younger than me, so we were growing up all together.

Each Sunday we were playing ‘tombola.’ I still remember the pieces an when it was piece 22 my uncle would shout, ‘Ducklings, suckling,’ and when it was the 11, ‘Wood nails, wood nails.’ Wood nails were those small thin wooden nails used to repair high quality shoes.

I remember my mother and Mrs. Soli and Mrs. Regina playing cards in the afternoons. Mother had many friends, who she knew through Grandmother, as Grandmother also liked to play cards and they were gathering at her place to play. Father didn’t know and never played cards. Neither did Grandfather. But Grandmother did, she liked it. She was a gambler.

Our house was a family home. Of course, with the many brothers my father had, we organized big dinners on the holidays. It was a custom at those dinners to have ‘uevos enchaminados,’ eggs cooked in the oven. We put them in the oven all night, as today we do with a casserole.

We cover the bottom of the casserole with dry onion leaves, tea, coffee, pepper and salt and then we put a layer of eggs and then again onions etc. and again add some olive oil and we let them boil for six or seven hours.

These eggs come out brown on the outside, and brownish like marble inside and have a special taste. These eggs were normally prepared on the high holidays such as Pesach, Rosh Hashanah, but even on ordinary days, as to some they are irresistible.

Another custom we had on Pesach and Rosh Hashanah was to exchange visits. My father would visit all the family and all the relatives would visit us with their children and we exchanged eggs. We would visit the other homes and return with eggs in our pockets. This was the custom.

I also remember that on Yom Kippur we were supposed to fast. My mother would bring us chestnuts, as it was their season, and would say, ‘Children, if you get hungry eat the chestnuts but do it in secret.’ So my friends Mendi Hassid, myself and Dolly from the next house would sit secretly together, clean the chestnuts, powder them with sugar and eat them. We would call them ‘the grandfather.’ I can’t remember why.

At home the language we were speaking was Spanish, or Judeo-Espanol, but also French and Greek. My parents, however, when they wanted to share a secret would use German, which we didn’t understand.

We also had a servant at home, to help with the housework. The only thing she never did was to cook, as this was the job of my mother and my grandmother. The ladies would cook as they didn’t do much more. They didn’t go out either; they would cook in big stoves like fireplaces with the ash falling down.

In the bathroom we had a water-heater operating with wood and in the winter we would heat the rooms with beautiful wood burning porcelain stoves, which were manufactured in Vienna. We had two such stoves, one of them was very big and you could lift the cover to heat cheese pies and other things.

At that time we would eat mostly pies. The traditional meal, even on Friday evening, was a pie. Cheese pie, eggplant pie, etc. One of these two stoves is now at my niece’s house.

When I was young I was taken care of by my grandmother and my mother. My father was very good but rather strict. As for me, I was very energetic, a monster!

The Jews of Thessaloniki were good husbands and family men. Even now I hear Christians saying, ‘I would very much like a Jew as husband for my daughter.’ The importance of family was highly appreciated by the Jews of Thessaloniki. The men would become good husbands and the women good mothers.

Now, of course, things have changed, as there has been a lot more elastic attitudes, but in that period we were living all together; my grandmother Molho, for example, would certainly pay a visit to our place at least twice a week.

In that period there was no telephone. It is worth mentioning that when Grandmother wanted to pay a visit to a relative, we would have to send a person, usually the grocer who was carrying our shopping, to pass the news for the forthcoming visit. There was no other way.

We installed our telephone at home in 1934. I remember once we called from Thessaloniki to Athens, as my uncle, Jacques, the engineer, also had an office in Athens and was traveling a lot. He had many construction sites in Thessaloniki like the Macedonian Studies building, the Mediterranean Hotel and others, many, many. So once we called Athens – via a telephone center and an operator, of course.

I was eight years old at the time and I remember that all the adults were very impressed. My mother and grandmother would say to everyone, ‘We did it, we talked with Athens.’ The also wrote about this news to Aunt Sylvia in Spain.

What a celebration! At that time, the most someone could do was to send a telegram, and the telegram was mostly used in order to inform people unexpected – of sudden news, like a death, an engagement, etc.

My father, I remember, would read French books. My mother didn’t read very much. They would both go to the Mizrachi club which was opposite our house and would be open for example on Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah. As for myself I wouldn’t go with them to the synagogue, we didn’t go very often. I remember going many times to the Beit Saoul synagogue for marriages though.

My parents were not involved with political parties as politics didn’t enter our house. Of course they always were conservatives, never leftists. I believe the only club my father would go is Alliance and this is, by itself, impressive as he had graduated from the German school.

When I was a kid I played a lot. Always with boys. We used to play ‘thieves and policemen’ for example, in our second home on Cyprus Street. I was always playing the policeman and of course my knees were continuously wounded. At the Hirsch Hospital 21, now it’s called the Hippocratio Hospital, they knew me very well as  I was a frequent visitor, once to have the one leg stitched, next time the other etc.

In that period we were frequently going to Aidipsos for baths, since the hot springs there were considered very healthy. We would first go by boat to Volos. The boat would stop at the Volos port for loading and we would go for a walk, using a small train, and then we would return to the boat, when it was loaded, and it would then take us to Aidipsos. There was no other way of going there at that time. Upon arrival there, the porter would come to carry our belongings and we would walk to the hotel.

In Thessaloniki we didn’t go to restaurants, we would normally stay at home, while my parents would rarely go the movies or to an evening party organized by an uncle. It was a rather conservative family life and there were almost no restaurants. I remember one restaurant called ‘Olympus-Naoussa.’

To the movies we were going quite frequently in Thessaloniki. Many cinemas, after the film, would also have theatrical performances. There  was the Apollo [at the eastern port of the city], the Alexander the Great [a music hall – night club by the sea at 62, Queen Olga Avenue]. I only remember these two.

I remember my mother saying to everyone that she would go to the theater to see ‘Dybbuk’ by An-ski 22, and she went to see it twice with my father.

Alexander the Great was by the sea, where we were going to swim. As there was no mixed swimming then, boys were swimming with boys and girls with girls. During the summer, Alexander the Great had also a stage.

Many famous actors and actresses, all the big names, would come to perform, like Hero Hatza and others whose names I don’t remember. When I grew up and came to live in Athens, when I saw them, in local theater performances, I recognized them, as I had seen them before in Thessaloniki, but had not kept their names in mind. Hero Hatzas, [Kyriacos] Mavreas, and many others.

They played ‘Les deux orphelines,’ [by A. Ph. Dennery, 1897]. I was insistent, asking my mother continuously, to take me to see it but she refused. Finally she gave in and took me to see it, and I was crying throughout the duration of the play, as I remember.

In Thessaloniki at that time there were no theatrical groups or actors, but theatrical companies would visit the city as part of their tour. This is happening today too, theatrical tours to Thessaloniki. Mesologgitis would come to play and he would make us laugh very much. I don’t remember other theaters, only these two.

I also remember, Palace 23, at the old quay, which was a cinema, and so was Ilysia. There was also the Pathé, which was very close to where we lived in Phaliron and Constantinidi Street. The street has this name as earlier the Constantinides School was located there. Today the School of the Blind and a baby nursery are in its place.

Very close was also the French nursery school called ‘The children of the Lycée.’ I went there for a year because it was very close to our house at the Constantinidis bus station.

For elementary school I went to the Jewish school in order to acquire the principles. We had various lessons, religion too. We learned about Ruth, the sacrifice of Abraham, the fat and the thin cows. Everything was taught in the Greek language, but two hours a week we also had Hebrew. We also had French every day as this language was spoken as frequently as Greek.

Out of my teachers I remember Miss Paula who was teaching us Greek. Later, when I was in the third or fourth grade, she was appointed by the state and left. We also had house keeping, needlecraft, drawing, painting, things like that. We also had history of the Greek Revolution, Composition and all the other lessons.

Only in the morning we would say our own prayer, ‘Shema Israel.’ I remember our Hebrew teacher, who had a wooden ruler, and when he asked something we didn’t know he hit us with the ruler straight on the nail.

After the elementary school I took exams to go to the gymnasium, the secondary school.

I went to the 2nd Girls’ Gymnasium which was a public school. It was a very good school, not only in terms of teaching. There were many girls from good families, but also poor girls like the daughters of the launderers and others... We had classmates from all sort of origins.

I was a good student and never had problems with my professors. After Rika Coulandrou, I was the second of my class with regards to my academic excellence. Rika is also a microbiologist and now lives in Psychiko. Her marital name is now Constandinidou.

After many years she told me that while at school she had felt anxiety that I would surpass her, because we were almost equal in performance.

I had another classmate, Kate Palaisti, who was a niece of the great singer Marica Palaisti; I remember her very well as she always had a runny nose. This Kate I met many, many years later in New York through my nephew Laki Reccanati, who lives there. It is a long story… And I met some other classmates again too, like Danai, whom I found quite recently, and it was a happy occasion as I remembered the past.

I also remember best friend Vouli, who got married to Bassias, a radiologist in Thessaloniki. Another friend of mine is the daughter of the doorkeeper, not a close friend but a friend. She also got married to a very good doctor in Heracleio Athens, or South Patissia.

We talk on the phone from time to time. This is the right thing to do, that is, to keep in touch and be on ridded neither in your thinking nor on your judgment.

I have to admit that as a trained doctor I never took notice getting into a poor or rich house. I never made a distinction. I always looked at the person, what he or she was never mattered and was left out, and this is how things should be. I did the same thing with my son, exactly as I had been taught by my grandfather.

I remember in first and second grade of the gymnasium we went to the parade. We went next to the beach, where there’s a street for cars now, while at that time it was only for walking – 25th March Street.

We had a pass for the bus, paying half the fare, we would pay for a semester or a whole year, so that we didn’t have to carry money for transport but just had to show our pass to the bus-driver.

Opposite our school was the 5th Gymnasium for Boys and there were many handsome boys there. As for me, I was rather young, but we had the intelligent ones, the ‘vivid’ as we called them. What vivid, it is crap. They were only looking in the eyes, this was the vividness. So as we were passing in front of the boys’ gymnasium and going towards the waterfront the boys would call us, ‘One two, one two. Chest out, the first one, chest out.’

Except for school I was also attending the music school and the English institute. The institute was at Aristotelous Place, where we were going by tram and when we finished we were together going to Flocaki, a patisserie which started in Thessaloniki and today is a chain all over Greece, to eat a pastry. Back then there was the Flocas and the little Floca, the Flocaki as we called it, which was located in a small street, Agiou Minas Street, in the center of Thessaloniki.

remember some particular pastries called ‘Plaisir des Dames’ which were round. Actually it was a roll with chocolate outside and cream chocolate filling. The sweets at Flocas were rather small as compared to other more popular sweet-makers whose sweets were huge.

I was very impressed when I went to the United States, to Astoria, the Greek center, where I got into a pastry shop called ‘The White Tower.’ It reminded me very much those neighborhood pastry shops with pastries as big as a plate, while at Flocas pastries were small and elegant.

The music school was at the grounds of the International Fair of Thessaloniki 24. It was easy to go there on foot. I recall that when I started going there, my mother knew every detail of what I was doing there and I kept wondering how my mother managed to learn everything in detail.

Once, while visiting my Molho grandmother, I saw Aunt Gracia talking to Mr. Karantsis, who was the director of the music school. He was living next to my grandmother and aunt, and then I knew how my mother was so well informed. I was about nine years old at that time. Those years were very good, I also had friends from the music school and my teacher there was Mrs. Emily, who was a Jew.

And later I was a member of the mixed chorus of Mr. Floros and once we sang at the Palace theater house that song which says ‘Alleluia.’ Kaufman sang solo the ‘Ave Maria’ and we accompanied her. At that time there were two piano schools; one was Margarite’s and the other Kaufman’s, who was a German Jew. The Kaufman that sang solo was his daughter. The performance was very beautiful, and I still have vivid memories of it.

We even got an award. Where is this award? Well, we left [during the Holocaust] and what did we find afterwards? Nothing! We had given things to people to hide for us, and when we returned my mother would see the same things at their houses but they would say, ‘There is nothing left, they took everything from us.’ What to say.

The best of all was that we were girl scouts. Every Saturday we gathered at the YMCA. The place where recently, in September 2005, there was a big fire. I was a girl scout and we were all divided in four groups, the leader and the deputy leader. The group I was in was called ‘Amarantos.’ We were six girl scouts and our chief was Lena Zanna, the mother of Samaras, a Greek politician and granddaughter of Delta 25.

How much did I wish for Saturday to arrive. We did a lot of things. We played detection games; we did our good deed every month, carrying flour and sugar to a poor family. Small things, but they wanted to teach to us how to help, to offer help to our fellow humans.

My clover-leaf had the number 124. 124, I was on the second team that Mrs. Zanna, the daughter of Mrs. Delta, was the trustee of and so was Mrs. Syndika. I was always carrying this clover-leaf with me, for it to bring me good luck, in all my examinations at university. The clover-leaf and a teddy bear.

As I mentioned before, my father was strict. My parents didn’t permit me to go to parties. Right opposite our house was ‘Radio Tsiggiridi.’ This was the first radio station in Thessaloniki, once I was invited to a party there by the son of the Tsiggiridi family.

My father refused to give me permission. This same son, Tsiggiridi, I met a few years ago in Athens, at a tea party he had at his place. That’s when I remembered this little episode.

My father also didn’t give me permission to go for an excursion with the girl scouts. They had planned to go to Lake Doirani. I went to bed early and left the blinds open so that the morning sun would wake me up.

However, my father came in at night and shut the blinds. That’s how I woke up late and missed the excursion. You see, we were not going on big excursion at school, so I had been looking forward to this one with very high expectations.

At school we were going for walks, to Aretsou. Once with the girl scouts we even went to Perea. I spent long hours in the sun and got sunburned, I returned home red from the sunburn. I was a very energetic child, a monster; if I had been in my father’s place, I would have been as strict as him.

However, I was permitted to go to the movies. Uncle Dario, who later died in Auschwitz, had a cinema of his own. So he gave me a permit, a ‘passe partout,’ to get in the cinema free of charge.

This way I would take with me a friend and we would get in without paying. At 2 o’clock the screening started. When I could, I would go at 4 o’clock, that is from 4 to 6, but my mother always knew. I had her permission as at that time I was only 14 years old.

I didn’t graduate from the gymnasium in Thessaloniki, as it closed during the war and I came here, to Athens. After the schools opened we covered three school years in three months so that we wouldn’t lose out on time. I really was ‘illiterate,’ all those lessons I read later on my own, and following those three months of schooling I got into the medical school in 1943.

At the declaration of the war with the Italians 26 we were in Thessaloniki. I remember that despite the fact that I was a young girl, I went to the hospital and asked to work there as a volunteer. As I had won the first award of the girl scouts in first aid I had the impression to have won the entire world.

When the doctor saw me, a girl that young, well, what could he tell me? He said, ‘We want volunteers, but for the time being we are not that desperate and when we will really need you we will inform you.’ And I was left in deep sorrow to return home.

I said to myself, now with the schools closed, unemployment etc. what can I do? So I learned how to knit and started going to the rabbi’s wife with another 15 ladies to knit pullovers for the army. In the beginning I knitted straight but later I also learned to knit with five needles for gloves and seamless socks, so that they would be smooth to the skin.

When the Italians declared the war, bombings started. Our houses, which were made of stone, were not that strongly built and couldn’t survive a bombing. So we decided to build an air raid shelter. This shelter was on the lower floor.

It was a corridor that led from the servant’s room to the kitchen, and this door we closed, my uncle put reinforced concrete cement and I don’t know what else. The people living next door were also coming to this shelter. In order to deal with our fear my parents would say, ‘We have no fear because if the bomb falls at the front side of the shelter we will come out from the back side.’ I really think that had a bomb fell upon us everything would have come down. My aunt would not come, as she had moved to a house in front of the sea.

With the bombings we decided to come to Athens in 1941. My grandfather, my mother and myself. Especially since during the summer, while we were at Aidipsos, happened the incident with the navy ship ‘Elli,’ which was bombed and sunk.

My grandmother was already in Athens, at my uncle Mario’s, as she had decided not to go to Paris for her yearly gynecological treatment, but chose Athens instead. She had even taken my sister with her. This way we all met here, in Athens.

When we left for Athens from Thessaloniki, it was during the Albanian war, and the trains were carrying the army, so we took a bus. It was grandfather, my mother and myself. It was an old bus with 16 seats, and we got into it, twenty persons, Jews as well as Christians.

The Germans had not arrived yet. We left early one Tuesday morning in March, and we arrived in Athens on Friday in the afternoon. It took us over three days for such a short trip.

It was then that a small earthquake shook Larissa and our driver almost fell asleep on the steering wheel. They would wake him up and shout at him, so that he wouldn’t fall asleep, but they insisted that he wouldn’t stop at Larissa due to the tremor. Thursday night we slept in Thiva, in a hotel full of bugs and fleas.

Early on Friday morning we heard the sirens as the city was bombarded, and we left and it took us five hours to reach Athens. Can you imagine it, five hours to Athens from Thiva? At the end of our trip we saw the Acropolis and couldn’t believe it in our joy.

And another thing: we had paid four or five golden sovereigns per person for the whole trip, and all during this trip I was traveling on my mother’s knees. I don’t remember how many ‘kokorakia, small roosters’ I swallowed during this trip – this was the word we used for aspirins.

When we arrived in Athens, we were accommodated at my Uncle Mario’s place, who lived on Ploutarchou Street in Kolonaki, from March to September. Uncle Jacques was staying on the top floor, the penthouse, on Kriezotou Street, but it was a very small place. In April the Germans entered and occupied Athens, and they set up camp on Ploutarchou Street.

At that point in time the racist legislation had not been passed yet, so we had no problem. We even talked on the phone with my father in Thessaloniki. He wouldn’t come to Athens. He would say, ‘I have my job to take care of, my brothers too, we will see, I will come later.’

We stayed here, in Athens, and made two big efforts to arrange for my father to come here: once with a boat owner and once with the help of a policeman. Unfortunately he was arrested in a roadblock two hours before departing for Athens. He was taken to Auschwitz and never came back.

In April we rented a furnished apartment at Ypsilantou 41 and Marasli Street, which was very close to my uncle Mario’s on Ploutarchou and Ypsilandou Street. It was a small apartment with an entrance, a bathroom to the right and the sitting room and a dining room.

The kitchen could be shut out and didn’t look like kitchen. It was the first time that I saw such a thing, like a sliding cupboard that would shut the kitchen out. The bedroom that my grandparents were using had a balcony looking out on Ypsilantou Street.

We were the only ones that also had a stove and when it was very cold the neighbors would come to warm up. On the floors there were carpets. In front of my grandparents’ room was a storage space under the floor, where we would put our suitcases etc. In this storage space I was saved later.

My sister had been hiding with the Karounidis family, who were ship-owners, while I went to a house in Pangrati to baby-sit a child. However, I didn’t stay as the man of the family behaved with what we describe today as sexual harassment, and this is why I left within a week and returned home. After I left, I stayed at my aunt’s so that I could be with my cousin May.

This is when my uncle learned about the new racist legislation, so we left and hid in Agia Paraskevi. There, there was a farm, but as we were afraid that the local people had understood that we were hiding, we left and went to stay at Tavros. The house was owned by the aunt of Koula, the Christina fiancée of the son of Nissim, who lived in Paris.

But even there, my uncle recognized somebody working at a neighboring farm, who used to work at a grocery shop in Kolonaki, and so we were forced to move from there too. I went back to our apartment, my uncle hid close to the Acropolis and my aunt with her daughter May, who had finished German studies in Dresden, Germany, found a job as an in-house teacher of German for the child of some lady. As for myself, I once again had to find a place to hide.

My uncle Mario had a friend called Aristotelis Stamatiadis, who was working at the Ionian Popular Bank. He sent me to a friend of his in Ekali, I remember I went in the morning to the bank wearing a scarf and looking down so that nobody would recognize me.

Mr. Stamatiadis took me to Mr. Telemachos Apostolpoulos, the bank manager. He died recently, at the age of 104, and he was included on the list of the Righteous Among the Nations 27 by Yad Vashem 28.

His sister, Toula, was the secretary of the National Bank manager, but she had been transferred to the office of Archbishop Damaskinos 29. Damaskinos was a ‘shelter,’ protecting whatever you could imagine: communists, New Zealanders, who had fought with Australians and Greeks against the Germans, when Germany invaded Greece, Jews etc.

My G-d how much he helped us [the interviewee starts crying]. I put myself in his position and ask myself would I risk as much as Archbishop Damaskinos did or Toula, or Memis, Telemachos. It happened because we were facing the same enemy, or maybe it is because we Greeks are great souls.

This is how I went to live in Ekali and I had with me the Physics books, as this was the only subject left from my first year’s exams. The professors was Mr. Hondros, he was a special man with great courage.

On 25th March, the national holiday, when we were not in hiding yet, he had gathered a group of us, students, and we went to the Hero’s Tomb to crown it, with a garland made of grass and herbs. We also sang the national anthem, and when the Italians realized what was going on they came after us and hit us in order to force us to scatter.

This house in Ekali was a three-story villa belonging to Mrs. Apostolopolou’s daughter who, in order to keep away the Germans, who could have requisitioned it, somehow managed to get a medical diagnosis, saying that she was suffering from psychological neurological problems and that it was me who would be occupied as governess there. There was also a gardener and a young girl for doing small jobs. It was good there.

Opposite there were some houses, where another Jewish family was hiding, with two children, but they weren’t very smart, as every Sunday they had a party. Once I had heard the lady talking in the street to her children and saying, ‘This is not possible, these kids, I am unable to get used to your new names!’ That’s how I knew they were Jews.

However the gardener, who at the same time was like a porter, going from one house to the other, he knew all the details and spilled them out, and he informed us about the party and what sort of meatballs the people next door cooked.

Mrs. Apostolopoulou would always say to him, ‘And what do we care about all these details Kostas?’ And then he informed us that the Antoniadou family were Jews in reality and their last name was Levi and this was a piece of information given to him very confidentially.

Throughout the occupation I very rarely went to see my mother. On 27th January I went to see them. When I visited I would normally sleep at Mrs. Maria Papadimouli’s place, next door.

My family lived at 41 Ypsilandtou Street, while they stayed at No. 39. Mr. Papadimoulis was a pharmacist at the Evagelismos hospital, while Mrs. Maria was making orthopedic corsets. They were good people and neighbors and, as I said, when I was visiting my family I stayed for the night at their place.

On that particular night of 27th January, my mother told me, ‘Yvonne, there is a party in the neighborhood tonight, there will be people coming and going and you will certainly be seen. And of course they will ask why you are here, so why go? You will stay here.’

I went to make my bed and Mother told me, ‘Leave it, we will share the same bed, we will talk and hold each other.’ I agreed. That was the night that the diplomatic relations between Argentina and Germany broke down. My family were Argentinean subjects but with faulty papers. At midnight the bell rang.

The sixth sense of my mother saved us. Had I been on a bed by myself, when the Germans came looking into our house, even if I had had the time to hide, a used, lukewarm bed would have given me away. This way we rushed, opened the storage space under the floor, I hid in it and my mother put the carpet on top.

My family didn’t open the door immediately in order to give me time to hide my belongings. And so, when the Germans came in, who in the meantime had rung many other doorbells, they didn’t find me. I stayed in this hiding place for two and a half hours, and throughout this time I was praying silently.

That night, the Germans had gone to other apartments too. First they went to Admiral Petroheilos, who was new to the block of apartments and didn’t know us. Then they went to Mr. Litsos as Mr. Petroheilos sent them to him. After him they came to us: ‘Are you the Moshe family? You are under arrest as the diplomatic relations between Argentina and Germany have broken down.’

They went into my grandparents’ room, stepping on the top cover of the hiding place I was in, and I could hear their steps: ‘Bam boom, bam boom, made their boots!’ At some moment I heard my grandmother asking, ‘Where will you take us?’ and he replied, ‘Tonight to a palace and tomorrow to Germany.’

This ‘tomorrow to Germany’ was actually the Haidari concentration camp where they stayed for seven months. I also remember the Germans telling them, ‘Whatever you have with you, furs, jewelry etc. take it with you as it is cold out there.’

My mother pretended to wear some gloves and as she was wearing some rings, she threw them into the gloves and saved them, and as she had also her jewelry, she was informing me, and so did my grandfather, in Spanish of what exactly they were doing. ‘Yvonne, here I place some papers’…and this and that… and mother said, ‘All the jewelry is in the little beige bag of mine, and I put it behind the bathtub.’

Anyhow, they took grandfather and grandmother. ‘Ai, Ai,’ I thought to myself, ‘they are going to hit my mother.’ But it was not like that. They had come with a small car, a Fiat 500, so they couldn’t fit in all of them. So they left my mother with the interpreter. This Greek ruffian, the traitor who was speaking Greek!

As my mother got into the room she saw him opening the drawers of a commode. ‘What are you doing there,’ shouted my mother, ‘you didn’t come to search our place, you came to arrest us, so shut it immediately.’

Mother had her own ways, you see. And then I heard mother calling out to the neighbor, ‘Mrs. Maria, the three of us are leaving, so please keep an eye on the apartment.’ Mrs. Maria, of course, knew very well that I was in there. Anyhow, I waited for an hour and I heard steps on the escalator.

It was Mr. Litsos, the landlord, who was coming down … the staircase was wooden. He was fond of Germans as he had studied in Germany and worked for the Germans. He went out to see the German stamp outside the house. Earlier I had heard my mother saying that after stamping the house, they would also cut the power.

I waited, and waited for Litsos to go and came out of my hiding place with great difficulty, as it had been stuck from the Germans walking on it. I came out like a snake and was still scared that they would see me. I got dressed in the dark, because I was afraid there might be a German guard outside the house.

Opposite our place lived a girl whose father was English and her mother was German. This way they had very good relations with both the English and the Germans. So I went to her and told her, “could I please bring you some stuff for hiding”?

My mother had a suitcase, this suitcase had been brought from Thessaloniki and it was full of things, my sister’s dowry, and what not. So I took the suitcase and without opening the door, it was the basement, I got out the window with the suitcase.

Earlier the Germans had insisted to lock the door leading to the balcony as it looked onto Ypsilandou Street and my grandfather had said, ‘I will do it,’ and he locked it and then quickly unlocked it again and said to them, ‘Now the house is properly locked and here is the key, which I give to you.’ And in Spanish he added, for me to hear, ‘The door is open, so you will jump from the balcony.’

So I came out of the kitchen window and went to the girl next door, who had already agreed to accept the things. I left the suitcase and went to bring more stuff and when I returned I found all my things outside, and the girl informing me that her mother was afraid that ‘if the Germans would come to search they will think we are dealers of stolen goods.’,

In short that they cannot accept them. So I responded OK, and took all these thing and gave them to Mrs. Maria. Well, at some point we moved from that place, Mrs. Maria never gave them back to us, what to do.

I stayed at Mrs. Maria’s up to six in the morning and left. I took Ypsilandu Street, then Ploutarchou and wanted to inform my sister that the family had been caught. At Ploutarchou Street, to the right, were the ‘Goblet’ is now, was a bakery that had a telephone. At that period all bakers were very severe. Anyhow I informed my sister and went back to Ekali where I was usually hiding.

My sister was issued with a Christian identity card as [Angelos] Evert 30, the [Athens] police chief, had given to everyone false papers. I don’t know how many golden sovereigns the false papers cost.

Later, when I went to the Fix family I learned details about the location of my mother and my grandparents. All these details we learned from Soeur Hélène, a nun who frequently came to the Fix family as they were helping us. They would send food to the people in hiding etc. and she had been allowed to enter the Haidari camp and this is how she learned that my mother was there.

My mother had learned about me from a friend of my sister. She arranged to escape and leave for the Middle East. Many went to the Middle East at that time. However, the guy who was paid the golden sovereigns to let them go betrayed them so they were caught, taken back to the Haidari camp and finally were sent to Auschwitz where she was killed.

Her name was Daisy Saltiel, and she was married to Carasso. When they first caught them they were taken to Haidari camp. Since Daisy was in touch with my sister, she learned what happened to me and this is how my mother learned it too.

For long months my mother would wait every midnight, when the police van would arrive and she would climb up to look out from the small window high up in her cell to see if they were unloading my sister or me. It also was from Daisy that she learned that I had come out of the hiding place under the floor and was safe.

In the neighborhood where I was staying, there was a guy called Spanopoulos, who had rented a house there and was occupied with gardening and who, during the winter, was occupied with delivering heating carbon. It seems that in February the people next door didn’t have the money to pay for the carbon and he betrayed them to the Germans.

Some day in February, maybe a month after they had caught my mother, they came to knock at my door: a German, a Greek ruffian and a translator. When I opened, the Greek asked me where Spanopoulos stayed. I told him.

Normally I should have recognized the fat guy, as he was the same that had come to arrest my family at our place in Ploutarchou. However, at that moment I didn’t think anything bad, I must have had some sort of peculiar reaction, hit by the February sun, and I thought of nothing bad. I said to myself, they may want to confiscate something.

Five minutes later comes the gardener and tells me, ‘Ioanna, the Germans are at the Levi’s place, they are hitting them and telling them that if they betray the other Jews hiding here they will leave their children alone.’ I cut him short and ask him, ‘And what do I care about it, Kostas?’ The Levi family didn’t betray me; it was the Christian servant who had been taking care of the kids all their lives, who betrayed me.

So I leave the house and go on foot to the other side of Ekali, phoned my sister and asked her to find Apostolopoulos and inform them on what had happened. She didn’t find them and upon returning I found Mrs. Maria out of control: ‘Oh what did my son do to me.’ And things like that and that the Germans are looking for me. I went into the room and when I tried to get out I realized she had locked me in, so I got out through the balcony.

I returned to the same grocery shop with the telephone and called again my sister who had managed to get in touch with Apostolopoulos. She informed me that I should leave immediately. I don’t know where I found the courage, but I returned to the house, collected my belongings and left.

As the night was approaching and the buses were not that frequent, I went through the meadow, after that to the public road and there I asked a passing van to give me a lift to Athens where, supposedly, my sister was giving birth.

So I returned back home and once again they found me another job, not as a servant but as a slave. The husband had lost a big fortune, he was suffering from neurasthenia and he was sleeping with a bayonet in his hand. The house was also rather big, and the work there was very hard. I stayed until May. Then they found me another job as a chambermaid, cook and child minder of two kids.

On 18th May I presented myself to the Fix family, opposite Zapeio, but we immediately left to go to their farm in Magoufana [today Pefki]. I had a very nice time with them and we are still friends. They even gave me a false identity card, from the ones that Evert was issuing. My false name was Ioanna Marinopoulou.

My mother, while she was in Haidari, was a needlewoman. As she knew how to make clothes, all the girls of the Athens high society who were with the resistance, would come to my mother and say, ‘Mrs. Molho, give us something to sew.’ And she would give them a button here, a fastener there.

You see, in the morning, the Germans would empty the Jewish houses from clothing and in the evening they would bring these clothes to Haidari, to be repaired and then sent to Germany to be used by them.

Even my uncle Jacques Moshe was taken to Haidari and immediately made to work as an engineer. My grandfather in 1940 was 65-70 years old, I don’t remember exactly. Since my uncle was an engineer he took his father to work for him as an office hand, to have him close to him as he was old. He took him as an office hand in jail too. They stayed there for seven months and were liberated on 14th September 1944.

I remember that day very clearly. It was the day of the Holy Cross, 14th September, I had taken the kids, two and four years old, to Zapeion for a walk and when I returned home Mrs. Fix told me, ‘Ioanna, please sit down. Your mother and grandfather telephoned.’ ‘Are they alive?’ ‘Of course they are alive. They came out today.

As soon as the Germans left, the gates were opened and they came out. They were all put in a van and they unloaded them at Omonia Square.’ ‘And where is mother?’

The house at Ypsilantou Street had been rented. However, Uncle Jacques had built a block of apartments at Academias and Amerikis Street. Starting from Omonia he went to his place at Kriezotou Street and he put up my family in an apartment in this block of apartments.

I will never forget my first visit to see them there. My mother was wearing some shoes which were not shoes, tied all over with ropes. It was very peculiar, some things here, some small pigtails. My uncle, who suffered from diabetes and while in jail couldn’t keep his diet, his legs were very, very thin like straws. And they all wore short pants. My grandfather wearing short pants! I was shocked. I looked at them and did not recognize them.

The city of Athens was liberated from the Germans in October [Editor’s note: Athens was liberated on 12th October 1944]. I don’t know why they abandoned the Haidari camp in September; thank G-d they didn’t shoot them.

After the liberation, I stayed with the Fix family for quite some time. I wanted to see where I stood. I wanted and liked to stay there, I felt as if I were at home. Later when I restarted the university I left. All my family, except for my grandmother, returned to Thessaloniki. We learned about my father, my uncles, my aunts, their children, two hundred and twenty members of my family had been murdered.

My father had stayed in Thessaloniki because he was saying, ‘I have to collect things, do my job.’ And uncle Jacques, a well known figure in town, arranged for a boat to go and take him. They had a meeting place, there at Phaliro, where the boat would take my father and bring him to Athens.

However, in that period Phaliro was within the limits of the ghetto and a brother of my father, Alberto Molho, with his wife and two children came to stay at our house. So my father said, ‘How can I leave my brother and go?’ The boat owner came to the house and my uncle would tell him that he was afraid: ‘If the baby starts crying in the middle of the night what will I do with the Germans?’ ‘I will give him Luminal,’ said my father but didn’t convince him.

Another ten to fifteen days passed and we found someone else to help him escape. At that time my uncle was very close friends with the police chief and he told him, ‘At six o’clock in the morning I will send a soldier to take your father, dress him like a policeman. At four o’clock in the morning there was a roadblock, the Germans caught my father and that was it.

Later I heard from my uncle that returned from Auschwitz that my father, because he was 50 years old, too old that is, was taken directly to the crematorium.

Out of the big family of my father there was left only a sister, Bella, who lived in Israel, a brother, Charles, who lived in Brussels and survived Auschwitz, another brother, Jacques who lived in Grenoble, France, and two brothers living in Thessaloniki, Saoul and Alberto, who also survived. That is four brothers in all.

This Uncle Jacques Molho, who was married in Grenoble, went to the concentration camp while his wife Daisy and his daughter stayed in Paris. When the command to empty Paris was issued, it applied particularly for the children who were caught. A certain Mr. and Mrs. Simon, at night, brought I don’t know how many children to Spain through the Pyrenees. Now, it seems that among these children was Uncle Jacques’s child.

When my uncle Jacques returned from the camp his wife had died, from a heart attack, and they said that the child had been brought to Spain. So he took a bicycle and went all over Spain looking for his child in all the monasteries, because it is more than certain that the kids were brought to a monastery. He never managed to find his daughter; he returned and got married again, to a very good lady. They both aren’t alive anymore.

Uncle Alberto was the brother of my father who didn’t want to go with the boat owner. He left for the concentration camp with his wife and two children. He was the only one of his family to survive.

Uncle Saoul lost his wife and daughter. She was like a doll, while his daughter was an angel. Aunt Gracia and Aunt Lisa with her two children also died in Auschwitz.

That is where another uncle of mine, Dario, died of typhus at the very end, and next to him was his brother, Saoul, who returned and wrote about his time there. I have here the manuscripts he wrote, he said many things and among others about Uncle Dario. He said that Dario was an electrician in the concentration camp.

You see, the members of my father’s family were very resourceful. They would ask them, ‘Do you know how to play the piano.’ ‘We know,’ they responded. ‘Violin, do you know?’ ‘We know.’ You see they knew everything in order to pass a bad moment!

Well, and there came a German and told him, ‘I want …’ Something, I don’t know what it was. And my uncle responded, ‘In a moment, please wait a little and I will bring it to you.’ Now, how can you say ‘wait’ to a German?

So they hit him hard and left him full of bruises, half dead, and his brothers took care of him, and as they didn’t have compresses they put snow on his face. Uncle Saoul wrote many other things about his time there. He was so good this uncle of mine, Saoul!

Slowly we left from Academias Street and went to Kolonaki. They were hard years. It wasn’t easy at all, my father hadn’t returned, we didn’t have facilities or conveniences but it was OK, it passed.

From 1941 my grandfather Moshe was like a father to me, and he was very, very, very strict. For example, when my sister and myself got engaged and we were going out in the evenings, he wouldn’t permit the groom to enter our place upon bringing us back.

Never, ever. When as a student I was late on returning home, not engaged yet, he would ask my mother, ‘Has Yannakis, little John, come home yet?’ Little John was me; my grandfather was very humorous too.

When I decided to go to medical school to become a doctor, as I had this passion since my childhood, I told him, ‘You know, Grandfather, I will go to medical school.’ ‘You will go with the boys to university? I don’t believe it. Why go to university? To learn? Tell me what books you need and I will buy them for you.’ ‘OK, Grandpa, I will tell you.’

And I went out and took part in the examinations and passed, so I went to the medical school. But it wasn’t easy, at all. Grandfather was very strict and acted accordingly, in order to reinforce his position as the head of the family. But he was also just. I learned very many things from my grandfather, how to respect myself, not to tell lies, to be honest, etc. He taught me all that and most important of all, how to stand in my life.

He made all sort of difficult remarks in order to show me that he was there. For example: ‘Where will you go? When will you return?’ And I was rather old, eighteen or nineteen years old, but who could talk back to Grandfather?

My grandfather Memik, from the TV series, Memik. He was my teacher, he would tell me, ‘You can forgive anything but never forgive the person that wants to accuse you falsely and put intrigues within your family. This person you should throw out. Out, for he/she will never change.’

My grandfather did many things. When I was studying for upcoming exams until up to four in the morning, he would get up and come to check on me, he would open the door slowly and say, ‘Are you still studying? You consume a lot of electricity.

Tomorrow is a new day.’ He would shut the door and I would laugh. You see we ask the children to study more today, while my grandfather advised me not to study that much. But he just wanted to irritate me, really, to tell me, ‘Here I am.’

I also remember my poor Molho grandmother. Whenever I had exams at university she would say, ‘You go calmly and I will be sitting here reading prayers.’ When I returned in the afternoon she would ask me, ‘How did it go?’ ‘Fine, Grandmother.’ ‘Didn’t I tell you? I was reading the prayers and you passed your exams!’

So because of my grandmother I was passing my exams! I still see her, she didn’t have much hair, which we also inherited, and she was wearing a small hat to keep her head warm, and she was sitting there with a book in her hands, reading prayers.

I think about anti-Semitism and have the impression that from my early years there was something in the atmosphere, something anti-Semitic that I wasn’t experienced enough to detect. However, in Athens, after I had attended medical school, as we were coming from a lesson, a classmate of mine, a girl called me ‘dirty Jew.’

She shouldn’t have said it, and I never spoke to her again. I don’t even recall her name. I thought to myself that if for no real reason she said that, she is dangerous, and I cut any contact with her. This is a behavior coming directly from my grandfather.

• After the war and later years

My family returned to Thessaloniki and Mother went to collect our belongings at our house. There my sister got engaged to the man she was in love with before the war, Raoul Frances, who had survived because he joined the National Resistance in the mountains. This is why I went to Thessaloniki, for my sister’s marriage in 1945.

People from the northern suburbs of the city, Menemeni, from the city of Veroia and some villagers had come to our house and lived there. Everything was in very bad condition, almost destroyed, beds, things etc. all destroyed.

The funniest thing happened to the house of my brother-in-law, Frances, which was also a two-story Turkish house with a fountain and garden. Well, the owner of a chained bear and monkey had come from Menemeni to live there!

And in the basement lived a poor woman, who had lost her husband in Yugoslavia, with her son and daughter, Vouli was her name. This Vouli stayed there for the rest of her life. My sister lived on the top floor.

The brother of my brother-in-law hadn’t gone to the mountain, but stayed in Thessaloniki and got married to an Italian girl called Vetta, who was pregnant. He would go somewhere and secretly, with his friends, would listen to the radio, from London, as the Germans had officially confiscated all the radios. Somebody betrayed them and they came in and arrested them all.

As the woman was Italian she tried to save him and get him out of prison. She would send him food daily; she couldn’t go herself, as she was very close to giving birth. Exactly on the day she was giving birth, the Germans had returned the food and the lady next door decided not to tell her, as she would think that her husband was taken to be executed.

However, right upon giving birth another neighbor said, ‘Vetta, why is your husband’s food still here?’ She gave birth and immediately, maybe from the shock, died. The baby was also called Vetta.

However, her father returned from jail, and since there was no active marriage anymore with a dead wife, he was sent to the concentration camp. He died either in the train or in the camp.

After the occupation this little girl, little Vetta was taken by my sister Nina and her husband and as the Italians had been expelled from Greece, Vetta’s aunt kept on sending letters, particularly when Nina had her first son, Mimis.

The Italian woman wrote, ‘Now that the son has been born, things are different.’ So we responded to her, ‘Dear Anita, the only person to remind us that Vetta is not our daughter is you.’ And that’s when she stopped bothering us, and indeed we all love Vetta very much. Now she has three daughters and six grandchildren.

So my sister had Vetta, then gave birth to Mimi and this Vouli took care of her kids. She had a son of her own, from her late husband. At some stage, Vouli immigrated to Germany, but she didn’t have any luck there and returned.

She also gave birth to a daughter, fathered in Germany by a Greek from Kavala, who was already married, but fortunately he recognized the child. We were the ones to take care of the marriage of this child. Vouli died 15 days after the death of my sister; she was as a member of our family.

Going back to our story: the first thing my sister did was to send away the bear, the monkey and the tambourine; she fixed the house as best as she could and set up the wooden frames factory they used to have. She had to do very many things as everything was destroyed.

The wooden frame factory had been the business of her husband before the war. It is worth noting that in the past my grandfather was a partner of his father. Later, following a conflict, they separated their activities.

Our family house wasn’t easy to get back. My grandmother didn’t want to return there, she would always say, ‘I won’t set foot in Thessaloniki. I will neither find my sister there, nor my family, nor anybody, so why go there? I will stay here, in Athens.’ My grandmother was very insistent and so we stayed in Athens. Of course, I couldn’t go either since I was already studying here.

When I visited Thessaloniki, I saw in our neighborhood that the houses where Jews used to live before the war now had been taken by Christians. However, the Mizrachi club, which was opposite our home, had stayed as it was.

The grandfather who was the guard didn’t live any more but the son returned. I don’t know if he’s still alive, Solomon was his name. There were very few Jewish people left. A minimum, maybe a thousand souls all together. So I went and didn’t find anyone, no friend, no cousins, no one.

Many of the ones that returned from the concentration camps, of the very few that did return, went to Israel. There was an orphanage or something like that, where they were offered free housing and this organization was helping them to go to Israel.

In reality what they did was to help them get away, transport them and leave them at a shore in Israel because they were not permitted to enter the country legally, as it was under British occupation. Of course, this wave of immigrants wasn’t the first aliyah. The pioneers were the ones that had come from Russia on foot and set up the kibbutzim.

There were quite a number, that is, the survivors that left. Some distant relatives of mine went. The place where they kept them was called ‘Hassara’ and we went there every weekend to sing for them and entertain them as they had lost their families and were very lonely.

Do you know what they did in Thessaloniki at that time? The Greek state did something good. Whenever there were no immediate heirs, the state could acquire the buildings. So, due to the condition of the people returning from the concentration camps, which in reality was indescribable, the state decided to give to the Jewish community all the real estates, so that the community could nurse and attend to the needs of the survivors.

So what did our community do? As the first survivors arrived, they started looking for their houses, their relatives, their mothers, their brothers and sisters but did not find anyone, absolutely none. So the community immediately arranged for group marriages. This is terrifying. In order to set up their homes and their families again.

My sister got married at the Monastirioton synagogue. After the marriage we went to Phaliro for an evening dinner but the picture of Thessaloniki was already different. You see, the Jews had always offered an element of civilization, of sociability.

It was an altogether different picture because all the people from the villages around had come to the city. They had come, the bear, the monkey, Menemeni, Chortiatis and had acquired the houses. They had even come from Veroia, Naousa. Who knew them? What did they care?

Of course, the Jews were a different society altogether, they were ‘people of the city.’ You see, Thessaloniki was also rather ‘posh,’ that is, they were somehow ‘stuck up’ as they knew they were good. Even here in Athens they were good, but in Thessaloniki the history was also there, they were descendants for centuries, 500 years. There were many good Jews in Thessaloniki, very good families, different, more civilized.

I finished medical school and in 1954 I got married, but I had not sat my exams for my medical specialization. I became a microbiologist and I studied it at the Evagelismos Hospital. I was a Greek subject while my husband, Richard Capuano, was a Spanish subject. He belonged to one of the approximately two hundred families that were expelled from Spain by Queen Isabella, and the Greek state refused to make them Greeks.

I don’t know the reason. We asked for the Greek citizenship many times. We even had a client at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and another client at the Department of the Interior and their response was: ‘We cannot do anything and we don’t know why.’

We applied and reapplied as my husband wanted very much to become Greek and he wanted our son to go to the army. The final result was negative and my son didn’t go to the army as he is Spanish subject. There are still a number of Spanish subjects in Greece.

Of course I couldn’t have a free profession, and then comes a law that says that a Greek woman can be married to a foreigner but retain her citizenship and therefore can be employed in a free profession. That made us decide to get married.

The family of my husband was known to my family from Thessaloniki. At the Jewish school there was someone who worked there whose son was married to a first cousin of my father in Israel. She was called Saltiel and her husband was Cohen.

He was the one who got me in touch with my husband-to-be. My husband was very open minded so he decided to call me on the phone and asked me to go out with him. We went out for a walk, we started to get acquainted and got to know each other, and we went out a few times and then got married.

I intended for my husband to be a Jew. Do you not see what is happening now’ This has become a ‘mayonnaise’ these days, and with the civil marriage we don’t observe these things. My daughter-in-law is Christian Orthodox; I had no objection.

However, at the time when I got married it was very difficult for someone to change religion. It wasn’t only because of the parents’ reaction, but also because to convert took a lot of time. Of course, you had to study, the women that converted and became Jews know about our religion much more than I do. I don’t know much about religion.

My husband had many commercial representations, medicals and other things too, but most importantly, he was the first importer of cellophane in Greece. He would tell me that when he first brought cellophane to Greece he went to Flocas and asked for the owner.

He knew the family, as they also came from Thessaloniki. ‘Let us have a coffee,’ he proposed to Flocas. ‘Yes, certainly.’ ‘Could you please bring some chocolates.’ And he brought some, wrapped in a golden piece of paper.

My husband had a piece of cellophane in his pocket, took the chocolate and wrapped it in cellophane. ‘What is this that shines?’ ‘Cellophane.’ This is how my husband got his first order before the war.

My husband was born in Thessaloniki. His mother was from Monastir, she was born at the end of the 19th century and her name was Tzogia Beraha. His father, Moses Capuano, was of Italian origins. He was very aristocratic, came from an old family. They say that last names ending in ‘–no’ like Capuano, Modiano, Massarano, etc. were selected families of Spanish origins.

My husband had finished the French Lycée and was very fluent in French. His father had died in 1934 and his mother in 1977. My husband, his brother Jacques and his mother, as Spanish subjects, were arrested and taken to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp 31. However, life in this camp was a different world compared to Auschwitz. In Auschwitz they would have roll-call in the morning, and you didn’t know if you would still be alive by the end of the day.

Lina, who was the oldest child and the third boy, Rene, were collected by the Spanish Embassy here, and were transported to Spain, then sent to Egypt and then to Israel. Finally they asked to be taken to Cairo, where they stayed at the house of the other brother, the second child; the older boy called Joseph was already living there permanently. However Lina’s husband was caught and never came back, while she and her two children survived and went to America. Rene was not married at that time.

My husband received compensation from the Claims Conference of Adenauer but nothing of importance. This organization paid the German compensation, that is 450 million German Marks, distributed to survivors. My husband received money twice but I cannot recall the exact sum. The last time was in 2001, but the previous one was much earlier. I don’t remember. I don’t know and I don’t wish to know. It didn’t interest me.

My husband received his pension approximately in 1980. His mother tongue was Judeo-Spanish and French but also Greek. He could speak English too.

My personal business went very well. I was a very conscious doctor. I was employed as a freelance professional. In the beginning I would work as a replacement at the hospitals Helena and Marika Heliadi in Athens. The manager, Mrs. Pangali was a close friend of mine; she is dead now. This is why I was going there from time to time but that was at the beginning of my career, later I didn’t go any more.

Then I inscribed myself for a PhD, which I started in 1960 and finished in March 1962. I was then pregnant with Maick. The mark I received was ‘excellent.’ The subject was new then, very avant-garde. The two transaminases that have already become routine by now. They are the microbiological examinations of the liver. They control the circulation of the liver and of the heart.

The work was done at the pharmacologists’ with Professor Mr. Nicolas Kleisiouni, a deputy professor, Mr. Constatinos Moiras, and teaching assistant, the next professor of pharmacology, Mr. Dionysios Veronos, who recently passed away. He was a remarkable men, I don’t think there was another professor like him. We became very close friends; I would go there every day to see my rabbits!

I have an allergy to mice; I cannot even pronounce the word mouse. Despite that the professor would tell me, ‘No, you must also do it with mice. We have so many mice and you spend your money on rabbits. They are white little mice, beautiful mice.’ ‘Professor, I can’t, it is impossible for me.’ ‘No, you will also do one mouse.’

Finally, we had a field mouse whose blood was taken by Dionysios Veronas. This is how I managed to run various tests on them too. I have to admit that their blood cells were very strong as compared to the rabbit’s red blood cells which were weaker! I have to admit that looking at the blood specimens was a great experience for me too; I was taking intravenous blood from the rabbit’s ears from their capillary vessels that are extremely thin. I learned, very quickly how to do it without breaking any vessels.

When I did my doctorate thesis I was pregnant and due to a pregnancy anomaly I had to lie in bed. So I sent my assistant, in order for him to phone me and tell me to come there when the time would be approaching; it was planned for seven o’clock.

I had already prepared my black costume so that I would be very formal for the occasion, with all the medicine professors there, and he calls me at five, instead of around seven, telling me that they decided to examine me immediately. I jumped up, like crazy, put an overcoat on top and rushed to the university. Everything was messed up on that day. I had ordered a taxi and the taxi never came, so I arrived there with great agony at the last moment.

In the beginning we stayed in a neoclassic house, which belonged to my husband’s family, on Rethymnon Street. My mother also stayed there, to look after the child, and we also had an in-house baby sitter for the child until the age of four. But later we left that place and came here, where it was more convenient for me and for the child.

The private practice was on the same floor and next door to this apartment. The kid would go to school in the morning and in the afternoon I didn’t work in my private practice, as I wanted to be at home and I wanted the child to see his mother in the house. Whoever wanted me would call and arrange for an appointment up to two thirty or three o’clock at the latest.

My son Mike attended the Jewish school from kindergarten to the third class of elementary school. Every afternoon a French girl, a very nice girl would come to teach him French.

Every summer, after he turned four, I would take Mike to Switzerland. It was to give him the opportunity to speak French, to learn languages. As he was a good pupil, my husband would say, ‘Why worry? He will learn languages. Every language is a different human being.’ And he was right. First he went to Switzerland, twice, the next three summers to France, the next three or four times to England.

He went to Chantilly where there was a chateau, belonging to the Rothschild family that had given it as a donation; it was used as an orphanage for the children that lost their parents in the Holocaust. There I met the manager and the manageress, Mr. and Mrs. Simon, who were the couple that had helped the children escape from Paris to Spain.

Those orphans grew up and the orphanage closed, but for one month every year Jewish children would come from all over the world. It cost 1,000 US Dollars for the month, but the money was not a payment, it was a voluntary donation. For example, the children coming from Canada and whose parents owned factories, gave much more.

Mike went there for three years, and it was very good. One year I went there too. In the first year he was crying. He had not yet finished the first grade of the elementary school. He went together with the oldest daughter of Vetta, my niece Sofie.

One day I called them on the phone. It was very funny. ‘Why are you there at this hour of the day?’ I asked and Mike said, ‘We didn’t go for the walk.’ You see, every afternoon they went for a walk in the woods. ‘And why did you not go?’

‘We cannot, we want to come back home. We are crying and don’t participate in order to save the money, the cost of the walk. If we don’t go they won’t charge us for the walk.’ Charging the cost of the walk, just listen to that!

‘But dear Sofi, what are you saying? You know that the return tickets are at the hands of the teacher there. What are you talking about?’ And so I wrote them a letter, I was just reading it again the day before yesterday: ‘We have sent you there as representatives of Greece, descendants of Kolokotronis, of Manto Mavrogenous and Bouboulina, heroes of the Greek revolution against the Turks in 1821, which eventually resulted in the creation of the first modern Greek state. You cannot humiliate us like that.’

Finally, the children were convinced and Mike also made a good friend there. This boy came from Amversa, and I even went to his bar mitzvah. His father was a jeweler. His mother was from Poland, and had gone to a concentration camp, where she had lost all her family. So they had this son, who was playing the piano exceptionally well.

The two boys got very close, and every summer Mike would go to their place and when the family would go, for example, to London, they would also take Mike with them. One summer Leon came here, to Greece, and gave three concerts: one in the Greek American Union, one at the Jewish camp and one at the ‘Casa d’ Italia.’ At that time he was ten or eleven years old.

For the last grades of elementary school, Mike went to the private school of Andonopoulos. This is contrary to what I did as a kid; I went to public schools and this turned out to be very positive for me, so for high school I decided that my son should do the same. He went to the 5th Gymnasium and all my relatives were against me. However, I still insist that this is what I should have done, as he got in contact with all kind of people and doesn’t make distinctions.

My son received all the lessons necessary for his bar mitzvah. It was held on a Saturday and the rabbi didn’t give his consent to decorate the synagogue with flowers because, as he explained, the magnificence of the day is such that it cannot be beautified more with flowers.

So we introduced a novelty and offered a gardenia flower to every lady in the synagogue, at the place reserved for women only. I will not forget him taking the Sefer Torah. But, how many flower petals did we throw to him!

You see I had gone to the end of Patissia, bought very many flowers and we had pulled out the petals. The petals thrown were like snow. I have his speech recorded on a cassette, it was very good. Afterward, in the evening, what a rain, my G-d what a rain, a true flood! Due to the rain only half of the people we had invited came to the evening cocktail.

After Mike finished high school he went for a year to the Deree College [the private American College of Athens]. Unfortunately at Deree he couldn’t get enough credits to get a degree and so he went to Israel. Despite the fact that he wasn’t a good student he went to Israel in 1980 and didn’t lose any time nor did he fail any subject.

My son studied political sciences and he also speaks seven languages: Spanish, French, English, Portuguese, Italian, Hebrew and Greek. He also worked as a simultaneous interpreter. He sent an application to the European Union and he was employed there. He worked there for four or five months, but in the end he wanted to leave because the Greek cabin, at that time, had very few translators. That was fifteen or sixteen years ago.

So he decided to quit. However, they told him that he cannot leave, as he would have to return all the benefits he had received, plane tickets etc. Mike said, ‘OK.’ They told him to wait, as they were in congress, and told him: ‘We will call you, but we don’t think that you can go.’ He waited outside. After some time they called him: ‘The era of slavery has been over in Europe for many years now. You are free to go.’ And he left.

Before going to Israel, during the period that he was learning Hebrew here, he worked for six months at the Embassy of Uruguay. He does not only speak Spanish, not the Spanish of Spain, the Castilian, he also speaks the South American dialects. He is an impressive child. When he left for Israel I wasn’t worried but I was sorry that he left, as he is my only son.

I remember a particular incident of which I am ashamed. I was at the airport, crying because he was leaving and there comes to me one of the ambassadors of Israel. She tells me, ‘What is it? Why are you crying Mrs. Capuano?’ Because I was a Jew, they knew me as a doctor at the embassy of Israel. ‘I’m crying because my son is leaving and I lose him.’ ‘You won’t lose your son,’ she said, ‘you win him as there he will acquire his personality, you will see.’ And she was right.

There they leave the kids alone, so that their personality can come to the surface. To get control of themselves and become independent. And even after he returned he lived alone of course. He was no ‘child of his mother.’

My son got married in 1999. His wife is called Silia Kapitsimadi. She finished the English Literature department here; she also finished another private American University on Arts and went to finish it up for two and a half years in London. She is a jeweler.

They didn’t have children for a long time. Mike says they were afraid they’d ‘become like him,’, that is, extremely undisciplined. Now, finally, my daughter-in-law is pregnant and we are all very happy about it.

My son now has a representation office; he represents Samos wines and other drinks. He is a very good person; he was always very good with his friends that love him. They try to be with him, he is a very civilized man, open minded. To tell you the truth, when mixed marriages take place, the parents, despite their original reaction, at the end give in. I can assure you I never said a word because he is a very fine person.

They married in a civil ceremony. Silia said that when they will have children she will convert. At their home they don’t celebrate the Jewish holidays, as they come here. A few days ago, on the eve of Yom Kippur, I made an eggplant pie and they ate all of it.

The Christian festivities we celebrate all together at the mother of my daughter-in-law’s: Easter, New Year’s Eve and Christmas. A little later my son has his own birthday and gives a party, as they all do.

Together with my husband we had many friends both from the Jewish community and outside it. We had a group of friends; one of them was an admiral. All of them where people that liked to feast. Giose, Lava, Gionis… we had very nice parties; it was unimaginable to have a party at which there wouldn’t be a piano or a guitar. As I sing correctly I was singing all night. They were very good companions. All this is lost now, nothing is left as most of these people have died.

My husband was also very good at companies. When he first went to America, he went on an ocean liner where they had a dance competition and he won the first prize. And what was the prize? This old lighter, let me show you, so nothing, but he danced well. He liked the entertainment.

Then there was also the Tsatsi family; we were very close with them. Mr. Tsatis was a professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and an academic too, a member of the Greek Academy. We were with them when he was accepted at the academy. We went to prepare the sweets and organize the meal that followed. We were friends, brothers, and of course with them we had a whole group of professors we were frequenting like Alexandropoulos, Kascarellis, Tountas etc. All these people we were close friends with don’t exist any more, they are all dead now.

Our companies were including all sort of different types of people, many friends, and we went on cruises, trips etc.

Today there aren’t even relatives left. Uncle Albert, the one that returned from the concentration camp and remarried and had a son, is now dead, while his wife is in Thessaloniki and the son lives here in Athens. I see him from time to time or call him on the phone, or at the synagogue. When my husband died in 2003, he came to the funeral, the Kaddish too.

I also had a sister-in-law who lived in Cairo. Her name was Rena, she was the wife of Joseph Capuano. She was born in Cairo but her origins are from Ioannina. Her father was a pharmacist in Cairo. I loved her very much, but she also died in 2003. She had cancer, a cystis that had not been noticed, and some day she knelt down to tie her shoes, understood there was something wrong, but is was too late.

Here in Athens, I also have a sister-in-law, the wife of Jacques. She has children etc but they are all very busy, they have their own life. So many people around. Sometimes I say to myself, ‘Which friend of mine should I call on the phone and arrange to see?’ And I don’t know, maybe my mind stops, I don’t know.

My mother has been buried in the third cemetery here. My husband too. The same applies to my father and mother-in-law. We brought the remains from Thessaloniki, as on 5th December 1942, the tombs were unearthed; the burial plaques were taken to the university which was built there, on the site of the Jewish cemetery, while the bones were here and there. Now they are all here.

At the beginning it was the first cemetery, which was relatively small as the site was also small. So it closed down. Now it is the third cemetery which will end anytime shortly, as we don’t unearth the remains. All the tombs are there. I guess they will give us another branch.

My sister is buried in Thessaloniki. There it is quite special as all the tombs look the same. There are no mausoleums, a simple tombstone, the same for everyone. I made a simple tombstone for my mother, a simple tombstone like in Thessaloniki. Here at the third cemetery there are only two tombstones like that. One Carasso from Thessaloniki and my mother’s.

We didn’t discuss Israel or other Jewish subjects with our Christian friends. It just didn’t happen. Not that we refused to talk, but they didn’t share the same interests with us.

Right from the beginning we have been following up the creation of the Israeli state 32, its actions and its evolution. We still are well informed of what is going on there. I receive the informative newsletters of the community; it is part of our life. I am even a member of the summer camp committee at the community.

I hadn’t thought of aliyah since I had my parents. I wasn’t all alone in life as the others that went there to start a new life. I had my mother, my people, so why go there? The ones that left had lost everything.

I had an aunt who stayed there, in Israel, before the creation of the state, I had many relatives that went there, all very satisfied with their decision to go there.

If someone immigrates, say a Greek goes to Germany or Australia or Sweden trying to improve his life, he will always feel a foreigner. When they left from here, they found a shelter there. And of course, it was the land of their forefathers. The State of Israel was at that period in the making as it was bound to be. The ones that immigrated there didn’t go to a foreign place, what they really did was go back to their home,. A home that had been occupied by others, but it was always their home, the land of their great-, great-grandfathers. That is where Israel started from.

Once, when I was in America for a health problem, I met an Israeli-German Jew. Before World War II, the German Jews didn’t want to leave Germany. They would say, ‘Why go?’ I am more German than the Germans; I love my county more than the Germans.’

Anyhow this man told me: “When I’m finished with my treatment I’ll leave.’ ‘Where do you live?’ In Israel, in Natania, where I own the best restaurant the “Henry the 4th”.’ ‘Very good and what do you do in Germany?’‘Oh, I have a very big business, real estate.’ ‘Bravo, how can you?

I cannot go to Germany, cannot even listen to German.’ ‘But Germany provides me with the funds to be able to live in Israel. My restaurant is in Israel but in reality it is my hobby. Germany provides me with the money to live in Israel.’ I was very impressed by what he told me.

What I mean to say is that Greece is a pro-Arab country. All the time you hear, there were killed that many Palestinians, that many Palestinians, that many Palestinians. You must be very naïve to believe that in a war in Israel only Palestinians get killed.

Do you know how many young people get killed in Israel? A very high number but what do they do, mourning is not permitted, the only thing permitted is to close the windows and the shutter and not go out wearing black because in that case all Israel would be colored black.

This is why it is so important that they do not retrograde so that they will keep their morale. And here on the TV and in the newspapers they say: “That many Palestinians were killed.’ For G-d’s sake, no Jew has been killed? Buy ‘The Times’ and you’ll see how many Jews were killed.

Or I call my cousins: ‘What’s the news?’ ‘Do not ask, the son of our friends XXX was killed.’ But here, on TV we only see them throwing stones, they don’t have guns. Or we see the wives of those killed who cry and cry and cry. They don’t say, of course, that they only cry when the cameras are there.

Jewish mothers are more dignified, they do not go out in the streets to cry. Their children are hit, because it is usually the children who are the victims and they get hold of themselves so that their husband can go to work, can look after the other children. A child is hit and the whole family is destroyed. And here they say nothing about all that. They don’t even refer to whole cities with hidden arms buried underneath them.

And what happened with all that money they gave to Arafat. He took all that himself and finally it ended up with his heir, his wife, since he didn’t get a divorce. As politics is dirty, huge amounts of money are involved. All the big nations are sending money because they want to sell arms. This is the truth of the whole story.

I have also to mention that there the young ones are continuously in the army. It is not like, ‘I went to the army and finished it.’ It is not like that. They call them every now and then to do ‘melouim,’ that is, going to the frontiers and serve in the army for some more time.

When my son was studying, they would patrol every night, a military man with a jeep and all the others were guarding and my son, wearing a helmet, was looking for hidden bombs. They were patrolling every night.

As for myself I am Greek. My religion is Jewish but as a citizen I am Greek and very much so. Even in the cemetery here there is a monument for the Jews that died in the Albanian war.

I always respected and considered seriously both religions. Let me just tell you something. I was returning from Paris with my son and getting out of the airplane we entered the bus to take us from the plane to the airport. There was an empty seat and I thought to myself, ‘Bravo, they all went to the other side and left this seat for me.’

Well, it turned out there was machine oil there and that was the reason it was empty. I try to go there and I slip, fall down with a triple crushing break of my shoulder. A whole story, the journalists came, I was taken to hospital etc.

Later we took Olympic Airlines to court. Olympic Airlines had tree lawyers to say that it was raining that day and that this was the reason I slipped! My son had to search meteorological archives in order to prove that it wasn’t the rain but the oil, to prove that it wasn’t raining that day.

Finally the president of the court called me and said, ‘Please take the oath.’ And there was the New Testament, so I took the oath on the New Testament, and that moment a young lawyer jumps out and says: ‘Mrs. President, Mrs. Capuano is bad willed.’ ‘How dare you say something like that?’ said the president.

The lady is a doctor and a very respected person.’ Upon that the young lawyer asked me, ‘What is your religion, my lady?’ ‘Jewish,’ I replied, and he goes, ‘But you took the oath on the New Testament. How is that possible?’ I said, ‘Mrs. President, G-d is one, his representatives differ.’

After that the examination of the case continued as nobody said anything else following that statement of mine. And this is what I really believe by the way.

Yesterday I was reading about Alois Brunner 33 who is in Syria. Here there is a law since 1959 that in reality abolishes the prosecution of Germans in Greece, and he killed so many people! Well this is ridiculous. If someone will steal bread they will arrest him and put him in jail.

He, who killed 56,000 people, has his prosecution finished… I’m sorry, but that I can’t understand. What does it mean that his prosecution is finished? These things happen only in Greece.

This Brunner is in Syria and they know who he is and what he did. But in Latin American countries there are all sort of peculiarities. You will see, for example, a mayor called Mr. Weinberg, many Germans who have been completely assimilated.

They changed their hair from blond to black, and they have had all sort of plastic surgeries to change their looks. And they had a lot of money, a whole lot of money. This is the reason they never invaded Switzerland, as the exchange was: we will give you our gold to guard and we will not invade.

A short while ago we visited Auschwitz, as it was the 60th celebration of the liberation. The visitors were coming from all over the world, but this particular year something new happened. The European ministries of education funded many non-Jewish schools, so that the children would have an opportunity to participate in the manifestation of memory.

There were about 30,000 people present, and as I was walking, I heard a group talking in French amongst themselves. I asked them where they were coming from and they told me Lyon, France, and when I asked them if they were Jews they said, no, that they were Catholics.

Here, the Ministry of Education gave 50.000 Euros and only 15 people were interested in coming! The rest of the money was given to schools, students etc. of our community. This is how the ones who wanted to could go. It was a gigantic manifestation, the ‘March of the Living.’ We walked three kilometers to go there and another three to return. I personally didn’t think I would be able to make it, as I have a problem with my legs. I still cannot quite believe how I managed to complete the march.

As we were going around the camps on foot I was crying and crying because it is a different thing to read about it – at home I have two shelves full of books on the Holocaust – than to see it in reality. To put yourself in their place at that moment that they would put in line one after the other in order to see how many a single bullet could kill, penetrating from one to the other etc. Well, this is a different thing all together.

You should see the ‘pieces of cotton,’ or what I thought were pieces of cotton. I asked myself, ‘why do they show these pieces of cotton? Did they take them out of a mattress? But weren’t mattresses here filled with straw?’ So I asked our group leader what those discolored pieces of cotton were all about and she told me, ‘What discolored pieces of cotton, Mrs. Capuano? Can’t you see that it is peoples’ hair?’

They found five tons of it there that were not sent to Germany. They also told me this hair is the raw material for manufacturing a very strong and light cloth that is used to make parachutes. If you do not see and live it you have seen nothing.

Many speeches were given and there came Sharon and we could see him on the big screens that had been installed. It was all very moving and the music they would play would also shake us. Before we started to walk – it was where the rail tracks were, on the spot where the trains were passing – they were giving us little cardboard badges and written on those was, ‘In the memory of my family, my parents, my uncle.’

They would pin those cardboard badges on us. And when we arrived there was a sort of esplanade because the manifestation took place in Birkenau 34, the march started in Auschwitz and ended in Birkenau. Of course, only Auschwitz exists now because in Birkenau there is nothing left since the Germans had the whole camp blown up before they left.

At this esplanade, we were looking at a giant screen and there spoke the prime minister of Poland, a representative of the organization of the Rights of Women and many others. However, the highlight was Sharon who said, ‘I will not speak to you about the Holocaust as what I see is enough. You must talk about it among yourselves, with your children, with your children’s children, as it must never be forgotten.’

Then came Elie Wiesel 35 and said, ‘I was a young child, fourteen years old.’ And I was wondering how he survived as at that young age they were not taking them in the camp, he must have looked much older. He continued, ‘I was holding hands with my father, my mother, my little brother and suddenly, I had no time, they all disappeared. My mother had no time to give me a kiss, neither my father to give me his blessing. I lost them. Why all that?’

Then came the former chief rabbi of Israel whose name is Lau and said, ‘Why did they choose us? We all see the same flowers, we all smell the same flowers. Why did they choose us?’

I went to the gas chambers and prayed my respects and is seems that he people taken in there they were suffocating and dying, but before dying they were hitting the door with their hands, and they were digging the walls with their nails and on one wall it was written ‘n-k-m’ and the rabbi said, ‘I understand it as the Hebrew word “nekama” which means “revenge.”

Certainly revenge but not with violence. Revenge is what I see today. Revenge is 30,000 people present in this manifestation today. Revenge is that they didn’t manage to achieve what they were after. Revenge is every child that is born.’

Only by visiting that place you can really understand it, live it partly, since only the people who suffered there really lived it.

Recently, in 2005, I honored Mr. Fix. I had everything prepared already some fifteen or twenty years ago, but Mrs. Fix didn’t want me to, as she told me, ‘Mr. Fix is dead. Mr. Fix hid you, I had no involvement in it, whatever we did we did it for the best and I don’t want any thank you. For whatever we did let G-d thank us.’

However, I had my dossier ready and last year was the celebration of the Holocaust in Greece for the first time and little Charles Fix, the son, calls me. ‘Ioanna,’ he says – I was called Ioanna Marinopoulou when I lived with them – and asked me, ‘Why did you forget us?’ I told him that I hadn’t forgotten them and that I would expect him at my place the next day. So he saw that I had everything prepared and I told him, ‘Your mother didn’t want it.’ But he said, ‘I do want it.’

It took me only eight months to arrange for it. I telephoned here, I telephoned there, got in contact with Yad Vashem and with Mr. Saltiel, if I recall correctly, and this year we celebrated the sixty year anniversary.

We went to Thessaloniki, because the celebration was held in Thessaloniki. The son, Charles Fix, came as well as my son and Mr. Prokopiou, the only cousin of Charles Fix. He came especially for this occasion and left again the next day in the morning.

I had also prepared a little speech to give but I didn’t in the end, as I was very moved and was crying. And when it was over I turned my head towards Charles, he turned towards me, and we looked at each other and fell into each other’s arms. I can still hear the applause we received.

Imagine, 2.500 people clapping. And when I saw Aliki Mordohai, I told her, ‘Aliki, my child, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to say a few words.’ And her response was that I did very well not to talk as, ‘the embrace and the kiss said it all and it was more than enough.’

Most recently, I’ve been occupied with my autobiography. Some people told me that there wouldn’t be a high demand for these old stories. However, it will soon be published by the Gavrielides Editions. So I am very busy with it.

I don’t go to the synagogue frequently. I only go for the holidays. It does not influence me, I am what I am, whether I am in a religious place or not. When there is a big holiday I like to go there and pray. I also go to the synagogue for memorial services or when they open the temple.

Every night I say my prayer, ‘Shema Israel.’ This is the only prayer I know, I am sorry to know only this prayer, but then again this prayer says it all. There is only one ‘Shema Israel’ but even if you don’t pray, when you say, ‘oh, my G-d, please…’ it means that for you G-d exists.

Describing my life I could say that I lived a ‘bourgeois life.’

I’ve always believed that the Greek Jews but also the Greek Orthodox Christians do no have an aristocracy, there may have been some aristocrats, on the islands of Corfu, Cefallonia, Zakynthos and that it is all.

For me aristocracy is a right and honest house. People well educated, cultured. These are the people that get distinguished. Is it not so? And we do not have aristocracy like the French with the prefix ‘de’, nor dukes nor counts nor Sirs, nothing of the sort. But even if we have, the titles have in reality been bought because today titles are sold. As for me, I consider equal and fully comparable all the correct, civil families with alleged aristocracy.

• Glossary:

1 Expulsion of the Jews from Spain: In the 13th century, after a period of stimulating spiritual and cultural life, the economic development and wide-range internal autonomy obtained by the Jewish communities in the previous centuries was curtailed by anti-Jewish repression emerging from under the aegis of the Dominican and the Franciscan orders.

There were more and more false blood libels, and the polemics, which were opportunities for interchange of views between the Christian and the Jewish intellectuals before, gradually condemned the Jews more and more, and the middle class in the rising started to be hostile with the competitor.

The Jews were gradually marginalized. Following the pogrom of Seville in 1391, thousands of Jews were massacred throughout Spain, women and children were sold as slaves, and synagogues were transformed into churches. Many Jews were forced to leave their faith.

About 100,000 Jews were forcibly converted between 1391 and 1412. The Spanish Inquisition began to operate in 1481 with the aim of exterminating the supposed heresy of new Christians, who were accused of secretly practicing the Jewish faith.

In 1492 a royal order was issued to expel resisting Jews in the hope that if old co-religionists would be removed new Christians would be strengthened in their faith.

At the end of July 1492 even the last Jews left Spain, who openly professed their faith. The number of the displaced is estimated to lie between 100,000-150,000. (Source: Jean-Christophe Attias - Esther Benbassa: Dictionnaire de civilisation juive, Paris, 1997)

2 German Occupation: in the spring of 1941, Germans defeated the Greek army and occupied Greece until October 1944. The county was divided in three zones of occupation. Thrace and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia were occupied by Bulgaria, Germany occupied Macedonia including Thessaloniki, Piraeus and western Crete and Italy occupied the remaining mainland and the islands.

Now depending of where the Jews lived, defined both their future luck as also the possibilities of escape. Greek resistance groups, communists or not fought against the occupation in an effort to save Greece but also the Jews living in Greece.

Approximately 8,000 to 10,000 Greek Jews survived the Holocaust, due to the refusal, to a great extent, of the Greeks, as also the leadership of the Greek Orthodox Church, to cooperate with the Germans for the application of their plan to deport all of them. Further more, the Italian authorities up to their surrender in 1943 refused to facilitate or to permit the deportation of the Jews from the Italian zone of occupation.

(Source: www.ushmm.org/greece/nonflash/gr/intro.htm)

3 Moskov, Kostis (1939-1998): Mayor of Thessaloniki, advisor to the Ministry of Culture and Representative of the Greek Civilization foundation in the Middle East. A historian, writer, poet and journalist who had many of his works published.

4 Ladino: Also known as Judeo-Spanish, it is the spoken and written Hispanic language of Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origin. Ladino did not become a specifically Jewish language until after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 (and Portugal in 1495) - it was merely the language of their province. It is also known as Judezmo, Dzhudezmo, or Spaniolit.

When the Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal they were cut off from the further development of the language, but they continued to speak it in the communities and countries to which they emigrated. Ladino therefore reflects the grammar and vocabulary of 15th-century Spanish.

In Amsterdam, England and Italy, those Jews who continued to speak 'Ladino' were in constant contact with Spain and therefore they basically continued to speak the Castilian Spanish of the time. Ladino was nowhere near as diverse as the various forms of Yiddish, but there were still two different dialects, which corresponded to the different origins of the speakers:

'Oriental' Ladino was spoken in Turkey and Rhodes and reflected Castilian Spanish, whereas 'Western' Ladino was spoken in Greece, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia and Romania, and preserved the characteristics of northern Spanish and Portuguese. The vocabulary of Ladino includes hundreds of archaic Spanish words, and also includes many words from different languages:

mainly from Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Greek, French, and to a lesser extent from Italian. In the Ladino spoken in Israel, several words have been borrowed from Yiddish. For most of its lifetime, Ladino was written in the Hebrew alphabet, in Rashi script, or in Solitreo.

It was only in the late 19th century that Ladino was ever written using the Latin alphabet. At various times Ladino has been spoken in North Africa, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, France, Israel, and, to a lesser extent, in the United States and Latin America.

5 Rashi alphabet: A Hebrew alphabet traditionally used for Rashi (Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac, 1040-1105) commentaries of the Bible and the Talmud, it is also the traditional alphabet of Judeo-Spanish. The Judeo-Spanish alphabet also used certain characters to denote the Spanish sounds that are alien to the Hebrew phonetics.

Judeo-Spanish religious as well as secular texts were written in Rashi letters up until the introduction of the Latin alphabet, first by Alliance Israelite Universelle after 1860.

6 Railway network of Thessaloniki: In 1871 the city of Thessaloniki was connected to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. In 1888 it was connected to Belgrade and the European Railway network.

In 1894 the connection of Thessaloniki with Monastiri was completed, while in 1896 Thessaloniki was also connected with Constantinople, today's Istanbul.

7 Fez: Ottoman headgear. As part of the Imperial Prescript of Gulhane (a westernizing campaign) of Sultan Mahmud II (1839-1876) the traditional Ottoman dressing code was abolished in 1839. The fez, resembling the hat of the Europeans at the time, was introduced and widely used by the Ottoman population, regardless of religious affiliation.

In the Turkish Republic it was considered backward and outlawed in 1925 by the Head Law. In the Balkan countries the fez was regarded an Ottoman (Turkish) symbol and was dropped after gaining independence.

8 Thessaloniki visit of King Juan Carlos: On 27th May 1998 the Spanish Royal couple, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia visited Thessaloniki. They were received by the Minister of Macedonia and Trace, Philippos Petsalnikos, and he accompanied them to the Holocaust Monument where King Juan Carlos laid a wreath in honor of the memory of the Jewish martyrs.

9 Synagogues in Thessaloniki: Before WWII there were 19 synagogues in Thessaloniki, all of which were blown up by the Germans a short time before the liberation. Already the big fire of 1917 had destroyed most of the synagogues and certainly all the historic synagogues, that is those built before 1680.

Historian Rena Molho accounts that before the big fire there were about a hundred synagogues out of which 32 were recognized by the chief rabbi, 65 private small synagogues belonging to well known families and 17 small public synagogues. [Source: 1. R. Molho, 'The Jews of Thessaloniki. 1856-1919 A special community,' Ed. Themelio, Athens 2001, pp.65, 121. and 2. Helias V. Messinas, 'The Synagogues of Salonica and Veroia,' Ed. Gavrielides, Athens 1997]

10 Beit Saoul Synagogue: It was set up in ca. 1898 on 43 Vassilissis Olgas Street by Fakima Idda Modiano in memory of her husband Saoul Jacob Modiano.

11 Monastir Synagogue (Monastirioton in Greek): Founded in 1923, inaugurated in 1927 by the Aruesti family who during the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), along with other Jewish families of Monastir (today Bitola), sought shelter in the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki and settled in the city. This synagogue survived the destructions during World War II because it was used as the headquarters of the Red Cross.

12 Mizrachi: The word has two meanings: a) East. It designates the Jews who immigrate to Palestine from the Arab countries. Since the 1970s they make up more than half of the Israeli population. b) It is the movement of the Zionists, who firmly hold on to the Torah and the traditions.

The movement was founded in 1902 in Vilnius. The name comes from the abbreviation of the Hebrew term Merchoz Ruchoni (spiritual center). The Mizrachi wanted to build the future Jewish state by enforcing the old Jewish religious, cultural and legal regulations. They recruited followers especially in Eastern Europe and the United States.

In the year after its founding it had 200 organizations in Europe, and in 1908 it opened an office in Palestine too. The first congress of the World Movement was held in 1904 in Pozsony (today Bratislava, Slovakia), where they joined the Basel program of the Zionists, but they emphasized that the Jewish nation had to stand on the grounds of the Torah and the traditions.

The aim of the Mizrach-Mafdal movement is the same in our days too. It supports schools, youth organizations in Israel and in other countries, so that the Jewish people can learn about their religion, and it takes part in the political life of Israel, promoting by this the traditional image of the Jewish state.

(http://www.mizrachi.org/aboutus/default.asp; www.cionista.hu/mizrachi.htm; Magyar Zsidó Lexikon, Budapest, 1929).

13 Matanot Laevionim: Matanot Laevionim was created in February 1901 with the objective of offering free meals to orphans and other poor students of the schools of the Jewish Community. It operated with funds from the community, the help of Alliance Israelite Universelle and other serious legacies left by the founding members or their wives when they became widows.

These funds were used in order to acquire a building in the suburb of Eksohi. In 1912, Matanot Laevionim offered approximately four hundred free meals a day, while after the big fire of Thessaloniki in 1917 it extended its activities and set up one cook house in each neighborhood.

During the occupation it offered great services to the community, as with the assistance of the Greek and the International Red Cross it managed to distribute daily 'popular meals' and half a litter of milk to 5.500 children. [Source: R. Molho, 'The Jews of Thessaloniki 1856-1919. A Unique Community,' Ed. Themelio, Athens 2001, pp.104-106]

14 Alliance Israelite Universelle: An international Jewish organization based in France. It was founded in Paris in 1860 by Adolphe Gremieux, as a response to the Damascus Affair, with the goal to protect human rights of Jews as citizens of the countries where they live.

The organization was created to combine the ideals of self defense and self sufficiency through education and professional development among Jews around the world. In addition, the organization operated a number of Jewish day schools and has done a lot to standardize the Ladino language.

The Alliance schools were organized in network with their Central Committee in Paris. The teaching body was usually the alumni trained in France. The schools emphasized modern sciences and history in their curriculum; nevertheless Hebrew and religion were also taught.

The Alliance Israelite Universelle ideology consisted in teaching the local language to Jews so they could be integrated to their country's culture. This was part of the modernization of the Jews. Most Ottoman Jews, however, did not take up the Turkish language (because it was optional), and as a result a new generation of Ottoman Jews grew up that was more familiar with France and the West than with the surrounding society.

In the Balkans the first school was opened in Greece (Volos) in 1865, then in the Ottoman Empire in Adrianople in 1867, Shumla (Shumen) in 1870 and in Istanbul, Smyrna (Izmir), and Salonika in 1870s. In 1870, Carl Netter of the AIU received a tract of land from the Ottoman Empire as a gift and started an agricultural school, Mikveh Israel, the first modern Jewish agricultural settlement in the Land of Israel.

The modernist Jewish elite and intelligentsia of the late 19th-century Ottoman Empire was known for having graduated from Alliance schools; they were closely attached to the Young Turk circles, and after 1908 three of them (Carasso, Farraggi, and Masliah) were members of the new Ottoman Chamber of Deputies.

15 American College (or Anatolia College): School founded by American missionaries in Merzifon of Asia Minor, in 1886. In 1924, after the invitation of Eleutherios Venizelos, it was transferred to Thessaloniki. During the interwar period it had many Jewish students.

16 ‘151’: After the Fire of 1917, the Jewish Community acquired the large No. 151 hospital, which belonged to the Italian army and was located east of the Thessaloniki. 75 wooden structures and many brick and cement structures were subsequently built to house the fire-stricken Jewish population.

17 3E (Ethniki Enosi Ellados): lit. National Union of Greece, a fascist nationalist organization, founded in 1929 by George Kosmidis. It had about 2000 members, of whom the majority was immigrants. [Source: J. Hondros, 'Occupation and Resistance: the Greek Agony,' New York, 1983]

18 Venizelos, Eleftherios (1864-1936): an eminent Greek revolutionary, a prominent and illustrious statesman as well as a charismatic leader in the early 20th century. Elected several times as Prime Minister of Greece and served from 1910 to 1920 and from 1928 to 1932.

Venizelos had such profound influence on the internal and external affairs of Greece that he is credited with being “the maker of modern Greece.” His impact on modern Greece has been such that he is still widely known as the “Ethnarch.”

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleftherios_Venizelos)

19 Campbell Fire (Pogrom on 29th June 1931): Responsible for the arson of the poor neighborhood Campbell was the Ethniki Enosis Ellas - National Union Greece, short: EEE also known as the 3E or the 'Iron Helmets.'

This organization was the backbone of fascism in Greece in the period between the two World Wars. It was established in Thessaloniki in 1927. The most important element of the 3E political voice was anti-Semitism, an expression mostly of the Christian traders of the city in order to displace the Jewish competitors.

President of the organization was a merchant, Mr. G. Cormides, there was also a secretary, a banker, D. Haritopoulos, and chief spokesman Nikos Fardis, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Makedonia. The occasion for the outbreak of anti-Semitism in Thessaloniki was the inauguration of the new Maccabi Hall in June 1931.

In a principal article signed by Nikos Fardis, from Saturday, 20th June 1931, it was said that Maccabi of Thessaloniki had placed itself in favor of an Autonomous Greek Macedonia. The journalist "revealed" the conspiracy of Jews, Bulgarians, Communists and Catholics against Macedonia.

Two days later, the Ministry of the Interior confirmed the newspaper's allegations despite the strict denial of the Maccabi representatives. All the anti-Semitic and fascist organizations were aroused. This marked the beginning of the riots that resulted in the pogrom of Campbell.

Elefterios Venizelos was again involved after the 1917 fire, speaking at the parliament as Prime Minister, and talked with emphasis about the law-abiding stance of the Jewish population, but simultaneously permitted the prosecution of Maccabi for treason against the state. Let alone the fact that the newspaper Makedonia with the inflaming anti-Semitic publications was clearly pro-Venizelian.

At the trial, held in Veroia ten months later, Fardis and the leaders of EEE were found not guilty while three refugees were found guilty, but with mitigating circumstances and therefore were freed on the spot. It is worth noting that at the 1933 general election, the Jews of Thessaloniki, in one block voted against Venizelos. [Source: Bernard Pierron, 'Juifs et chrétiens de la Grèce moderne,' Harmattan, Paris 1996, pp. 179-198]

20 The Fire of Thessaloniki: In the night of 18th August 1917, an enormous fire, fed by the famous Vardar wind, destroyed the city centre where most of the Jews lived. It was a region of 227 hectares, where 15,000 families lived, 10,000 of them were Jewish families which were deprived of their homes.

The Jews were hit the hardest, since more than two thirds of the property destroyed by the fire was Jewish and only a tenth of that immense fortune was insured. Nearly all the schools, 32 synagogues, 50 oratories, all the cultural centers, libraries, clubs, etc. were annihilated.

Despite of the aid of a sum of 40,000 golden pounds collected from all over the world, the community never recovered from that disaster. The Jewish face of the city that had been there for more than five centuries was wiped out in 36 hours.

25,000, out of 53,000 of the stricken Jews that belonged mostly to the lower and middle class, were forced to live in the working-class districts that were hastily built in a rudimentary fashion. (Source: Rena Molho, 'Jewish Working-Class Neighborhoods established in Salonica Following the 1890 and the 1917 Fires,' in Rena Molho, 'Salonica and Istanbul: Social, Political and Cultural Aspects of Jewish Life,' The Isis Press, Istanbul, 2005, pp.107-126.)

21 Hirsch [Clara de] Hospital: It was inaugurated in May 4th, 1908, exactly ten years after the donation of Baroness Clara de Hirsch who had died in the meantime. Her condition for the donation of 200,000 golden francs, once off for the construction of a 100-bed hospital and 30.000 francs per year for its maintenance was that an equal amount of money would be given by the Jewish Community.

In order to cover the second part there were many public fund raising efforts and a special committee was formed in order to supervise the details of the construction. The hospital manager was Doctor Misrahee and it employed the most specialized doctors of the city.

During WWI it became a military hospital which was returned to the community in 1919. After the end of WWII the hospital was sold to the Greek State on the condition that the label with the name of Baroness de Hirsch would remain intact. This was respected only during the first decades.

Today the label cannot be seen, while some of the marble plaques where the names of other Jews donators were written, were taken out and others were covered with many layers of paint. (Source: 1. R.Molho, “The Jews of Thessaloniki 1856-1919 A special community” Ed. Themelio, Athens 2001, pp.96-101)

22 An-ski, Szymon (pen name of Szlojme Zajnwel Rapaport) (1863-1920): Writer, ethnographer, socialist activist. Born in a village near Vitebsk. In his youth he was an advocate of haskalah, but later joined the radical movement Narodnaya Vola. Under threat of arrest he left Russia in 1892 but returned there in 1905.

From 1911-14 he led an ethnographic expedition researching the folklore of the Jews of Podolye and Volhynia. During the war he organized committees bringing aid to Jewish victims of the conflict and pogroms.

In 1918 he became involved in organizing cultural life in Vilnius, as a co-founder of the Union of Jewish Writers and Journalists and the Jewish Ethnographic Society. Two years before his death he moved to Warsaw. He is the author of the Bund party's anthem, 'Di shvue' (Yid. oath).

The participation of the Bund in the Revolution of 1905 influenced An-ski's decision to write in Yiddish. In his later work he used elements of Jewish legends collected during his ethnographic expedition and his experiences from WWI.

His most famous work is The Dybbuk (which to this day remains one of the most popular Yiddish works for the stage). An-ski's entire literary and scientific oeuvre was published in Warsaw in 1920-25 as a 15-volume edition.

23 Cinema Palace: The sign post at the front of the cinema was in three languages: French, Greek and Hebrew. Palace was also a theater. Performances were organized there as early as 1935.  On2nd January 1942 the Germans confiscated it, changed its name to “Soldatenbühne” (Soldiers’ Stage) and it was a theater  for German soldiers only.

(Source: Costas Tomanas, “theaters in old Thessaloniki” Ed. Nisides, Thessaloniki 1994)

I, Lyudmila Samuilovna Matsina (before marriage - Levit),
was born on December 24, 1932 in Leningrad.

My parents lived in the 2-nd Sovetskaya Street then, where as early as in 1924
the family of my grandmother and her sister Vera with children settled.

 
The times, certainly, were difficult, but I, beeing a child, certainly didn’t feel it,
as I was a sole child who survived (before me Mum had two babies, the first was born dead
and the second girl died at the age of six months). Everyone was nursing me, and you could tell everything was done for me.

Grandmother was staying at home, and there was a housemaid, too.

My family background

During the war

After the war

Marriage life

Recent years

My family background

My grandfather on the mother’s side - Leib Meerovich Golshmid [the correct spelling is Golshmid, according to the documents. Most probably, the original surname Goldshmidt was changed in the course of time], - was born in the Ukraine in 1872, in the town of Smele, or Shpole, because he is registered in Mum’s birth certificate as "Shpole resident". His family was rather well-to-do. Grandmother Rachel Moiseevna Golshmid (nee Eiderman) was also born somewhere in the Ukraine in 1881. Then it was Kiev province, and now it is the Poltava region. The parents proposed them to each other, before that they hadn’t met. As it was customary in Jewish communities back then, they were proposed to each other, but I am unaware about the details. But when they got acquainted, they fell in love with each other from the first sight and lived happily all their life. Grandmother died in 1944, in evacuation, grandfather - in 1947. I haven’t been to Shpole, I only now about this Jewish settlement from my mother’s birth certificate. I only know that her father was a Shpole resident – nothing else, unfortunately.

They arrived to live in St. Petersburg in 1904. But the first to come here was my grandmother’s father. He was registered as a merchant of the second guild. I found it out in the directory " All Petrograd " for 1915. At first Grandfather worked in the Kalashnikov stock exchange, near the Lavra. He was an expert in flour. As a commercial traveler (or commission agent – that is what written in the directory) he bought and sold flour, traveling extensively. And my grandmother, naturally, was a housewife. Then grandfather served in St. Petersburg as an assistant of the manager of Bligken-Robinson confectionery factory, where the managerial position was held by the husband of grandmother’s elder sister Vera. All of them together lived in Vozdvizhenskaya Street (nowadays Tyushin Street), not far from Obvodny Channel. They had rather a large apartment there. The family was well-provided for. During the elections before 1917, - as grandmother told me - they voted for the party of Constitutional Democrats  (what kind of party it was?)… Before the revolution they used to go for vacations to Dubelnya near Riga (now the place is called Dublty), then - to the village of Martyshkino in the vicinity of St. Petersburg. They hired maids. Children, while they were small, were basically taken care of by the nurse, later – by a governess.

Grandfather and grandmother spoke basically Russian, but Yiddish they also knew well and sometimes spoke this language too. Grandmother Rachel was a fashionable woman and wore beautiful dresses and jewelry. Of course she would not put on a kerchief or a wig. They were not especially religious. And they did not go to the synagogue on Saturdays, even on big holidays. But some traditions they did observe. I remember that grandmother never gave us milk after meat.  Kashrut was an inherent feature of Grandfather’s and Grandmother’s everyday life. But, in other respects they were not religious people – Grandmother didn’t wear the wigs, nor did she attend to the synagogue or pray. Grandfather worked in the chocolate factory and I have no idea of his religious life.

The wife of Grandfather’s younger brother also had endured enormous hardships in her life. Her name was Eugenia, her last surname was Zolotareva [her last husband’s family name]. Mother’s uncle left her with a daughter, and a bit later, in 1930s, she married a German engineer, who worked in Leningrad under a contract. But when his contract was over, he left to his Fatherland, and she stayed here and in 1937 she was arrested. Above all, she was a teacher of the German language, and thus they charged her of being a German spy. I think it was in 1938, when Beria [People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs] let people out of prisons, she was released. I do not remember precisely, but I know that by 1941 she was free. And when the war began, she was immediately arrested again and put in the chamber for prisoners condemned to death penalty. But she was a very tough, strong-willed woman and got through all that, although her legs failed her [became paralyzed] there, in that prison camp, and she could not walk. This is what probably saved her life, because she was not able to do that terribly exhausting physical labor.  They released her in 1946, and she came to us, to the 2nd Sovetskaya Street in a quilted jacket, looking awfully. And she was officially prohibited from coming to Leningrad, because those subjected to repressions were banned from living in metropolitan cities. She was hiding at our place. One late evening we heard a doorbell, and Aunt Zhenya seized her quilted jacket and rushed to the lavatory and locked the door from the inside – so that nobody could find her. Being a spiritually strong woman she later recovered, received a contract proposal and went somewhere to the North to work. She got married again there, and earned herself a good pension. She died a long time ago, too.

Grandmother’s brother David Moiseevich and his wife Eva Abramovna lost both their sons during the Great Patriotic War. Misha was killed in the fights over Nevskaya Dubrovka, though for a long time he was considered lost, his death was not really confirmed. Aunt Eva waited for him until her death. His elder brother Sasha was wounded at the front and  died in hospital of wounds.

There was some craving for Ukraine left in Grandmother’s soul - she taught me Ukrainian songs, but she didn’t teach me Jewish songs for some reason. They seldom traveled to the Ukraine afterwards, only on short visits. My grandfather’s parents lived there. He was a manager of some business here, I don’t know precisely! When the revolution began, my mother’s parents - grandmother and grandfather - lived in Petrograd, but in 1918 famine began here. Therefore they  left to the Ukraine to their relatives. I recollect Mum telling me, that when after the Petrograd starvation they found themselves in that family farm of their Ukrainian kin, they were simply astounded: geese, chicken, turkeys, cows … In the Ukraine in 1918-20 they survived through the onslaughts of Makhno and Petlura bandits, Denikin Army attacks and the related pogroms.

My grandfather’s younger brother Yasha Golshmid served in the imperial army and was killed in 1915, during the First World War, somewhere in the territory of Prussia and was buried in a Jewish cemetery.

Another younger brother of Grandfather, Nison Golshmid (but they always called him Nikolay Markovich) was a student of the Moscow conservatory and participated in operas as a supernumerary. He lived in Moscow both after the revolution and after the Great Patriotic War. He had not become a singer, because his wife would not permit  him to do so, and he worked for a very long time in one and the same place – as a sales director for one factory. He died in the 1980s in Moscow. He had one daughter Victoria, who had graduated from a college of law and worked in the Supreme Court.

My grandfather’s elder brother (I do not know his name) emigrated to America in the 1920s. Grandfather had sisters as well, but I know nothing about them.

My mother Аida Leibovna Levit (nee Golshmid) was born in 1906 in St.Petersburg. Before revolution, in lower classes, she studied in the well-known female Stayuninskaya grammar school. She was telling me about that grammar school with delight, that there was good order and, by the way, no anti-Semitism ever existed. One of the subjects was the Law of God, and the Jews were allowed to skip those lessons. And in general there was no anti-Semitism in the attitudes of people with whom my grandmother and grandfather communicated. Anti-Semitism in their circle in general was considered a shame. A person who showed any sign of anti-Semitism, was simply announced a boycott. After the revolution, in 1924, Mum  finished a school in Petrograd that was located in the building of the former 1-st grammar school for boys in Kabinetskaya Street (now Pravdy Street).

Mother and her cousin Abram Isaevich Zlobinsky entered the Leningrad University. But they both were dismissed from the university - as persons of bourgeois origin. Abram became a journalist, for a long time worked in "The Red Newspaper" and took a pseudonym Lukian Piterskoi. And mother entered the Leningrad Institute of Municipal Construction Engineers which was then referred to as LIIKS, and later it merged with the Institute of Civil Engineers.

Mum had two brothers. The elder, Semen Leibovich Golshmid, was born in 1902. During the Great Patriotic War he was severely wounded and lost his leg.  He died in 1948 in Leningrad. Her second brother - Alexander, born in 1909, also was a participant of the Great Patriotic War, and received a heavy contusion in the fights in Nevskaya Dubrovka. After the war he worked as an engineer and designer.  He died in 1980.

The name of my grandfather on father’s side was Berk Levit, and in everyday life they called him Boris Petrovich. He died in 1944 in the city of Minyar, Kuibyshev region. Grandmother’s name was Frida, her maiden name, I think, was Kunina – I can remember it somehow. She died in Leningrad in 1949. Unfortunately, I know almost nothing about them. Unfortunately I know almost nothing about this Grandfather, where he worked or what he did, because nobody informed me about that, and I myself was not interested while being small.

My Daddy Samuil Berkovich Levit was born in Simferopol in 1904. Their family was also rather rich - they owned a house, I think in Kanatnaya Street. As a boy Daddy, it seems, went to Cheder, but I do not know for sure. Then he studied in a vocational school, in the commercial department. In 1929 Daddy graduated from the Institute of Civil Engineers in Leningrad and was assigned to Murmansk, the city under construction then. Daddy was one of the first builders and designers of that city. But Mum fell ill with tuberculosis there, and they had to return to Leningrad. Mum got acquainted with Daddy during the students’ practical training session in Kronstadt and they got married in 1928. Parents didn’t tell me anything about their wedding, I don’t even have any photos of this event. Maybe there weren’t any wedding at all, they could have just register their marriage with state bodies or live in civil marriage.

Daddy’s elder sister Rachel worked in the Crimean Komsomol, was a very loyal Komsomol member, and consequently named my cousin, born in 1922, in honour of Inessa Armand [a prominent Bolshevik figure], and after the death of Lenin renamed her Lenina. The father of Inessa-Lenina was a writer by name Gorev. Before the war, they performed his play "On the banks of Neva" in Alexandrinsky Theatre in Leningrad. He died in the middle of the 1970s, and Aunt - in 1936, of cancer.

Also, Daddy had a sister Fenya, but what her occupation was, I do not know. Her husband Yosya worked at a defense factory, therefore they were evacuated to Sverdlovsk in 1941 and never came back to Leningrad any more.

Father’s sister Sonya named her son Rem – the abbreviation for  "revolution, electrification, peace". Sonya also was an ardent Komsomol member, as well as her husband Nikandr (in general we called him Kolya), but actually he was Nikandr Kuzin. Uncle Kolya at that time was the chief of construction of Pre-Baltic Electric Power Station, deputy of the Supreme Council of Estonia, they lived in Narva, and died in Pushkin, when they were retired.

Daddy’s younger brother Abram, too, was an active Komsomol member. He was the Komsomol leader of the steel-casting shop in a factory. Then he worked as a deputy director of a large factory in Gatchina. He also died rather young, approximately in 1976.

Until 1941, all Daddy's relatives lived in Leningrad, but the war scattered them over to different places.

During the war

Before the war, our family lived rather well financially. Daddy worked as an engineer and architect in a design organization and, probably, earned good money. When the war began, we were in our summer residence in Sestroretsk, but returned to the city in a rush. Soon Daddy was enlisted in the army, and Mum was urgently sent to a business trip, and I stayed with my relatives. In the summer of 1942 Daddy came and took me to Udmurtia, the city of Izhevsk, where Mum was already waiting for me. We lived in the Tatar family, nobody spoke Russian, except for the elder daughter. There was no furniture in this log hut - pillows and blankets were just piled up in the corner and were picked up for the night. We slept in our clothes, without any linen … Mum and me lived in a narrow room, separated from the landlord’s room with a partition not reaching the ceiling, the light bulb was only in master's "half".

The level of life in evacuation was extremely low, Mum was sick with tuberculosis, but all the same worked somewhere and received some trifling compensation. Actually we lived on father’s certificate and had some vegetables from our kitchen garden, which we planted. In the autumn of 1943, when Oryol and Smolensk were liberated, Daddy was sent there for mine clearing operations - he first studied the craft at some courses and trained soldiers later. In February 1944 we joined him in the town of Lyudinovo. We lived in a semi-destroyed house, which Daddy restored somehow with the help of his soldiers. Everyone wondered how we could live in it. Then we followed Daddy to the town of Kirovsk of the Kaluga region.

Now, let me tell you a little about how the life of some of our relatives worked out. Mother’s cousin - Aunt Polya Zlobinskaya, with whom they lived together in their childhood in Leningrad in the apartment in the 2-nd Sovetskaya Street, had suffered severe ordeals during the war. She married Yakov Bronshtein in 1930 or a little later. His father was a doctor, and he later moved to live in Kislovodsk, where he became the chief doctor of the Kislovodsk sanatorium. On June 7, 1941 Aunt Polya gave birth to a daughter, and their son was five years old by that time. When the war began, her husband decided to send his wife together with his two kids and a nurse, to his father in Kislovodsk – as far as possible from the war. But as you know, in 1942 the Germans broke through to the Caucasus and seized all the Caucasian area, the entire region. They issued an order for all Jews to come to a certain place with their belongings. But Aunt Polya said that she wouldn’t go there with her children. Her father-in-law started assuring her, that Germans were not brutal beasts, that he finished a medical faculty in Germany and perfectly knew Germans and did not believe in all those ball yarns about Germans. He and his wife, as well as his younger daughter and others - the family was quite large - all set off to this assembly point, and, of course, everyone was shot. And Aunt Polya  started to roam round and about because they couldn’t stay in one place, for the neighbours knew that they were from Bronshtein family, and could report to the German authorities. So she kept rambling from town to town, leaving her children with the nurse, a Russian, Marusya by name, who gave out the kids either for her own children, or for her nephews. Aunt Polya went rambling from place to place, from Essentuki to Pyatigorsk, from Pyatigorsk to Essentuki and back, because otherwise she would have to check in in the German Commandant's office. She gave herself out for an Armenian woman, wore only black clothes, wrapped with a kerchief up to her very eyes. And once an elderly German on a horse cart overtook her on the road. He looked at her and asked: "Sie sind Jude?". " Nein! Nein!" - Aunt Polya uttered. And he said “OK” and brought her to Essentuki …to the Commandant's office, because she even had no place to spend the night. From Commandant's office she was sent somewhere to spend the night. In general, that’s how they stayed alive. Thanks to the nurse, her children survived, too. But after the war, when my aunt returned to Leningrad, she couldn’t find a job, because those who had been on the occupied territories, wouldn’t be hired anywhere.

After the war

Mum and me returned to Leningrad in August 1945, and Daddy still stayed in army, he was demobilized in 1946. During the war I continued to study, and at all schools I was an excellent pupil. But when we returned, Mum was given advice that I should proceed not in the 6th, but in the 5th form: "We know, how they teach in this evacuation!" But Mum persuaded them, and I didn’t lose one year because of the war. I continued to study at school 175 in the 2nd Sovetskaya Street, where before the war I managed to finish the first year. At our school nobody was in the slightest degree interested, who was Russian and who was Jewish, however, the two of my nearest friends were Jewish. I finished school with a silver medal in 1950. I had no special propensities to anything. And, following my father's path, I entered LISI - the Leningrad Institute of Construction Engineering. Those were the terrible years of 1952 and 1953. In those years, the last years of Stalin’s rule, there was an onslaught of anti-Semitism in the country. Jews were fired from work in enterprises and factories, they were banned from entering higher school institutions. Propaganda was claiming that Jews were the nation of “poisoners” – meaning the medical doctors from the notorious “Doctors’ Case”, fabricated by Stalin’s companions-in-arms in 1952. But in our students’ environment there wasn't a trace of anti-Semitism. But I remember, that when my relatives learned that Jews were going to be exiled, Mum burnt all the photos of our American relatives - Grandfather’s elder brother, who left for America in 1920s, and his letters, because everyone was scared of the worst. But nothing happened. God was merciful to us.

Marriage life

In 1955 I married Yuri Matsin. He, as well as I, entered LISI in 1950, the evening branch, and came to day-time lecture sometimes, participated in amateur art performances, but I had other company then, and we did not pay much attention to each other. And in 1954, when he returned after service in the fleet and continued studies, - from the second term of the first year, - we got really acquainted at some party, before November holidays, and in 1955 we were already a husband and wife.

The biography of my husband, as he puts it, is very "striped". He was born in Leningrad in 1931 - his father Zakhar Nikolaevich Matsin (Zakhary Nisonov) turned 54 then.  My husband’s entire childhood was connected with theatre. When he was very small, his father – a graduate of the Saint Petersburg conservatory, took him to Mariinsky theatre, behind the scenes, and the first ballet that he saw was "The Nutcracker ". Later, during the war, in Perm, where the actors of Mariinsky theatre were evacuated, Yuri, as a boy, performed in children chorus of the theatre, sang in " The Queen of Spades " and in many other performances. At the end of the war he entered a choreographic school, but, unfortunately, or - fortunately, he felt that he had no calling for that profession, and shifted to a comprehensive school, after ending of which entered the Leningrad Institute of Construction Engineering. From the first year in the institute he was taken to the army – where he served four years in the Fleet. Then he graduated from LISI and became a mechanical engineer. And the life of an ordinary Soviet Jew with all the following consequences began.
He had encountered manifestations of anti-Semitism in the army, where he served in the most difficult years: from 1951 to 1954. He was the secretary of Komsomol organization of the ship, very active. And, from his words, the Deputy Commander on political education put much pressure on him, especially in 1954, when Yuri, being "a Komsomol figure", wanted to join the Communist Party. The Deputy Commander assured Yuri that he is never going to become a party member … And it was clear that reason was "a wrong nationality". A year earlier, when the so-called "Doctors’ affair" emerged, the sailors on the ship started to sing all sorts of anti-Semitic songs. Yuri expressed his discontent to the Deputy Commander, but the answer was that the guys were just fooling around, and no measures at all were taken.

Recent years

After graduation from the institute my husband tried several times to get a job in organizations that were considered "closed" [working on secret projects] - and each time he was rejected, in spite of the fact that he was a very well trained specialist. And later on, all his attempts to get an employment failed, - in 1961 he had been to almost all serious companies in the city. In the long last he acquired a position in a small firm

After graduation from the high school I spent much effort to try and stay in Leningrad:  I was lucky that my husband still continued to study in the Institute. I went to work in the Institute of Refractories, worked there for about one year, but fell seriously ill and had to go to Essentuki for medical treatment. They wouldn’t give me a leave from work – I hadn’t worked enough by then yet, so they offered to discharge me, and promised to take me back later. But they didn’t hire me again - the boss who promised it was gone by then. And that’s where my hardships began. I could not find a job for more than one year. It was in 1956, when some British-Egyptian conflict took place. I would come to this or that institute, and they would tell me that they need project engineers … And when I brought the filled questionnaire, they were telling me that the situation had changed, staff reduced, etc. In this way I had been to 5-6 organizations and everywhere I heard the same answer. I tried TEP, too ("Heat and Power Supply Projecting Company"), and also was given a questionnaire to fill in - and again the same standard answer. The director of that institute was father’s friend; Daddy called him, but he said: "There’s nothing I can do.  Employment issues are the responsibility of the 1-st [security] department and personnel manager, and I can not speak up against them". The reason was completely clear to me. 

At the long last, I managed to get a job in a design institute of the 2-nd category, where they paid the lowest salaries. It was located in Poltavskaya Street, in a basement, - conditions were awful. It was called "Giprocommunstroi" [State institute for projecting communal infrastructure]. They designed waterpipes and sewer stations there. The collective was good, and I learned a lot there, having worked until 1963. Then I had to leave because we moved to another location. In 1965 I started to work in "Giprospetsgaz" [State institute for projecting gas pipes and equipment] - my daddy worked there for many years as chief project engineer, and he helped me to get the job with much effort. In that design organization I worked until retirement.

In my life I have designed and built many objects. They include the Northern and Southern water supply stations in Leningrad, reservoirs, gas pipelines, in particular Leningrad - Vyborg - State border with Finland, gas pipeline Ukhta-Torzhok, various compressor stations

My parents lived in Pushkin from 1966. Daddy had to retire rather early to take care of the diseased mother. She died in 1970. And Daddy died in 1986, and during a few years before his death he went to the synagogue on holidays, though he had never been a religious person.

I have never been to Israel and I can’t possibly say anything about my attitude to this country. As for political parties, - I have never joined any of them.

[Lyudmila Samuilovna has a very weak health and it prevents her from communicating with many people. Traditionally, her husband and she annualy go to the cemetery where her parents are burried in the town of Pushkin not far from Saint Petersburg. The interior of their flat is quite typical of a family of Saint Petersburg intellectuals: lots of books, a piano, an old computer. The spouses have no children, but they are very fond of each other and grieve that they have no one to pass the little information they have about their ancestors.]