Travel

Bella Zeldovich
Odessa
Ukraine
Interviewer: Alexandr Tonkonogiy
Date of interview: December 2002

Bella Zeldovich is a nice gray-haired, elderly woman. She was willing to give this interview, but she preferred to talk about others rather than herself. Bella keeps her house clean and cozy. She lives with her daughter, who is married and does all the necessary housework. The apartment is furnished with furniture bought in the 1980s. There are many tiny things such as vases and statuettes in the house.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

My grandfather on my father's side, Solomon Zeldovich was born in Vilno [today Vilnius, Lithuania] in 1860. All I know about my grandfather is what my father told me. My grandfather's parents passed away when he was small and he was raised at the municipal children's home in Vilno. In the late 1860s some childless relatives of his took him to Nikolaev where they lived. They must have been wealthy people since they could afford to give him a good education. My father said that my grandfather finished a grammar school and studied at Novorossiysk University [after 1919 Odessa University].

My grandfather supplied timber to the shipbuilding yard in Nikolaev. He owned a big storage facility and five residential buildings in the center of Nikolaev where he also leased apartments. My grandfather's family lived in one of these houses near the timber storage facility. They were religious. They followed the kashrut and my grandfather went to the synagogue on holidays. He had a beard and moustache and wore clothing typical for merchants. My father told me that there were Jewish self- defense 1 units during the 1905 pogroms 2 in some streets in Nikolaev and those neighborhoods didn't suffer that much. In my grandfather's neighborhood there was also a self-defense unit and their Russian neighbors also helped them. My grandfather's property didn't suffer from pogroms.

My grandfather died of a heart attack in Nikolaev in 1915 at the age of 55. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Nikolaev. After the Revolution of 1917 3, when the synagogue didn't operate for some time, my grandmother Leya Zeldovich, nee Lichtenzon, leased one of their houses to the Jewish community to serve as a prayer house for Jews.

My grandmother was born in Nikolaev in 1864. She came from a religious family and was religious, too. She always lit candles on the Eve of Sabbath. She wore a wig that she only took off before she went to bed. When I came to her room in the evening I didn't recognize her and always asked my parents, 'Who's this old woman sitting in our room?'. They explained to me that it was my grandmother who had taken off her wig. My grandparents got married in 1879 when my grandfather studied at university. They were very young when they got married. No doubt, they had a traditional wedding. My grandmother's oldest daughter was born in 1880 when she was 16.

My grandmother was a housewife. From the time I remember her she could hardly walk and her condition got worse with age. In 1930 she moved to her older daughter in Odessa. Since she was paralyzed she needed special care and my parents couldn't afford to pay for a nurse. My grandmother died of a heart attack in Odessa in 1930 at the age of 66. She was buried in Odessa. My grandfather Solomon and grandmother Leya had seven children: Rosa, Elizabeth, Boris, Leo, my father Samuel, Aron and Manya. All of them except for Boris were born in Nikolaev. The family was wealthy and all children got a good education.

My father's older sister Rosa was born in 1880. She finished grammar school and medical school. She worked as a medical nurse. She was married. Her husband's name was Natan and he was a Jew. Rosa had two children: Munia and Nyuma. They were much older than I. I don't remember if Rosa's family observed Jewish traditions. Rosa and her family moved to Odessa in the late 1920s. Rosa's husband and children perished at the front during the Great Patriotic War 4. Rosa perished in the ghetto in Odessa in 1941.

Elizabeth was born in 1882. She finished grammar school and the Medical Faculty of Novorossiysk University. In Nikolaev Elizabeth met a Jewish man from Lodz, Poland. She and her husband moved to Lodz before the Revolution of 1917. She worked as a doctor there. She had a daughter called Ella. My parents corresponded with Elizabeth. When World War II began in 1939, Elizabeth's family moved to Belgium. When Germans occupied Belgium in 1940 they wanted to move to England by boat. The ship was bombed by German planes. Elizabeth and her family perished. My parents only got to know about their death after the Great Patriotic War.

My father's older brother Boris was born in 1884 in Saint-Petersburg, where my grandparents lived temporarily during some business. He finished a grammar school in Nikolaev and then an art school in Saint-Petersburg. Boris was an artist, a painter. He was married and had two children: Lilia and Rafael. He died in Saint-Petersburg in 1910. I have no information about his wife and daughter. His son Rafael was a painter, too. He died in Leningrad in 1992.

My father's second brother Leo was born in 1886. After finishing grammar school in Nikolaev he graduated from the Shipbuilding Institute in Saint- Petersburg. He worked as an engineer at the shipbuilding yard in Nikolaev. Leo was married, but had no children. He died in Leningrad in 1930. I have no information about his wife.

My father's third brother Aron was born in Nikolaev in 1890. Aron finished secondary school and a technical college in Moscow. During World War I he served in the tsarist army and was in captivity in Austria. He told his family that Germans treated him well when he was in captivity. He returned to Russia in 1918. Aron got married in 1921. His wife's name was Sarah. They had a son called Lyoma. In the 1930s Aron and his family moved to Odessa where he was superintendent in a shop of the garment factory. During the Great Patriotic War Sarah and Lyoma were in evacuation in Tashkent. After the war Aron continued to work as a shop superintendent at the garment factory. He died in Odessa in 1957. His wife and son moved to Australia in the early 1970s, and, after a few years, further on to the US. His wife died in the 1980s, and his son works as a doctor in America.

My father's younger sister Manya was born in 1892. She finished a grammar school. She was married. Her husband's name was Semyon. Manya moved to Odessa in the 1930s. After the war she moved to Moscow with her family. She was a housewife and had a daughter called Ella. Manya died in Moscow in 1976. I have no information about her husband. Her daughter Ella lives in Israel and works as a doctor.

My father, Samuel Zeldovich, was born in Nikolaev on 20th September 1888. He finished a grammar school in Nikolaev and then a commercial college in Vienna. In 1914 my grandfather sent my father to Palestine to get familiar with our historical Motherland. At that time World War I began and all young people subject to recruitment were ordered to return to Russia. So my father returned to Russia. He was recruited to the tsarist army in which he served until the end of World War I. He returned to Nikolaev in the early 1920s.

My mother's father, Avrum Chernenko, was born in the village of Zultz [since 1945 Veseloye], Nikolaev region, in 1864. It was a German colony 5, although there was a German, Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish population in this village. I don't know what my grandfather Avrum did for a living. His family wasn't wealthy. They rented a house in the village. My grandfather was deeply religious. He went to the synagogue several times a week and prayed at home regularly with his tallit and tefillin on. He wore a beard and a kippah at home. He was a very handsome and tall man, and very intelligent.

During the Civil War 6, when pogroms began, a nice German family helped my grandfather's family to move to Nikolaev. Later, some Germans visited us in Nikolaev and then in Odessa. I don't know who arranged the pogroms, but my parents said that they took away everything they could lay their hands on. White Guards 7 came and there was a pogrom and when the power switched to red troops [Reds] 8 there were also pogroms and it was difficult to make a difference between these gangs 9. In Nikolaev my grandfather's family rented an apartment and my grandfather worked as assistant in some shop. In 1932 he moved to Odessa and lived with my parents. My grandfather refused to evacuate during the Great Patriotic War and perished in 1941. He didn't believe that Germans would do any harm to Jews. He was shot in the village of Dalnik 10 at the age of 77.

My grandmother on my mother's side, Ella Chernenko, was born in Zultz in 1865. I don't know her maiden name. She was educated at home; her father taught her to read and write in Yiddish and to pray in Hebrew. She was a housewife. My grandparents got married in 1883. My grandmother died of a stroke in Nikolaev in 1927 or 1928, at the age of about 62. I was very young back then and don't remember her at all. My parents told me that she was buried in accordance with Jewish traditions. Kaddish was recited at the funeral and my grandfather kept sitting on the floor for seven days after her funeral. My maternal grandparents had four children: Isaac, Israel, Clara and my mother Sarah.

My mother's older brother Isaac was born in 1884. He studied at cheder in Zultz and finished the commercial school in Nikolaev. I don't know what he did for a living in Nikolaev after he finished school. In the 1930s he moved to Odessa where he worked as a shop assistant in a haberdashery store. He got married to a woman called Bella and they had a son called Leonid. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War Isaac said, 'You may leave if you feel like it, but we shall stay here. I don't believe that Germans will do us any harm. It must be propaganda'. Isaac and his son Leonid were shot in Dalnik, like my grandfather, in 1941. Isaac's son Leonid was only 11 years old.

My mother's brother Israel was born in 1888. Like his older brother he finished the commercial college in Nikolaev. Israel was married; his wife's name was Rachel. They didn't have any children. In 1932 he moved to Odessa where he worked in the same store as his brother Isaac. He was a shop assistant. During the Great Patriotic War Israel and his wife stayed in Odessa. When Germans occupied Odessa they arrested him immediately. I don't know how he perished. His wife was hiding in a Russian family. I don't know whether they were their friends or neighbors. In 1943 somebody reported on her and she perished, too.

My mother's older sister Clara was born in Zultz in 1890. In the 1930s she moved to Odessa with her family. Clara was a housewife. She was married and had a daughter named Katherine. Katherine was finishing her 1st year of studies at the Chemical Faculty of Odessa University when the Great Patriotic War began. Clara and her daughter evacuated to Aktyubinsk [Kazakhstan]. Katherine went to study at Moscow Medical Institute which had evacuated to Tashkent. Upon graduation she moved to Leningrad. She got married there in 1946. Her husband was Russian. He was sentenced to imprisonment in 1949 and was at the wood-logging site in Omskaya region, Siberia. Katherine followed her husband with her baby. They returned to Leningrad after four years. Katherine died in Leningrad in the 1960s. Clara had returned to Odessa where she died in 1947. I don't know what happened to her husband.

My mother was the youngest in the family. She was born in Zultz in 1902. I don't know where she studied. My grandfather taught her Jewish traditions and prayers. Grandmother Ella taught her housekeeping and cooking. She made traditional Jewish food: gefilte fish, chicken and strudels. My mother lived with her parents in Nikolaev before she got married. She helped her mother about the house.

My parents never told me how they met. I guess they met when my mother's family moved to Nikolaev. They got married in 1924 and only had a civil ceremony. They lived in my grandmother's house, which had a number of rooms. They also had housemaids. I don't know what my father did for a living. He might have been a businessman. My grandmother had a room of her own, and my parents had a few rooms for themselves. I had my own children's room. We had meals in the big dining room. The house was nicely furnished. My grandmother had a woman who took care of her. There was also a housemaid.

Growing up

I was born on 13th September 1925. My brother Leonid was born in Nikolaev on 1st September 1932.

My mother was a housewife. My father and mother came from religious families. They went to the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and fasted on Yom Kippur. I remember a general clean-up of the house before Pesach and the removal of chametz from the house. Fancy dishes were put on the table. There was matzah and other traditional food: gefilte fish, chicken broth, maror (horseradish), charoset and kosher wine. Grandfather Avrum visited us on Pesach. He conducted the seder. I, and, later my brother Leonid, asked our father the traditional four questions [the mah nishtanah]. Our grandfather hid afikoman in the room and we had to find it.

I can't remember any anti-Semitism in Nikolaev. I remember our Russian neighbors, who were as wealthy as Grandfather Solomon. They treated us very well.

In November 1932 our house and belongings were confiscated. It was the end of the NEP 11. My parents, Grandfather Avrum, my little brother and I moved to Odessa to escape the persecutions of the authorities. We lived in a communal apartment 12 in Paster Street in the central, rich neighborhood of Odessa. We occupied two rooms: 23 and 16 square meters. There was another room with other tenants. We had a common kitchen, running water and a toilet in the apartment. There was a stove to heat the apartment with either wood or coal.

My father was a superintendent at a haberdashery shop. My mother was a housewife. My father spoke Russian and sometimes Yiddish to my mother. He also had a good knowledge of German since he had studied in Vienna. My mother spoke Russian, German and Yiddish. I understand Yiddish because I heard my mother and father speak it.

There was a Jewish theater in Odessa before the war. My mother and I often went to watch performances there. As far as I remember, there were plays by Sholem Aleichem 13 on the schedule. My mother and I really liked the performances of the Jewish actress Lia Bugova. [Famous Jewish actress in Odessa, after World War II she performed at the Russian theater in Odessa.] My father never went to the theater.

In Odessa we continued to celebrate Sabbath, Pesach and other Jewish holidays. My grandfather Avrum said a prayer on the Eve of Sabbath. My mother lit the candles. Grandfather Avrum blessed the children. He and my mother tried to observe Sabbath, but my father couldn't have a rest on Saturday because he had to work. My grandfather also conducted the seder on Pesach. Our relatives and friends visited us - there were usually about 20 guests. Our gatherings were very ceremonious. We usually bought matzah at the synagogue or at Jewish bakeries. We had traditional Jewish food on Pesach: fish, matzah and other delicacies. My grandfather and my parents went to the synagogue in Peresyp 14 near our house on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. When my grandfather was still alive our family fasted on Yom Kippur. After he died only my mother observed the fasting. She always took chickens to the shochet to have them slaughtered there.

In 1933 I went to a Russian school. We studied chemistry, physics, mathematics, Russian and Ukrainian. I know German, Russian and Ukrainian. The majority of our teachers were Jews. I was fond of mathematics. I had Russian and Jewish friends at school. I became a Komsomol 15 member at school. I also attended dancing classes and had piano lessons at a music school. My brother Leonid went to the same school.

1933 was the period of a terrible famine in Ukraine 16. My family didn't starve. The husband of my father's sister Manya worked at the windmill in Peresyp. He received flour for his work and shared it with us. We baked bread and ate it.

1937 was the year when arrests began in Odessa and all over the country [during the so-called Great Terror] 17. People were arrested at night. There was a hospital and a medical institute across the street from our house, and many doctors and professors lived in our house. Many of our neighbors were arrested at night and their families had to move into the basement of the house. Our family didn't suffer from arrests.

My younger sister Lubov was born on 3rd April 1939. In the same year World War II began. We had discussions on this subject in our family and were very concerned about the situation. [Editor's note: All the information Bella's family had was from Soviet papers.] My father's sister Elizabeth lived in Poland and we didn't hear from her.

During the war

On 22nd June 1941 the Great Patriotic War began. It came as a surprise to us. We were afraid, of course. When the war began my father was 57. Regardless of his age he volunteered to the army and went as far as Berlin. My father was a very patient and reserved man. He never complained about the hardships of the war. When asked about that time he usually answered, 'It was a hard time for all of us, so, what can I say - thank God it's all over'.

Odessa had been bombed since July 1941, but the stores and the market were open. Many of our relatives didn't plan to evacuate from Odessa. My mother

hesitated for a long time and only decided to go when our neighbors brought her all the necessary evacuation permits and insisted that she took us, children, out of the house. These neighbors may have known how Germans treated Jews.

We left Odessa at the end of August or beginning of September 1941 I can't remember the exact date. We went by train and our trip was hard and long. My sister Lubov was two and my brother Leonid was nine years old. We had a small package of food and when we ran out of it my mother bought some or got some in exchange for clothes. It took us two weeks to get to the town of Mineralnyye Vody, Stavropol region, [1,100 km from Odessa]. From there we got to Georgievskaya station, near Mineralnyye Vody. After three months, when the frontline moved closer to the collective farm 18 where we worked, they evacuated us by tractors with trailers to the Caspian Sea. There we boarded a boat in November 1941. We crossed the Caspian Sea and got to Aktyubinsk, Kazakhstan, [2,000 km from Odessa]. We changed trains to get to Aktyubinsk and the trip took us about two and a half months. Whenever the train stopped at a station my mother asked our fellow travelers to get us some food or water since she didn't want to leave us alone. People were helping us. In Aktyubinsk we went to my mother's sister Clara, who had evacuated three months before. We stayed with her for some time until we rented a room from a Kazakh woman in the same house, where my mother's sister lived. There were two rooms and a kitchen in that apartment.

I worked during the day and went to a secondary school in the evenings. Many of our teachers were Jews. I finished school with a gold medal in 1943. I went to work at a military plant, in evacuation from Moscow that manufactured bombs. I had friends at this plant. One of my friends was a local girl called Aisha. We went for walks and to the local club for dance parties. I still correspond with her.

My mother stayed at home to take care of my sister and my brother Leonid, who was in the 3rd grade back then. We were in evacuation for almost three and a half years. We weren't used to the severe climate in Kazakhstan: minus 40 degrees in winter, and extremely hot in summer. Local people helped people who were in evacuation and supported them as much as they could. We never faced any anti-Semitism. We didn't observe any Jewish traditions though. We corresponded with my father all the time.

We returned to Odessa in April 1945, two weeks before the war was over. On 9th May [Victory Day] 19 we heard about the victory on the radio. Everybody was overwhelmed with joy. My father returned home - he was an old man and subject to immediate demobilization. We couldn't move into our apartment. The house had partly been ruined during the war and some family had repaired it and moved in. There was no way to get it back. Later we received a two-bedroom apartment with a kitchen in the same house where we had lived before the war.

My father was superintendent in the shop of a haberdashery factory. My mother was a housewife. My brother Leonid studied in the 7th grade. My sister Lubov was the youngest in our family and everyone's darling. In 1946 she also started school and my brother and I took turns to take her to school in order to help my mother.

A coupon system was introduced after the war. There were things to buy at the black market after the war, but the prices were too high - 200 rubles per loaf of bread while the average salary was 400 rubles. Nobody could afford to buy things there. The standard rate of bread per coupons was 400 grams for a child and 800 grams for an adult.

After the war

After the Great Patriotic War the synagogue in Peresyp opened. On Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah my mother and father went to the synagogue. It was possible to hear Yiddish in Odessa in those days. Jews were gradually returning from evacuation. In my opinion Jews weren't treated very well in Odessa after the war. Maybe the reason was that when Jews wanted to move into their old apartments, Russian families that occupied them were ordered to move out.

I got a job as an assistant accountant at the Financial College. In the evening I attended classes at the evening department of the Credit and Economy Faculty of Lomonosov Institute. Since I had finished school with a gold medal in Aktyubinsk I was admitted without exams. There were no restrictions for Jews to enter higher educational institutions. There were many Jewish students and Jewish lecturers at the institute - I don't remember the exact number. We didn't pay any attention to issues of nationality at that time. I had Russian and Jewish friends and didn't face any anti-Semitism.

Upon graduation in 1949 I got a job assignment 20 in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. I worked as a credit inspector in the main bank of Armenia for three years. It was a good job and a good location. There were only Jews that had been in evacuation in Armenia and there were no synagogues. I didn't observe any traditions while I lived in Armenia - it was a very difficult post-war time. I was glad to have survived the war. I had gotten the job assignment in Armenia along with a friend of mine and we rented a room in a communal apartment together. There were no comforts in the apartment. It was heated with wood or coal. In 1949 the campaign against cosmopolitans 21 began. The Jewish and Armenian population was worried and concerned about the situation. After I completed the term of my job assignment I returned to Odessa.

In 1948 Israel was established. I was very enthusiastic about it, just like all other Jews. After such a horrific war, in which so many Jews had been exterminated, our people were happy to have a home country. However, the situation in Israel is rather severe and still our people are being killed. I've never thought of moving to Israel since the issue of moving to another country never interested me.

During the postwar period there were no restrictions for Jews to enter higher educational institutions as long as they were clever enough to pass their entrance exams. Those that finished school with a gold medal were admitted without entrance exams. My brother Leonid entered Odessa Polytechnic Institute and my sister Lubov entered Odessa Pedagogical Institute. All my cousins have a higher education, too. Difficulties for Jews that wanted to enter higher educational institutions began in the 1960s. [Editor's note: Iin reality, beginning from the early 1950s, admission of Jews was significantly restricted from the early 1950s and this limitation was authorized by the highest authorities as an expression of state anti-Semitism.] It was also difficult for Jews to get a job - Russians or Ukrainians were given priority. I believe it was a state policy; people of other nationalities had nothing to do with this segregation.

My brother Leonid finished school in 1948 and entered the Mechanical Faculty at Odessa Polytechnic Institute. He graduated in 1953 and worked as a mechanical engineer. In 1955 Leonid married Svetlana, a Jewish woman. They have a daughter called Marina. My brother has always had more Jewish friends. After he got married my brother and his family lived in a three- bedroom apartment. Leonid left for America three years ago. He lives in New York. He doesn't work any more - he's already 70 years old. His wife Svetlana looks after elderly people. His daughter Marina works as an economist in Odessa. She goes to the synagogue on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah.

My sister Lubov finished school in 1955 and graduated from the Physics/Mathematic Faculty of Odessa Pedagogical Institute in 1960. She worked as a teacher at a secondary school. She got married in 1964. Her husband's name was Efim Yarmunik. He was a Jew. He was production manager at the Centrolit Factory. She has two sons; Igor and Sasha [Alexandr]. Igor graduated from the Agricultural Institute and got married. His wife's family moved to America, and Igor and his wife also decided to move there. My sister followed her older son. She left for America in 1990. Her husband died on his way to buy plane tickets, three months before their departure. He died at the age of 53. Lubov lives in New York now. She looks after elderly people. Igor and Sasha work as programmers.

I got married in 1951. My husband, Esay Germer, is Jewish. He was my schoolmate and we were neighbors. He was born in 1923. Esay was an only child. His father, Abram Germer, was arrested in 1937. He was sentenced to a term in the camps in Arkhangelsk. After Abram returned from exile he was murdered at the entrance to his house. We never found out who did it. Esay's mother was a housewife. She perished in the ghetto in Odessa during the Great Patriotic War.

In 1940 Esay entered a military school and in 1941 he went to the front. He finished the war in Berlin. After the war Esay served in Germany and we corresponded. In 1951 he came on leave to Odessa and we got married. We registered our marriage at a civil registration office.

After we got married Esay got an officer assignment to serve in Saratov where we lived for three years. I was an economist at the radio plant. We rented a room on the 3rd floor of a communal apartment. Our co-tenants were the family of my husband's colleague. We had central heating, water and a toilet in this apartment. We also had a common kitchen. There weren't many Jews in Saratov at that time. We mostly socialized with my husband's colleagues. They were military and there were hardly any Jews among them. There was a beautiful synagogue in Saratov, but I only went to look at it.

The Doctors' Plot 22 began in 1952. My daughter Katia was born on 26th January 1953. My doctor was a Jewish woman. She was very worried about the situation. There were rumors that Stalin wanted to deport Jews to the North and the Far East [Birobidzhan] 23. Thank God Stalin died and this didn't happen. When Stalin died in 1953 I and my family, along with many other people, were in grief and thought that there could be no life or justice without Stalin.

In 1953 my husband demobilized from the Soviet army with the rank of major. We didn't have any relatives or close friends in Saratov. Our family was in Odessa. Since our daughter Katia was only four months old I couldn't go to work. So we moved to Odessa. We lived with my parents, brother and sister. My sister Lubov was in the 8th grade and my brother Leonid was a student at an institute. We didn't have enough space in our two-bedroom apartment, but we got along well. My mother helped me with the baby and Lubov also enjoyed spending time with Katia.

My husband went to work as a polisher at the Poligraphmash Plant and went to study at the Evening Department of Odessa Polytechnic Institute. Upon graduation he worked at the Special Design Bureau of the plant. He was a mechanic engineer. He worked at the plant for many years. Esay was very valued at the plant. There were representatives of many nationalities at the plant but he never faced any anti-Semitism there. My husband wasn't a party member. He went to the synagogue on Yom Kippur. His relatives perished in Odessa during the war and he left a note with their names at the synagogue so that prayers would be said for them. We didn't observe other traditions.

In 1954 I went to work at the Mechanic Plant in Kvorostina Street. I worked as an economist at this plant until 1996. I worked in the area of Moldavanka [poor Jewish neighborhood on the outskirts of Odessa]. There were Russian families there, too, and they understood and spoke Yiddish. Ever so often, when two people talked in Yiddish, it was difficult to say who was Russian and who was Jewish. Once I asked my colleagues at the plant, 'Why do you all call this guy Mosha when he doesn't even look the least bit like a Jew?' They replied, 'He lives in Moldavanka. His neighbors are Jews and they call everybody in a Jewish manner'.

I worked 42 years at this plant. I had many friends there and still keep in touch with them. I was supposed to retire in 1980, but the management of the plant offered me to stay at work a little longer. I worked there for another 16 years. We were not poor; but we had neither dacha, nor car. However, my husband and I traveled a lot all over the USSR, visited the Caucasus, Latvia, Estonia and Uzbekistan.

Katia began school in 1960. She was successful with her studies. She was fond of mathematics and English. I associate the 1960s with my daughter's childhood and her teens. Katia had quite a few Jewish and Russian friends. They often came to visit her at home. Every year we arranged birthday parties for her at home. I liked watching her and her friends grow up and fall in love for the first time. Katia spent her vacations at a pioneer camp at the seashore. We traveled to the Crimea with the whole family several times. Katia finished school with a silver medal and entered the Faculty of Economics of Lomonosov Technological Institute. She had problems being admitted to the institute, which, I believe, was due to her nationality. She had to take entrance exams, although she had a silver medal. But she passed them and entered the institute. Upon graduation Katia worked as an economist at a design institute.

She got married in 1977. Her husband, Dmitriy Gershengorn, is a Jew. He graduated from the Mechanical Faculty of Lomonosov Technological Institute. He worked as a designer at a design institute. In the 1980s, during perestroika, this institute was closed and Dmitriy went to work as a foreman at a heating agency. My daughter works as an economist/accountant with a private company. My daughter's son Sergey was born in 1978. My husband and I became grandparents. I spent all my time with our little grandson. He was a great joy for me. I didn't quite notice how Sergey grew up and finished school. He is 24 now. Sergey graduated from the Mechanical Faculty of Odessa University. He works as a programmer at a bank. He doesn't go to the synagogue.

In 1975 my father died of a heart attack. My mother died in 1988. She had a brain tumor. They were both buried according to the Jewish tradition near the entrance to the Jewish cemetery. My husband died of rectum cancer in 1987. He was also buried in the Jewish cemetery.

Many of my acquaintances and relatives have recently left Odessa. The people that were leaving were treated with sympathy by others. Everybody understood that people had a right to live where they preferred to live. Only my niece remained in Odessa. I think it's a very brave decision of people to move to another country. I remember I couldn't wait to come back to Odessa when I had to stay a few years in Yerevan. Odessa is like a Promised Land to me.

At the end of the 1980s Jewish life revived in Odessa. The synagogue in Osipov Street was opened and the building of the main synagogue in Yevreyskaya Street was returned to the Jewish community . There are two Jewish schools, kindergartens, the charity center Gemilut Hesed and an Israeli cultural center in town. We receive Jewish newspapers and watch Jewish programs on television - all in Russian. There is a kosher store in the yard of the synagogue in Richelievskaya Street, and a slaughterhouse in Stolbovaya Street that supplies kosher meat to Jewish organizations and kosher stores.

I've lived with my daughter's family since my husband's death. I have many friends of different nationalities. I've been friends with some of them for 52 years already. My daughter and her husband go to the synagogue very seldom, but we have matzah on holidays and my daughter and I cook traditional Jewish food that our grandmothers used to make: gefilte fish, chicken and other delicious things. I buy matzah at the synagogue in Osipov Street. I hope that my grandson will go to the synagogue on holidays and remember us.

Glossary

Sima Shvarts
Kiev
Ukraine
Date of interview: January 2002 Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya

My name is Sima Markovna Shvarts. I also have a Jewish patronymic - Yankel- Mordkovna Shvarts. I was born in the town of Rzhischev, Kiev region, on 19th January 1914.

My mother's parents, my maternal grandparents, were Ilya and Chaya Vainstein. Grandfather Ilya was a teacher. He died before my birth, but my mother told me a lot about him. He was a highly educated man, but I don't know what institution he finished. I know that he taught grammar and arithmetic. My mother said that my grandfather also knew French. At their house he had a special big room equipped for teaching children. There was a big wooden table. Children would come, sit around that table, and grandfather would sit at the head of the table. This is how he taught. During the break, grandmother would give them something to eat, then they rested, and then grandfather would continue teaching. He taught in Yiddish. Grandfather was totally involved in his teaching work. He gathered poor Jewish children from his town; he found around 30 of them. He taught them free of charge. I can't even tell you exactly where the family got money from - my mother never discussed this question with me.

My grandfather died unexpectedly in 1912. At that time his children already lived in different cities: in, Dnepropetrovsk, Kiev, and Zhitomir. On Passover grandfather always invited all of his children to his house, both married and single ones. On the day he died they also came to his house, and the house was richly decorated by my grandmother. The whole town went to see how Ilya's children came to visit him. So, everything went wonderfully during the day. That night they all went to bed, and grandfather had a stroke and died. Grandmother Chaya was a housewife: she cooked, cleaned the house, took care of the children and kept order.

They had seven children: one son and six daughters. I don't remember when they were born, but I can name them all. The eldest daughter was Etya, then came their son Naum, then Dvoira, then my mother, Risl, then Chaika, Rakhil, and Fruma.

At that time, even though our family was not rich, none of the women worked outside the house. When they got married, their husbands provided for them. The year before my birth, only two elder sisters and the brother was married. Those who were younger than my mother were still single. They were seamstresses. Two of them lived in Dnepropetrovsk and one in Kiev.

My mother Risya Shvarts was born in Rzhischev in 1885. She only completed a Jewish junior school. Her family was very poor and didn't have the money to pay for the education of their children. Besides, my mother had to help grandmother with the housework and take care of her younger sisters. Later, when she got married, she couldn't study because she was busy. I was born in 1914 and my father was called up to the army at the beginning of World War I.

My father, Yankel-Mordko Shvarts, was born in Rzhischev in 1883. I never knew my father because he was killed in the war. I know that he worked as a roofer. I still have a silver spoon that he once brought for me. Once when he was working on the roof of a house, he found this spoon in the attic. He brought it home and said: 'Our little daughter should eat only from this spoon until she grows up'. So, I still have this spoon.

My parents got married in 1913. They lived together for only one year. When the war broke out, my father was called up to the army and stayed in Rzhischev for some time. He was wearing the army uniform, but had a chance to see his friends and wife. I have some pictures of him from that period. Later, when he was sent to the front, he wrote to my mother, but then his letters stopped coming and he didn't return from the war.

In Rzhischev we lived in my mother's parents' house. I can vaguely remember that house because I was only four years old in 1918, when we moved to Kiev. I remember that there was one big room and two bedrooms. As I mentioned before, grandfather used the big room to teach children. There was also an attic where they kept winter clothes and shoes, as well as the kosher kitchen utensils [for Passover].

According to my mother's stories, my grandparents were very religious and strictly observed the kashrut, Jewish traditions and holidays. But I don't remember any of these things. I know only that on holidays, especially on Passover, grandfather tried to get all his family together under the roof of his own house.

My father's parents had a better life financially than my mother's parents. My father's father owned a business that dealt with the loading and unloading of goods to and from ships that docked in Rzhischev. Grandfather's name was Mordko Shvarts, and grandmother's name was Rakhil Shvarts.

My father was the eldest child in the family. He had brothers, Ruvim and Naum, then a sister Manya, then brothers Shmilek and Menachem, and then sisters Etya and Liza. I am not sure if they were born exactly in this order, but I think so. The brothers helped their father in his business. They also had a store and sold things there. Women certainly didn't work outside the house. Before getting married they helped their mother, and after getting married their husbands provided for them - this was a tradition in all Jewish families.

I remember the house of my father's parents because mother took me there for the summer holidays when we were already living in Kiev. There was a large thoroughfare in Rzhischev that led to the market, and the main square in the town was a market, where all people came together. Grandfather's house stood in a small street right next to that thoroughfare.

I have a photo where all grandfather's grandchildren are together. He gathered all of them for summer holidays. They had a big house with an orchard, and children were delighted to spend their summer holidays there. Of all the children I was the only girl who went to school. The rest were too young, as far as I remember. Grandfather gathered not only his grandchildren, but also his daughters and daughters-in-law, who brought their children to him. There was enough room for everyone.

He had a very good orchard. Grandfather loved us very much, so he allowed us to pick the flowers and eat all the fruit. I remember that we felt wonderful at his house because both grandfather and grandmother were very kind people.

My father's parents were also religious. They kept the laws of kashrut and always celebrated Sabbath. I remember how grandmother lit candles [on Friday night] and grandfather prayed. When they had to go to the table, he also went to the dining room and prayed there. Even though he taught us to believe in God, we often mocked him and laughed, unfortunately. That is why he would turn his back on us, pray looking in the other direction, then sit at the head of the table with all of us around the table, and grandmother would bring food.

My grandparents always went to the synagogue - it was like a law for them. I know that grandmother said she had to go up to the second floor where all the women prayed, while grandfather stayed on the first floor. I also remember that I told her that it was unfair, that grandmother should stay on the first floor because it was easier for her. And they laughed at me. The synagogue was a sacred place because mostly Jews lived in that town.

Grandfather always wore a yarmulka. He also had a tallit that he put on during the prayer and tefillin that he put on his right hand and head according to the Jewish tradition. My grandmother was rather fat, but very active. She had time to do everything around the house. She wore a wig and sometimes a kerchief because, according to the Jewish tradition, all married women are always supposed to cover their heads.

When I came to visit them in the 1920s, my grandparents no longer worked. Some Ukrainian girls came to help them take care of the garden, the fruit trees and flowers; my grandparents always told them that their grandchildren would come in summer and they would want to 'eat something tasty'.

At that time relations between Ukrainians, Russians and Jews were wonderful. I know it because later in Kiev my mother told me that every time she heard somebody saying the word 'zhyd' [kike], she always said, 'How can they! For so many years we lived with wonderful people, Ukrainians, in Rzhischev. They even said our names in Yiddish.' For, in those times if someone was called Chaim, it was pronounced as Chaim [the Jewish way of saying it], and not as Efim or something else. So, my mother was outraged by the fact that people could change so quickly: you have wonderful relations with someone and suddenly these relations are broken.

The Ukrainians who lived in Rzhischev highly respected the Shvarts family because they were very kind people. Their house was always open to whoever wished to come in. Sometimes old, poor people would come in, and grandmother would never throw them out, no matter what their origin was (Jewish or Gentile). First of all she would feed them at the table. That is why our families were so highly respected in the community.

I remember almost nothing of our life in Rzhischev before we moved to Kiev, but I can vividly remember the Jewish pogrom. Maybe I remember it so well because I was in stress because of the fear. One night, when the light was put out (there was no electricity then) and we went to bed, suddenly we heard whistles, noise, and clatter. Bandits came to the town on horses. I don't know if they went to every house, but they knocked at our door. When nobody answered, they broke the window, opened the door, entered and asked, 'Who lives here?' When nobody answered them again, they set fire to somebody's blanket on the bed and it began to burn. I remember my mother was terribly scared. She asked them, 'What do you think you're doing? Can't you see that a child is sleeping here?' I don't remember what happened next because I was very scared. Mother took me to another room. I think the adults gave the bandits some money, and they left and went to another house.

This was one story. Another one of this sort took place during the day. I mean, nobody gets really scared during the day. People go outside if they need to. And the streets were very narrow then, so that people could come to one another's house easily. So, one Jew was walking down this street. A bandit caught up with him from behind on a horse, took out his sable and hit the Jew on the head with his sable. The man's head flew away, while his body made two more steps forward and only then fell down. It was a terrible picture that is still before my eyes. I was 3 or 4 years old, but I can still remember it vividly. Fortunately, none of our family suffered during the pogroms or the Civil War 1.

In 1918, when mother realized that my father had died and she was left alone, we went to live in Kiev. Mother had to earn her living, and it was impossible to find a job in Rzhischev. When we first moved we didn't take my grandmother. She joined us later because she couldn't stay alone. In the beginning she managed to live alone because her children, mother's sisters, came to visit her all the time. We thought they would take her to live with them. But they didn't do that, so my mother said, 'Please, she will live with us here.' On the one hand, it was very good that grandmother lived with us because I loved her very much, but on the other hand, our life was hard because only my mother was working in our family.

My mother's good friends had children living in Kiev. They lived in Rzhischev, and when their children grew up, they moved to Kiev. We took a ship to Kiev along the Dnepr River. These friends met us and took us to their house. They had a little house with three rooms. They gave us one room, where my mother and I, and later grandmother Chaya, lived. These people helped my mother find a job. At that time underwear was not sewn at factories, but at home. My mother was very good at this, even though she never studied how to sew. But she could sew a good shirt or a bed-sheet. So, these people found her clients, my mother would go to their homes and get orders. There she was fed, received money and food for her work. This is how we could make ends meet.

We paid nothing for our flat. My mother simply helped the landlords around the house, washed for them, cleaned the house, but they didn't want us to pay. I don't know where they worked, but I'm sure they worked somewhere. Their house was small with no electricity. The toilet and water was outside. There was another flat in the house where a Ukrainian family lived. I don't remember them well, but I remember that we had friendly relations with them.

I was often ill, maybe due to lack of food. I had huge furuncles all over my body. That is why I went to school only in 1921, a year later than I should have. It was a Russian school. I don't know whether there were any Jewish schools around. At home, mother and grandmother spoke Yiddish. (Back then I understood everything they said, but didn't speak much Yiddish. Now, regrettably, I've forgotten everything.) But then my mother said that I should study only in a Russian school, so that I would later be able to study at a university and find a job.

The school I went to was a mixed school, both boys and girls studied there. There were Ukrainian, Russian and Jewish children there. But I don't remember that anyone would offend anybody else for national reasons. Most of our teachers were Russian or Ukrainian, but they treated Jewish children very well; they treated me even in a special, warm way because I was fatherless.

My favorite school subject was mathematics. I also liked physics and literature. I liked to read a lot, even though we didn't have many books at home, but my friends brought me books; we also went to the children's library. I was a Young Octobrist 2. Then I was a pioneer. I remember one interesting situation. Back in Rzhischev, mother pierced my ears and bought me small golden earrings. I wore these earrings all the time. But when I joined the pioneers, we would go to the Pioneer House and children would tease me, saying that a young pioneer should not wear golden earrings. I came home in tears and told my mother that I shouldn't wear the earrings. Mother told me, 'If you began to wear them, you should continue'. But I lost one earring soon after that. I didn't want to lie to my mother, but I was afraid to go home. Finally, I came home and said, 'Mom, I lost one earring'. She said, 'You didn't lose it, you did it on purpose!' No tears, no arguments of mine, could persuade her that I really lost it accidentally. I took off the other earring and the children stopped teasing me. Later, when a special system for changing gold for clothes and food was set up in the USSR, my mother sold my earring and bought me a sweater. [the interviewee is referring to the Torgsin stores.] 3

Grandmother came to Kiev when I was in the 3rd grade, that is, in 1923. Grandmother was religious, so after her arrival we began to celebrate all the Jewish holidays at home. We had no kosher kitchen utensils [for Passover] and were not able to boil it long enough to make them kosher. But my mother would wash them carefully, then hide them and take them out right before the holiday. On Passover we always bought matzah. There was a small basement not far from us; it was very deep, so its windows were below street level. Matzah was secretly baked in that basement and sold through one of the windows. My mother and I would go to buy matzah there. During the 8 days of Passover mother would not allow me to eat regular bread at home. She would say, 'If you really want to eat bread, go to your friends' house, but you can't eat bread at home'.

I remember once the day before the fast on Yom Kippur, when our family was going to have a good dinner in order to fast the next day, I went for a walk with some girls. Mother told me, 'Don't forget, you need to be home for dinner in time'. Well, I was late, and neither my mother nor my grandmother had a chance to eat dinner. They were both nervous, and I was punished. I remember it for my whole life. I also remember that mother and grandmother celebrated other Jewish holidays as well. But they didn't light candles because we had no money to buy them and no place to put lit candles. We lived very poorly.

On Saturday mother never went to work. She didn't go to her Jewish or even Russian clients, but she always warned them, 'I'm not coming tomorrow - it will be Saturday'. At home she also tried to do nothing on that day, only what was necessary, but on Saturdays we always had good lunches. Even though our life was poor, mother always tried to save some food for a good Saturday lunch.

When I was older, my school friends would often visit me, and mother's sister, Basya, who lived in Kiev then, took grandmother Chaya to live with her, because our flat was too crowded. But grandmother didn't live long after that. She died soon after, around 1928.

We had a good company at school. We all liked going to theaters and museums. We went to the Russian and Ukrainian drama theaters. We also celebrated every Soviet holiday: 1st of May, October Revolution Day 4, etc. On those days we had no classes at school, so we would go for a walk. Every family tried to fix a good lunch and invite guests. We also liked going to demonstrations on these holidays.

Among my mother's siblings Rakhil, Basya, Chaika and Fruma were also in Kiev. Fruma was still single. She got married a few years later and her husband took her to Moscow.

After finishing the 7-year school I entered the cooperative technical college. I studied at the department for library studies for three years. At that time we never thought of people's nationalities. At our technical college there were Jewish students and students of other nationalities. But this question never worried us. I only remember we had a Ukrainian student who always spoke Ukrainian, so all the teachers always told him to speak Russian. All teaching in our college was done in Russian.

At that time we lived in another place. The husband of my mother's sister Rakhil was a high-ranking party worker. At that time there were many private houses. So, this man told us that there were several flats owned by somebody called Parkhomovsky in Zhilyanskaya Street. And Rakhil and her husband had no flat in Kiev. So, he went to Parkhomovsky, intimidated him with something and said that if he didn't give him the flats, they would be confiscated from him. So, Parkhomovsky gave him two flats - their family stayed in one, and my mother and I, in the other one. They had two sons, Boris and Mark Kamenkovich. They were younger than I but we were good friends. We remained friends for life.

When I went to college, there was a military unit right across the street from our college. We went to dance at each other's clubs: we girls went to dance at theirs, and they came to dance at ours. This is how I met my future husband. I was 19 years old then, and he was 26. He was from a Jewish family. My husband's family comes from Gomel in Belarus. At that time they were living in Kiev, and my husband served in the army. His name was Litman Veksler. His father worked at the construction site of the Kiev central train station. My husband's parents were very good, wonderful people. They received me very nicely and made friends with my mother.

They had five children. They were born into a very poor Jewish family, in a some small shtetl called Gomel in Belarus. My husband's parents were religious, kept all traditions, and went to the synagogue. My husband was the eldest son; he had a sister Roza, brother Grisha, a sister Sonya and brother Izya. Only Izya is still alive today. He lives in Kiev. He celebrated his golden wedding, the 50th anniversary, last year.

When I finished college he went to my mother to ask for permission to marry me. It was very solemn. He brought flowers - he knew that both my mother and I loved flowers very much. To have at least two small flowers in a vase was like a law for us. Even though we were poor, having flowers at home was our hobby. So, after that we got married. It was in 1933. There was no wedding ceremony or anything like that. He came from work, told me to wait for him. Then we went to the registration office, from there we went to his parents, who cooked a regular lunch. We had no wedding rings, no special dresses. Everything was very simple. I think we did it in such a way because we were very poor.

My husband was still serving, but very soon, in the autumn, he was demobilized. He was given a room in a communal apartment 5. We had a big room in a communal flat. We had three neighbors, a common kitchen and a toilet, but we got used to living with neighbors. My husband only had secondary education, but he was a highly educated man. He worked at a woodwork factory as the chief of the shift. Then he was transferred to work for the city executive committee as chief of some department. We continued to live in our room, even though my husband would have been able to get a flat adequate to his office. But he was very modest and considered it indecent for a party member to ask for the improvement of his living conditions. His mother told him, 'Litmanke (she called him Litmanke), why don't you take care of getting a new flat?' And he answered her, 'Mom, I shouldn't do that now. The time will come when I'll get one, but not now.' That's how it was.

My husband wasn't paid much. He received the 'party maximum' - the sum that was the maximum limit for him to earn as a party member. The sum was not very large, but we didn't demand much, so it was enough for us. He had been a member of the Communist Party since the 1920s, so he was a man who believed in communism. Throughout his whole life he believed in the ideals of communism. He didn't know, and didn't want to know, what really happened in our country, and thought that everything happened because it was meant to.

I entered the Kiev Construction Institute. When I finished the 1st year I gave birth to our daughter Mira, whom we called Lyalechka, in 1935. But I didn't quit my studies because my mother and mother-in-law helped me and this way I could continue my studies.

At this time political repression and arrests [the so-called Great Terror] 6 started. I knew all about it. There was one situation. My husband's friend, Iosif Kaplunov, a Jew, occupied a high military office. Then he was accused of doing something illegal. My husband's friends told my husband, 'Stop talking to Iosif because you will suffer too'. But we were friends with the Kaplunov family. So, my husband was warned that he shouldn't visit him any more. But he still continued to meet Iosif's wife in some deserted streets in order to learn something new about Iosif's fate after his arrest. Iosif was released soon; he didn't spend too much time in prison.

In general, we certainly knew that people around us were arrested, but my husband never discussed such questions with me. He said I was too young and I had other things to take care of. I think he simply wanted to spare me. I was a Komsomol 7 member and trusted everything I heard, absolutely everything.

We celebrated all Soviet holidays. Our favorite holidays were 1st of May and October Revolution Day. My husband's friends and colleagues would come with their spouses, and we would throw a party, sing songs, listen to the gramophone, and dance. We didn't keep any Jewish traditions, we didn't even think about it. My mother lived with us, and she continued to buy matzah every Passover, but I don't even know where she got it. We didn't have any kosher kitchen utensils [for Passover] at home and kept bread on Passover, but my mother always had matzah.

We knew that there was fascism in Germany and that the war broke out in Europe. But we believed that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 8 guaranteed that our country would never be engaged in a war, so we were not ready for the war. For us, just like for the millions of Soviet people, the beginning of the war was absolutely unexpected.

So, in June 1941 my husband rented a dacha for us outside Kiev, in the village of Ukrainka. It was not the first time we rested there. On Saturdays my husband came to visit us. He had a special car that served him from work, and he spent Sundays with us. But on Saturday, 21st June my husband didn't come to the dacha, and we were waiting for him all Sunday morning. We had no radio at the dacha; neither did we receive newspapers there. Later, dacha landowners came home very sad and somewhat lost. We were in a wonderful mood and I turned to them with a smile, asking what happened. They told us that war had broken out. I ran to the Dnepr shore to find a boat that would take us to Kiev. We immediately gathered our belongings and went to the boat, but the boats were already gone - instead there was a great crowd of people who wanted to leave.

My husband came then. He had already been mobilized and had a paper that said, 'called up on the first day of the war', but he didn't wear his military uniform, and came to take us. So, we went home, he put on his military uniform and went to the military enlistment office. However, he stayed in Kiev for a long time. He worked at the pontoon-bridge battalion. They defended approaches to Kiev from the Dnepr River. He called us every day. But a short time later, about a week-and-a-half, my husband came home and said we needed to evacuate.

By that time I had already graduated from university and was working (I found a job right before the war). I worked at the Kiev highway construction department. I evacuated with this organization. In July we left by regular train. I evacuated with my daughter and mother. We were taken to Dnepropetrovsk. My mother-in-law (my father-in-law was no longer alive) remained in Kiev and evacuated with the family of her other son. When we reached Dnepropetrovsk, we were told that we couldn't go any further because the railway had been heavily bombed.

My mother's elder sister, Etl, lived not far from the train station in Dnepropetrovsk. When we arrived there, one of my mother's sisters, Chaika, was already there with her daughter. Our mood was awful, we were crying. We spent only two or three days there, then bombing raids on Dnepropetrovsk began. Etl's husband put us on a ship and sent us further on. He remained in Dnepropetrovsk because he was deputy director of a major plant. We went eastward together with aunts Etl and Chaika. I can't remember all the details of our evacuation now, but I remember that it took us more than two weeks, first by ship, then by different trains with long stops. We were often bombed. It was horrible, but I was young and I felt responsible for my mother and my daughter. That's why I did my best to keep myself under control. Finally we arrived in the town of Kokand in Central Asia.

When we arrived in Kokand [Uzbekistan] we were received nicely. We were immediately settled in different flats. We didn't have any jobs yet, but our living conditions were quite satisfactory. Very soon I wrote to my husband to our home address. His unit was stationed in Kiev and he was able to visit our flat sometimes, hoping that I would write to him. He received my letter, wrote me back to Kokand and thus we established communication, which, unfortunately, was short because I stopped receiving letters from him in the winter of 1942.

When I learned that Kiev was occupied by the Germans, it caused me great sorrow. My husband was still alive, I was still receiving letters from him, but this news brought me a lot of sorrow. There was a loudspeaker at the central square of Kokand, which looked like a big black plate, and all the people ran there to listen to the latest news. I would often run there too. That's where I heard that Kiev was occupied. I didn't listen to it any more, but ran home crying, 'Mother, Lyalechka, Kiev has been surrendered, Lyonya is no longer alive', even though my husband was still alive. I think I had that terrible feeling that he would die soon. And my little daughter told me, 'Mom, don't worry. You will become my mother and father together'.

My husband was killed somewhere in Sumy, Ukraine. There were a lot of units of the Soviet army there, and they were all bombed, even without fighting. I received a paper that said that my husband 'is reported missing'. I realized that he was killed because otherwise he would have found us after the war.

We were in Kokand in evacuation during the whole war. The attitude of the locals towards us was very warm. I was working at the office of the canteen because they needed literate people. We ate at the same canteen. We didn't starve, but I had a feeling of insecurity, when there was no husband behind my back, when everything was bad. As soon as Kiev was liberated, we received an invitation for the three of us that we could go to Kiev. At that time it was impossible to go home from evacuation without a special invitation. We came to Kiev but had no place to live. The very next day after the Germans entered Kiev, bombs left by our soldiers began to explode all over the city. Kreschatik, the main street of Kiev, was blown up, and our house was blown up - one of the first because a German office was located next to it.

Boris Kamenkovich, the son of aunt Rakhil, with whose family we had lived, came to Kiev at that time. Before the war Boris (who danced very well) had been taken into a famous dancing band and spent the whole war in it. They went to every front and performed there. After the war the band stayed in Moscow. As soon as Kiev was liberated, all the Kiev residents in that band went to their native town for a few days. That's when we saw Boris. He came to our house, wearing his uniform and looking very important in it. Other people were living in the flat and all our furniture was missing. They got so scared when they saw him! Boris asked them, 'Tell me, who took our furniture. I need to get it back before my parents come back to Kiev'. And he was able to collect a wardrobe, a bed, chairs and a table - a lot of furniture. He took it back to his flat. We settled there and lived there until his parents came back.

Then the department that I was working in gave me a room. We settled there, but the very next day there was a knock on the door - its former residents came. I didn't let them in for several days; we didn't go out for several days so that they would not occupy it in our absence. Then we were given a room in Pechersk, but the same story was repeated there. Our department was given a plot of land in Gorky Street for construction, and I was given a room there. But until the construction of that building was finished, I lived with the secretary of our party organization, Viktor Korshenko. He was an extremely kind man, who had pity on my daughter and me.

In the autumn of 1947 we finally moved into our own flat. By that time, almost all of our relatives who had lived in Kiev before the war returned to Kiev: my mother-in-law, mother's sisters Rakhil and Chaika.

My husband's brother Izya fought in the war, then fought against Japan, and then he stayed in the Far East. Samuel also remained alive, but their third brother died defending Moscow.Practically all the members of our large family were evacuated and then returned to Kiev. Only the husband of Klara, Chaika's daughter, Leva, didn't want to evacuate. He said, 'I speak German well and I will make friends with them'. So, he stayed and was killed in Babi Yar 9. He alone from our large family was so self-confident that, as a result, he was shot in Babi Yar.

I continued to work in the highway construction department. It was then turned into a ministry. I worked there for the rest of my life till my retirement. In 1945, I joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It was entirely my wish: my husband was a real Bolshevik, I was a Komsomol member, and so it was my sincere desire.

The attitude towards the Jews changed everywhere - in Kiev and not only in Kiev. But I think I was lucky in this regard. A man called Mikhail Dovgan was my boss; he was a very good man and I experienced no anti-Semitism at work.

I remember Stalin's death very well. We lived in a communal apartment, and the two other rooms in that flat were occupied by the family of a general who returned from the front. When Stalin died, the general entered my room. He was a little drunk and very upset. He asked me, 'Sima Markovna, how are we going to live now without Stalin?' And even though I took Stalin's death calmly, I also sensed his anxiety.

So, we lived with my mother and my daughter. My daughter went to school. They had a class of mixed nationalities and they never had any problems; relations between children and teachers' attitude to Jewish children were wonderful. My daughter was very good friends with our neighbor's daughter, who was Ukrainian. It was a whole Ukrainian family, but our relations were good. These neighbors were the first in our house to buy a TV set, so everybody else would go to their flat to watch it. They would often come and invite my mother too.

Until her last days my mother kept Jewish traditions to the best of her abilities. She didn't go to the synagogue because it was too hard for her, but she had a prayer book at home and she tried to do nothing around the house on Saturday: she would prepare everything on Friday evening. On Saturdays we always had a special dinner. On Passover we always had matzah.

When my daughter finished school, she didn't really want to enter the Road- Transport Institute. But at that time it was hard for Jews to enter universities. So, the secretary of the party organization, Korshenko, at whose house we once lived, helped us - he went to the director of the Road- Transport Institute and asked him to accept my daughter. She passed her exams with not very good marks, but she was privileged because her father had been killed in the war, so she was admitted. Sometimes I think it would have been better for her not to have entered there.

My mother died in 1956 and my daughter in 1957. She was a very good student, she liked her studies; she finished the first year and then the second year. Everything went well and she was very happy. Then she went to the third year. After the third year she and other students went to practice. Their practice was near Odessa, where the Kiev-Odessa highway was built; it was closer to Odessa. At that time I was in a health resort outside Kiev - I just took advantage of the fact that my daughter was at the practice. A few days later, Korshenko came to pick me up by car. 'Sima Markovna, let's go to Kiev!' And he looked very energetic. I told him immediately, 'What happened to my daughter?' He said, 'Nothing serious!' I demanded, 'Tell me immediately!' I couldn't move. So, he put me in his car and took me to Kiev. On the way he told me that my daughter had been hit by a car and was now at the Institute of Neurosurgery. When I came to Odessa my daughter was no longer alive. In Odessa she was put into a coffin and the coffin was put on a truck. So, I took my only daughter, my only joy and meaning of my life, to Kiev. I buried her next to my mother, and I always think about how good it was that my mother had not lived to see the death of her granddaughter. I was left alone. I never married again. I devoted all my life to work and fellowship with a few friends.

I have already told you about my cousin, Boris Kamenkovich. He became a very famous man in Kiev's theaters - he was the chief ballet master of the Opera Theater and of the Ukrainian Drama Theater. He was married to a stage director, famous in her circles, Irina Molostova. Everybody treated him nicely in the theater. Last year, when he celebrated his 80th birthday, a special celebration was organized in the theater in his honor - many Ukrainian workers of culture were invited; his son came from Moscow (he works there in a theater, too). Unfortunately, Irina Molostova died several years ago. When my cousin Boris introduced me to his friends he always said, 'This is my cousin Sima - an iron lady'. Boris died very recently, and I was left absolutely alone. His brother Mark lives in Germany.

My parents' brothers and sisters died a long time ago. My cousin Bronya Shvartser lives in Israel; Hannah, in America. Some other relatives live around the world. Only my husband's brother Izya still lives in Kiev.

Many of my relatives and friends moved to other countries for good, but I had made up my mind on this question a long time ago - the remains of my dear daughter are buried here and I will always live here. 'My daughter, you are a part of me', says the inscription on her tombstone.

Recently, it became possible to communicate more with the Jews, to take part in Jewish life. While I was relatively healthy I often visited the Jewish charity center, the Hesed, attended Jewish concerts, read Jewish newspapers. Today I need more help, and Hesed helps me and takes care of me. In conclusion I would like to say that despite the fact that my life has been very hard, I am a person who has never looked at the material side of life, and I believe I was very lucky in this life to meet many good people, both among my friends and among my relatives. I've never felt really lonely.

Glossary

Marta Gyori
Kosice
Slovakia
Interviewer: Edward Serotta

Our religious life
During the Communist period
Growing up
Married life
Our community

Our religious life

I was born in 1947. We had a strong Orthodox community. We'd go on a
picnic, and the shochet and his seven children would come, the rabbi and
his family, too. This was back in 1953. We would have secret brit milahs in
our home.

The rabbi was born in Berevovo, a very Orthodox village in Subcarpathian
Ruthenia. He only attended cheder, not a regular school. But even without a
secular education, he was bright and perceptive. After the war, he came
here to Kosice, which then acted as a magnet for Jews of eastern Slovakia
and Subcarpathian Ruthenia, which was given to the Soviet Union.

During the Communist period

My family was preparing to leave Czechoslovakia, and we had our papers
signed and even our furniture was shipped off. Everything was packed, and
then my brother came down with diphtheria. The doctor told my parents:
"Your brother's life or Israel, take your choice."

My father was not allowed to emigrate, and he said, "So I'll piss on the
Communists; I'll stay a religious Jew." He tried to emigrate in 1948 and
then again in 1962. My brother, Alexander Grossman, studied for a year in
the rabbinical seminary in Budapest. In 1969, he traveled to London and he
stayed there for a month, then moved to Israel.

My father kept geese and chickens at home so that during the Communist
period, he could always have kosher meat, which he would ritually slaughter
himself. There was usually kosher meat available; it came from a shochet
who would come through here when he was in eastern Hungary. But you
couldn't depend on it, I suppose, so my father made his own preparations,
too.

Growing up

Back when I was growing up, it was very difficult. We went to school six
days a week then, and my father made a shaygitz carry my books on Saturday.

We had a soup kitchen here in Kosice all during the Communist times, but we
called it a restaurant. Naturally, it was kosher. The Goldberger brothers
ran it. Up to 100 people ate there every day. And when I was young, whoever
needed to pick up dinner cheaply because they didn't have the money, could
do so.

Even in the 1950s, we had a strong community. My father was one of the last
of the Hevrah Kadishah. Up to the end, he would get on a bus or a train and
travel to some small town in Slovakia to prepare the dead for burial.

One day my father came back from a Hevrah Kadishah meeting - they met every
Sunday - and he was enraged. The Communists had made them sell the Neolog
synagogue, the great synagogue in the center of town. And they took it for
almost nothing, he said.

He was a baker by trade, and baked challah. Everyone would buy from him.
Every Friday he would be busy at home baking, but he had another bakery
help out and they would prepare around 200 challahs.

We had a great deal of trouble from the Communist government here. In the
1960s, the Jewish community received medicines donated by a Swiss charity,
and the Party made all sorts of problems. But still, for all the holidays,
children my age would attend synagogue and we had community seders as well.
For the holidays, our big synagogue, the old Orthodox one, was always full.
We continued to have services there, even though the crowds got smaller and
smaller, until five years ago.

In 1971, we made plans in secret to visit my brother in Romania. This was
the only Communist country that didn't break its ties to Israel, and as
Czechoslovaks, it was one of the very few countries we could travel to. We
planned to say that we would be meeting a medical specialist for a problem
in the family, and we fixed the location and place. It was done well, we
thought. But the day we returned to Kosice, the police were waiting in
front of our door. They knew when we left, where we went, who we met and
when we would return. They took our passports away; we didn't see them
again for six years.

Married life

When I married a non-Jew in 1965, my father sat shiva for me. When he saw
me on the street with my first son, he would cross to the other side and
keep walking. It killed me to see this. How I suffered so much because I
married a non-Jew. To cope with this has been an enormous burden. One day,
after my first son was born, I realized that if I didn't act, I would lose
my father forever. I went to him and knocked on his door. I said, "This is
your grandson." He said, "He will be my grandson when he has a brit milah."
I said, "So make the arrangement."

Well, my father was right: I should have married a Jew. The differences
between my husband and me were great and became even greater.

My mother died in 1990, and my father died in 1994. I'm sure that he
wouldn't have talked to interviewers as he lived his simple, believing life
and he never spoke about it with strangers.

Our community

After 1989, many more people started coming to the community. Some came
because they wondered if they could get something out of it, but most came
because they were really interested. At least 10 families left on aliya in
the first few years. Now there are very few interested in leaving.

Our community isn't uniform now, and there seem to be three types of Jews
here. The first group has a strong Jewish background from their families.
They know more than just the basics; they know how to pray. A second group
is coming mainly to explore their past and make a reconnection to Jewish
life. They want to be involved, but not in a religious way. The third group
is comprised of those who have very tenuous roots. They are simply curious
and don't have any background at all.

The biggest problem is that the middle generation doesn't want to observe
religion at all, but still wants to maintain traditions. The question is:
What is enough? Some people say that just admitting being a Jew is quite
enough. It's not.

The elderly cannot understand any of this. When I speak with them, I
realize that they will not soften their views at all. But, to involve the
younger families, they will certainly have to bend. But they won't. So I'm
looking for a compromise. I'd like some sort of Reform Jewish movement to
grow here because if we don't get that, it will all come to an end. You
see, of the young Jews in Kosice today, almost none of them know how to
pray.

Alice Klimova
Prague
Czech Republic
Interviewer: Lenka Koprivová
Date of interview: March - June 2006

After Kristallnacht 1, the British government decided to open its borders to Jewish children from the countries most endangered by National Socialism: Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. From the end of 1938 until September 1939, the lives of about ten thousand children were saved in this fashion. A total of 669 children managed to travel out of Czechoslovakia. These transports were organized by Nicholas Winton, and Mrs. Alice Klimova thus became one of his "children." Along with her sister, she spent the war years in Great Britain, and like many emigrant children hoped that after the war she would once again be reunited with her family. Alas, like for many others, luck was not on her side either. Mrs. Klimova often participates in various get-togethers where she talks about her life. She also actively helped the director Matej Minac in the preparation of his film about Nicholas Winton and his rescue mission, called "The Power of Good."

Family background
Growing up
During the War
In England 
At boarding school
After the War
Glossary

Family background

My father's family was from Prague; my father was born in Liben [a Prague neighborhood]. Alas, I didn't know either of his parents. My grandmother died 14 days before my older sister Emilie was born, which is why she was named after her. We're apparently somehow related to the painter Alfred Justitz [1879-1934]. How exactly, I don't know. For thirty years now I've been saying that I'll find out, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

My father's name was Bohumil Justitz and he was born on 14th October 1894. He had a number of siblings: sisters Kamila, married name Morawitzova, Olga, married name Epsteinova, and Helga, married name Tukova. It's possible he had one more sister, who however died very young. Then he also had two brothers, Karel and Rudolf. Their family was very close. They observed this unwritten rule that every Saturday they'd meet in some café. But only the adults, we children didn't go with them. I don't know why, but I remember that Uncle Karel died in 1937. All the other siblings perished in concentration camps during the war.

While I don't know anything at all about my father's parents, I remember those on my mother's side well. My grandfather's name was Julius Glauber and he was born on 1st April 1866 or 1867. He was a very affectionate, kind and nice person. One of my memories is from their apartment on Sokolska Street. There he had something for which there is great demand today: a writing desk with one of those roller tops. He used to sit at it and in the bottom right drawer he used to have cat's tongues [chocolates]. When I'd come over, he'd sit me on his knee, take out one tongue and say: 'One kitty, for my kitty.' Back then the custom was to give children things bit by bit, it wasn't customary to give them the entire bar, the way it's done today. He was one of those kind, affectionate grandfathers. He and his brother ran a coffee wholesale business on today's Opletalova Street, back then Lützova Street. My mother used to go do secretarial work for them; apparently they used to bring me there to her so she could nurse me. Grandpa died in April or May of 1933.

His wife's name was Otylie, nee Hellerova, and she was born on 8th August 1870. She had a sister, Laura, who knitted beautifully. My grandmother was one of those smaller, kind grannies that let you lick the pot and so on. I remember her mainly from the time when she lived with us after Grandpa died, first on Sokolska Street and then in Vinohrady [a Prague neighborhood]. She died in 1942 in Treblinka. Otherwise all my relatives died in Auschwitz.

Grandma and Grandpa lived at the corner of Sokolska and Zitna in a building that was the first in Prague to have central heating. Their apartment was on the first floor, and was huge, with six rooms. To a child everything seems bigger, but even today, when I look at it from the street, it makes the same impression on me. When you walked in, there was this long, narrow hallway and on the right were two rooms where my great-grandmother lived. That must have been still before we moved in there, and aside from the fact that she had this stuffed canapé with fringes, which my sister and I used to make fun of, I don't remember her. Then on the left there was a large kitchen and four rooms. The rooms were enormous, with high ceilings; I mainly remember the room where Grandpa's writing desk was, as well as the washroom, in which there was a hot water heater. I think that currently the apartment is derelict and there's nothing in it. My sister was born there.

My grandparents had two children: my mother, Ida, and my uncle Bedrich. My mother was born on 12th June 1894 in Prague. She definitely graduated from some gymnazium [high school] or lyceum, and afterwards she passed her state exams in English at the Faculty of Philosophy. Uncle Bedrich was born on 1st April sometime in the 1890s. I remember him as a big cutup. Around 1920 he and his family, his wife and two children, Eva and Vera, moved to Dresden, where they lived up until Kristallnacht. They then returned to Prague and at one time even lived in the same building as we did.

While my father's native tongue was definitely Czech, I suspect that for my mother it was more likely German. In any event, everyone in their families spoke both languages. As far as I can remember, my grandfather preferred Czech, while Grandma preferred to speak German.

I don't know when and where my parents met, but their wedding was on 29th January 1922, in Prague. The ceremony was most likely Jewish, but because it took place long before I was born, I can't guarantee that. That same year, on 22nd November 1922, my sister Emilie was born, and six years later, on 5th July 1928, so was I.

Growing up

At that time we lived in Dejvice [a Prague neighborhood] on what is now Kafkova, back then Bachmacska Street. After my grandfather died we moved into my grandparents' apartment, where we were for only one year, and then we moved to Vinohrady. So to this day, Prague to me means Dejvice and Vinohrady, where I lived until my departure for England in 1939.

I remember our home in Vinohrady as being a very pleasant, sunny place. Winters have been erased from my memory. The pleasant things always remain in your memory. We lived in this neighborhood of villas that was near Flora and we used to go on foot as far as to Wenceslaus Square. These days few people walk in Prague - back then that was nothing unusual for us. I think my father had a car since 1937. He used to drive it back and forth to work, and on Sundays we'd go on trips. But the way it's common these days to drive everywhere, that didn't exist back then. Vrsovice was nearby, where there were still many open hills that had not yet been built upon, where we used to sled in the winter. And there were parks close to the school I attended. We'd often go for walks to Rieger Gardens for example. It was simply this pleasant place to live.

We lived in a rental villa on Na Zajezdu Street. Its owner was the nephew of Skoda 2 from Pilsen, and had received it as a wedding present. The owners lived on the first floor, we on the ground floor, and on the second floor there was this two-room bachelor apartment, where Uncle Bedrich's family lived for a few months when they returned from Dresden. The house had a garden, and because the owners would leave during May for their cottage somewhere, my sister and I, the only children there, were allowed to pick the fruit.

We had a beautiful four-room apartment. It had a vestibule, across from it a living room where my parents slept, a dining room, Grandma's room, and a bedroom where my sister and I slept. You'd walk through our bedroom to get to the bathroom. Plus there was a kitchen, of course. I've got very beautiful memories of that place.

A little ways away from our house was the Orionka chocolate factory. [Editor's note: During the time of the First Republic, ORION became the largest producer of chocolate, sweets and baked goods. Today it dominates approximately 2/3 of the chocolate market in the Czech Republic] It always smelled beautifully there! Our mother would say, 'Girls, if you're good, you can walk by and smell it.' In front of Orionka there was always this wagon where they sold fruit. We used to walk by it on the way to school, and we'd always get 50 halers [1 Czechoslovak crown = 100 halers] or a crown [in 1929 the Czech crown was defined by law to be equivalent to 44.58 mg of gold], so that we could buy some fruit.

For a long time after the war, I didn't have the courage to walk by our house. It wasn't until sometime in 1947, when I was at some youth festival which ran late, and because there were no longer trams running, I had no way to get to Hanspaulka, where I was living at the time. So a girlfriend of mine, who lived on Ruska Street, offered that I could sleep at their place. So I had to walk by our house; she didn't know about it. Well, I dealt with it somehow. And in the morning, when I was returning, I noticed that that fruit wagon was still there in the same spot. The vendor suddenly asked me, 'What's your sister up to?' My jaw dropped and I asked him how he knew that I had a sister? 'Why, the two of you lived here and came by every day.' He'd recognized me, and I didn't recognize him of course. He knew that our parents had perished, and that only my sister and I were left. Those are these little memories.

Our father first worked as a traveling salesman. He walked around with a briefcase and sold things, perhaps still when I was born. Then he had his own business, with electrodes. First in Strasnice on Prubezna Street, then in Liben. Today it's up there in Holesovicky, as you drive down, on the right there are these nice little houses that are still there. My father was the only owner, and the company was tiny, at most twelve or fifteen employees. I used to go there very often and gladly, because they liked me there, too. When we lived in Vinohrady, it wasn't far to Prubezna, I think I even used to walk there. Back then there wasn't nearly as much traffic as today. After we moved to Holesovice I could no longer walk there alone anymore, it was too far, and so my mother probably used to take me there.

What were my parents like? If I could exaggerate slightly in describing my mother, I'd say that she had a bit of an aristocratic manner about her. She was always a lady. It of course had nothing to do with aristocracy. But she was always dressed in an exemplary fashion - she paid attention to that. I'd say that she was also quite educated for her time. She had state exams in English, which was quite unusual back then.

At home we spoke Czech and German. I think that my mother had more German schooling, but I can't say for sure, I don't know. My father had Czech schools, even though he also spoke German excellently. My father had been wounded in World War I, I think in 1933 they had to take one of his kidneys, and my mother then took exemplary care of him. Really with immense care and love. She was a housewife, because back then it was very rare for a woman to go to work. Those were really only those very poor families, where it was for financial reasons. Definitely not like today, when someone pursues a career. So our mother was at home and took care of us girls.

I did rhythmics [rhythmic gymnastics], today you'd probably call it gymnastics; I used to go where today Palac Metro is on Narodni Avenue, and my mother would accompany me. My sister didn't attend rhythmics, she played the piano. So basically our mother made sure that we had these various activities, so we had what was 'in' or done in a decent family. She of course also made sure that the family held together. Like almost everywhere else, siblings argued. But our mother took it very hard when someone used a word like 'cow' or something like that. No cuss words, that simply didn't exist, that wasn't allowed. Only when she was out of earshot. Our father was more tolerant in this, but not our mother, there was no way.

I can't even say that our parents were strict, but when they said something, that was the law. I remember absolutely exactly the one and only time I got a spanking from my father. On Saturday evening our parents' best friends used to come over to our place to visit. That was sometime after our relatives from Dresden had moved back to Prague, and then by coincidence lived for about two or three months in the same house as we did. Well, and I and my cousin Vera were supposed to get in the tub and have a bath. But I kept dawdling and didn't want to get in the tub, because I was embarrassed to get undressed in front that friend of my parents', that man. But I didn't want to say that. And I kept saying that I had to do this and that for school, that I had to fill my pen... I kept on making excuses. Finally my father had had enough, and gave me a spanking. As that friend of ours then told me after the war, there was no talking to him for the rest of the evening, because he just kept repeating, 'I spanked my little girl!' and couldn't get over it.

Otherwise, it was constant fun with our father. He was always making and playing jokes. I found out a lot about all the things he used to do from my parents' best friends. They were chemists and left Prague in 1939, and via Poland and the Ukraine ended up in Siberia. In 1946 they returned home and were glad to find us here. When I left I was eleven, so I was glad that they told me something more about my parents. They for example told me that when they had visits over, they didn't have milk at home, because they didn't have children and liked to drink black coffee. Whereas my father liked a bit of milk. So he'd take a small bottle along with him, put it in his breast pocket and then take the cork out, like he was squirting the milk. So those were my father's little jokes; that was my father.

My mother's brother, Uncle Bedrich, was something similar. He was also immensely funny. He'd always say that he'd have to have this machine for spanking children made. He'd keep saying that they can't finish it, that this was missing and that was missing, that they can't deliver it yet... But that it would definitely arrive, and that then I'd get a proper licking. My uncle was always fooling around. Not my mother, as I've said, she was serious, but my father and uncle were big jokers.

My mother's lifetime achievement was a wall tapestry that she'd embroidered. Oddly enough, I got it back after the war. She also knitted my sister two sweaters, and that was the apex of her handiwork, she definitely wasn't the handiwork type. My parents liked attending the theater and operas. My father would often sing melodies from various arias, Carmen for example.

My parents didn't take me to the theater. Once or twice I might have gone to see Spejbl and Hurvinek 3 and that was it. Cinematography was in its beginnings during my childhood, and I was at the movies about twice. The first time was 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves' at the Flora Theater, and then the Blanik Theater, to see 'Mickey Mouse.' I remember it to this day, amazing experiences. I couldn't attend the evening screenings because at home it was strictly seen to that I was in bed by 7pm. Always. I wasn't sleepy, but when it was seven, there was no mercy.

As children my sister and I would snap at each other every little while, argue and call each other names, because she had a red pencil case which even had a zipper, and I had a brown one that had no zipper. Dumb trivialities like this bothered me, even if mine was from much better leather, for example. But as a small child I was always ill, the flu and bronchitis and so on. At that moment my sister would of course have done anything for me, mostly [she'd bring me] glass figurines or something like that. So during that time we loved each other, but as soon as I got better, we'd be at each other again.

When we were in England, Mimka was more of a mother to me than a sister. I don't remember us ever arguing there. There were more of us who had a sibling in England, but I don't think that anyone had a sister like I did. She was absolutely unique in how she took care of me. As I say, she was an amazing person, she was exceptionally kind. Not only to me, she was willing to do anything for anyone. When she found out that someone wasn't well, right away she'd go bake something and take it to him and would look around at what she could arrange, help out with and so on. Many times it was even to the detriment of her own family. During the postwar years there was nothing, and we had double nothing. But my sister would have done anything for anyone. However, when she took a dislike to someone, they were finished. She'd no longer communicate with them. Either black or white.

Already as a small child my sister was interested in literature. She'd for example save up her pocket money and would spend it on having Jirasek bound in leather [Jirasek, Alois (1851-1930): Czech author and playwright]. I doubt she'd still do it today, but back then, yes. She was very versatile, though not very into sports, but she was interested in music.

My sister and I played the piano. This young lady teacher used to come to our place, a saint, because it would have been hard to find someone as musically untalented as my sister and I. I loved her. She was amazingly patient with us. And it's true, that when I listen to music today, I enjoy piano most of all, so I guess something of it must have rubbed off on me.

When I was little, I wasn't really interested in anything very much. My parents were desperate, that I didn't like to read. Until once, I don't know how, I got hold of a book called 'Irca vede jedenactku' by some author named Hüttlova, one of those books for girls. Thanks to it I got into reading and today I can't imagine life without a book. But back then I was more likely to be jumping around somewhere, doing handstands and cartwheels. My father used to say, 'You're more on your hands and head than on your feet.' I attended rhythmics twice a week. But I didn't have any special interests as such.

My mother used to take me to my rhythmics class, which used to be on Narodni Avenue in Palac Metro. Beforehand, she'd always take me to the confectioner's and would buy us a pastry made with egg yolks. I had a terrible sweet tooth.

I had a total of twelve female and four male cousins, of that perhaps only one set of cousins was younger than me, otherwise they were all older than I, and I had to wear their hand-me-downs. That was normal back then, after all, you wouldn't throw something out if it could still be used for something, right? Otherwise I liked my cousins, it wasn't their fault, that's true, but it bothered me. The first time I got my own [new] things was only when I was going to England.

Because my cousins were older, I didn't associate with them very much. When someone is eight and someone else 16, that's a huge gulf. The one I liked the most and with whom I got along best was Vera, Uncle Bedrich's daughter. She was about nine months younger, and even though we didn't see each other that often because they lived in Dresden, Vera was the cousin I liked best. We loved each other. She was a terribly nice girl. When she was in Terezin 4 during the war, she went out with Alfred Kantor, a painter, whose pictures from Terezin were published in a book. They were very much in love. Vera didn't return from Auschwitz. Alfred did. Vera also had a sister, Eva, who was a day older than my sister. She didn't return either.

The school I attended wasn't far from where we lived, two tram stops; I used to walk there and would meet girlfriends on the way. When it was raining, I'd get 50 halers for the tram. Well, and for us the national sport was riding illegally for free. Not that I needed those 50 halers that much, but I probably did it just as a lark, on a dare, the same way as most kids do.

Rather than talk about what I liked in school, I'll tell you what I didn't like: handiwork. To this day I remember how in Grade 5 we had to knit a row of faggoting onto some apron. I was completely incompetent. So I took it home, but my mother was just as incompetent at it. Nevertheless she helped me with it somehow. So this definitely wasn't my favorite subject. I didn't like penmanship either. Otherwise I passed with more or less average marks, I always had at least one to three twos [out of five, roughly equivalent to between a B and a C], in penmanship and handiwork. I probably liked gym class the best.

Back then, girls' and boys' classes were separate of course. Religion didn't play a role in my choice of girlfriends. I was for example friends with Alena Hromadkova. Her father had some sort of important position in the Czech Brotherhood Evangelic Church [Editor's note: the Czech Evangelic Brotherhood Church is a Christian church in the Czech Republic. It is the largest Protestant church in the country]. In April 1945 she left with her entire family for Switzerland and then for America. I know that she then returned, but even though I tried, I never found her. Another was Vera Vrbenska. For a number of years during the war, she lived with her mother in a cellar, in hiding. When I returned from England, I attended high school for two years in Dejvice, where there was a class for repatriates. And Vera was there too. So once again we sat beside each other.

And then I had one more girlfriend; that one was Jewish, and left with me for England in 1939. Her name was Zuzka, and by chance we found each other and met up on 29th June 1989, so exactly 50 years later. That date was more or less a coincidence, but quite an important one for both of us. Zuzka brought along with her some letters that she'd received right after the war from another friend of ours, Ruzena Zelena. In them it said that she'd survived the concentration camps, thus she must have also been Jewish, and both of us were quite surprised, because we hadn't known that. You simply don't look for friends based on whether someone is a Jew or not. Some girl named Dorantova was in our class as well, she was also Jewish, but she didn't survive.

Everyone in our family was Jewish. At home we observed holidays, and that was the beginning and end of it. We definitely didn't do things like attend services during the week or keep kosher 5. We celebrated the New Year [Rosh Hashanah]; my parents would go to the synagogue, and perhaps I did too. For seder supper we'd go to Aunt Kamila's, and for Chanukkah we'd light candles. What really bothered me was that at Christmastime we weren't allowed to have a tree at home. So I'd go visit my girlfriends, and felt terribly sorry for myself.

Back then religion class was more or less compulsory in all schools, so I attended the Jewish one. We had it at a different school, at 'Na Smetance' I think. But I also had a number of other activities, I played the piano, did some gymnastics and so on and so on, well, and often I'd complain of headaches, which afflicts me to this day. So my parents decided that in order for me to not have such a load, it would be no problem for me to skip religion. So in Grade 5 I no longer attended it, and was very glad for it.

Our parents would always rent a room or two somewhere for the summer, and we'd spend the summer holidays there, along with one other family. Our fathers would be in Prague working, and only our mothers would keep an eye on us. My first memories are of Dobris, after that we'd mainly go to Mala Skala. We did a lot of walking around the 'Czech Eden' area. And when it was nice, we'd always be by the water, as for me, more like in the water, from morning till evening.

I don't know how my parents met this family. I remember them from times immemorial. They had two girls; the older one was the same age as my sister, and the younger one was a year older than I. I got along relatively well with 'mine,' we were friends, while my sister not so much with 'hers.' Their mother was Jewish. Their father wasn't, plus to top it off he was German. But as a family they were perfect. I used to go to their place at Christmas to see their tree. But then when the occupation 6 came, right away on the 16th or 17th of March, my father took me and we went to go have a look at where they lived. A swastika was hanging in their window. I can still see that horror to this day. No one had to explain anything to me, but a swastika, that was simply our biggest enemy. I couldn't even swallow back then. After the war I found out that they'd tried to persuade him to get divorced, but he refused. This way he actually saved both his wife and daughters. They were in Terezin, but only for the last few months. As I say, for me it was a shock. I see it to this day. The flag was flying.

I'd say that my father was probably politically left-leaning, even though he definitely didn't belong to any organization. On the other hand, he was a member of the Freemasons, who definitely weren't some sort of leftists. But my sister was a member of one very left-leaning youth organization. They were named 'Rote Falken' 7, Red Falcons, so if our father allowed her this, he must have been somehow inclined towards it. Let's call it a social conscience. It was through these 'Rote Falken' that I actually got to England.

I remember that from the fall of 1938, some student used to come to our place once or twice a week for lunch. He was from the Sudetenland 8 or from Germany, and had come to Prague after Kristallnacht. I was naturally aware of the events of the late 1930s, even though as a girl of not even eleven, not to such an extent. I only more or less realized things in retrospect.

During the War

To this day I remember 15th March 1939 [the beginning of the occupation of the remainder of the Czech lands by Germany], it was a Wednesday and snow was falling. When we arrived by the water tower on Vinohradska Street, there were tanks sitting there. I'll never forget what it's like for a ten- year-old child to walk by tanks, when he has no idea why and what is going on, and now those muzzles are aiming at him. I walked by German soldiers, they had these hats with peaks on them. It didn't make a pleasant impression, definitely not. I know that back then people were saying that they were eating everything in the stores, mainly ham. My parents didn't tell me anything about the fact that they began to confiscate Jewish property, that they had to report, they protected me from that. Relatively recently I found in some documents that still before my departure my father also had to report his tiny little factory, his little workshop, and the correspondence was about that a 'Treuhänder' [a superintendent of Jewish property] would be installed there.

My parents apparently did what they could to protect me from everything unpleasant. When the opportunity arose for me to go to England, they said with a smile, 'That's amazing, you're so lucky, you'll go to England, we'd like that too, for sure you'll go to the sea.' They basically made it into something sensational for me, and I looked forward to it. Of course, not even they could suspect that we'd never see each other again, if they'd have suspected it, I don't know if they would have managed it. When it came down to the decision whether they should or shouldn't send my sister and me away, their best friends were persuading them to do it. They said, 'Look how they behaved to the Jews in Austria, what Kristallnacht in Germany was like, you can't expect anything good, let at least the girls be somewhere safe.' So in the end they convinced my parents, who then managed to serve it up to me like that with a smile.

Originally only I was supposed to go to England. As I've already said, my sister was a member of the 'Rote Falken' organization. Their leader traveled to England and there he made a connection with a similar organization, where he wrote a circular that here, in Czechoslovakia there was an entire number of endangered children whom it was necessary to get to England. He looked for people that would be willing to take some child in. I don't know why, but age-wise it was limited from 10 to 16, I think. My sister was 16 and a half, so didn't meet the conditions and I was supposed to go in her place.

When I was leaving, there was nary a mention of her going too. By sheer chance she managed to leave on the next transport, and all because she attended a German high school. Our parents sent her there so that she'd learn to read and write German properly. In 1934 some girl from Germany joined their class, whose father, a journalist, was jailed in a concentration camp. My sister became friends with her, and she used to come to our place to visit, and in the summer would go with us to our summer apartment. Her mother was a children's doctor, and after they released her father from the concentration camp, the entire family left for England.

When I arrived in England, they were waiting for me at the train station. Later it dawned on me that it must have been they who made it possible for my sister to come. Because the condition for the children's transports was that each child had to have a place to stay. And because that lady was a doctor and my sister arrived in England and already had it arranged that she'd immediately begin studying at a hospital to be a nurse, she must apparently have been the one to have arranged it. So my sister arrived right on the next transport after mine. Conditions were getting tougher; while I was allowed to leave with 50 kilograms of luggage, she was only allowed to have 20. Those types of measures 9, where Jewish children weren't allowed to attend school, you weren't allowed to go to parks, to the movies, we luckily didn't have the chance to experience here.

So I was being prepared for my departure with a smile, I got a new dress and so on, so it was terribly exciting for me. As I say, I had lots to look forward to. I left on 29th June 1939. It was a Thursday, and by coincidence school had ended that day, so I'd completed exactly five grades of elementary school. A short distance from where we lived, they sold exceptionally good Italian ice cream. My mother wasn't otherwise very into sweets, but this ice cream she liked very much. We'd go there often. I was this type that ate things slowly, while my sister had to eat everything right away. And my mother took me there again as a farewell treat. She bought me a big scoop of ice cream, plus whipped cream on top, all told it cost two crowns, which was a lot of money back then. [Editor's note: In 1929 the Czech crown was defined by law to be equivalent to 44.58 mg of gold.]

Then in the afternoon our Dresden cousins came to say goodbye. By then my suitcases were probably already at the train station, and all I took with me onto the train was a rucksack; however, back then a rucksack was something different than it is today, back then it was this ordinary cloth sack. Grandma gave me a half kilo of apricots for the trip. At that time it was still quite early for apricots, they must have been imported. I said goodbye to her at home, and only my parents and sister accompanied me to the train station; we left around 7:00 pm.

In England 

Today I can still see little girls clutching their dolls, little boys their teddy bears, and so on... Their fathers were trying at the last minute to teach them some English word or something similar. And everyone always: 'Write, write!' Then suddenly I saw those friends of my parents'. At that time they were already in hiding, but they also came to say goodbye to me. Well, and then it was time to get on the train. I remember sitting by the window. Everyone had their necks craned out the window, and as soon as the train started moving, I saw that my father started weeping. He simply could no longer hold it in, no one had any idea for how long we were saying goodbye. My last words to him were, 'Dad, don't blubber here and don't embarrass me!' That was the last thing I said to him.

Today, when I put myself in my parents' shoes, a shiver runs down my back. When someone comes to see me and says, 'Jesus, what all you had to live through,' I say, 'I? Not at all, but my parents did.' I was always protected in some way. I was lucky that in England I came to stay with a very good family, and all my life my sister watched over me. I never knew what it was like to not have love all around me. I never had the feeling that I was unwanted, which is very important. For example, that friend of mine from elementary school, the one that also went to England, ended up in a family that didn't want her very much. Not nearly everyone had as much luck as I did.

My parents would of course have liked to have emigrated, if it would have been possible. Alas, it wasn't. Though as late as 1940, some people managed to get out, but they didn't. Years ago, when I was looking through the letters I had received while in England, I found a letter from my uncle, in which he wrote that my cousin Vera was supposed to leave on the September transport and that she'd be in Newcastle. That was the largest transport, and almost 300 children were supposed to leave on it. Alas the war broke out, and the transport didn't leave. As far as I know, none of those children survived, and neither did Vera. Aside from my sister and me, only about two other distant relatives managed to emigrate, one relative survived the concentration camps, and that's all; the rest of our family perished. Most of them in Auschwitz, and my grandmother in Treblinka.

I took 'Granny' by Bozena Nemcova 10 with me to England. That piano teacher of ours had given it to me, and I've got it to this day. Otherwise I don't even know what else. Clothes, practical things like that. Actually, up until my arrival in England, I didn't know where I'd be going. The Prague leader of 'Rote Falken' was waiting for our group of about fifteen children with an English colleague of his, and they then took us to this camp in eastern England, where we were supposed to get acclimatized, so to say. It was this gift from them, very kind, nice, we slept in tents. Friends of my parents were in England, and because my birthday was coming up, they came to see me there. I remember that they brought ice cream, the kind in wafers, similar to our Russian ice cream, they brought more, so that there'd be enough for everyone, we liked it very much.

Then we went to stay with families, but my family didn't have a bed for me yet, so for a few days I was with another family that lived nearby. This family also took in one girl, her name was Lia or Lea, and she was from the Sudetenland. I remember it as if it were yesterday: I went to the bathroom, and when I returned the girl was weeping profusely. I asked her what had happened, and she said, 'I'm homesick.' Suddenly I was homesick too. So we had a duo, a vale of tears.

We both wrote anguished letters home, as to how homesick we were. And that we'd cross the sea and I don't know what all. I threw the letter in a mailbox and already felt better, I no longer thought about it. A few days later I got an anguished letter from my mother, who was all upset, saying that I'd get used to it soon. And that she hadn't shown Father the letter yet. Then all my aunties began writing to calm me down. As I've said, I'd long since already forgotten about it. My mother showed my father the letter only once I began writing normal letters again. A child doesn't realize at all what all he can cause, what it must be like for his parents. No one harmed a hair on my head. Soon I went to stay with my family.

They were young, pleasant, kind people who had a four-month-old baby. I had my own beautiful and large room, which by then also had that bed. I learned the language relatively quickly, and even though age-wise I was supposed to be in Grade 6, I began attending Grade 5, because it was taught by the sister of the lady with whom I was living. She devoted herself to me immensely, especially after class, and so when in May of 1940 I went to stay with another family in northern England, no one could believe that I wasn't English.

This family lived near London, so I could see my sister, who was working in a hospital in London. I think that once every 14 days she had the entire day off, so we'd get together every second Saturday. It was a short way by bus and then the subway, plus I paid half fare. The little tiny bit of pocket money that my sister got, she gave it all to me. Either for the movies, for ice cream, or something like that, to make me happy. Which she really did. While all that time, as I found out years later, she was always hungry in that hospital. But instead of buying something for herself, she invested everything into me.

But then May 1940 came, and the man from the family I lived with had to join the army, so I could no longer stay there. They were expecting another child, they wouldn't have gotten any support for me, and the support that soldiers got was so little that they could barely live on it themselves, when on top of that they had to pay a mortgage. So I had to move. At that time they also fired my sister from the hospital, because she was a foreigner. Those were exceptional cases, and she was one of them, she was literally suddenly out on the street. Later it came out that due to the poor conditions in which she lived, she got tuberculosis.

My next family was a childless pair in their forties, they were kind, but how should I say it, these simple people. I did have my own room, but their little house had no washroom. They used to go to some sort of public bath house. The town had a very strong Jewish community, which, when they learned that a Jewish child was living in a Gentile family, could not leave it at that. I had no problem with it. Due to their efforts, I ended up with another family, this time a Jewish one. Which wouldn't have been a problem, but they were really very Orthodox. They had emigrated either from Lithuania or Latvia in 1917, and now they were around 60. I wasn't at all used to their lifestyle, I knew only the most important holidays. And now this.

I remember that on Friday afternoon I had to for example tear up newspapers for the toilet, because on Saturday you weren't even allowed to tear paper. You weren't allowed to carry a handkerchief in your pocket, you had to tie it onto your wrist like this. And many similar details. I'd never heard of anything similar in my life, but I soon adapted, a child of 12 or 13 is malleable. Mainly I was convinced that if I did and observed all this, I'd thereby save my parents.

Once it happened that the building where we lived was bombed, and we had to move somewhere else. I didn't see my sister very often, as the town where I was living was quite far from London. My sister didn't have the money to come, so she wanted me to come see her, as I paid half fare. But this family said no way, London's also being bombed, we can't take responsibility for that, that if something happened, that they were responsible for me. And they kept saying no, no, it's not possible. Until my sister apparently realized what the main reason was, and then once wrote that some rabbi was living beside her, with whom I could live, and for me to come for Christmas. Suddenly it was possible.

So I went to see my sister in London for Christmas, it was a Friday evening. Of course the trains were late, it was wartime, and it was already dark. We found ourselves right away, we hadn't seen each other for a year and a half, maybe longer. And the first thing I said was, 'Here's my suitcase, carry it for me.' Because I wasn't allowed to carry them, but she - a Jewish woman - could. [Editor's note: "could" carry them because she wasn't observing Jewish laws regarding the Sabbath.] My sister just gasped, but grabbed the suitcase.

We arrived at the hostel where she was living along with some other Czechs. And now we were supposed to eat something. But I refused to eat anything that wasn't kosher, and there wasn't much there that was kosher. My sister was tired, so we went to sleep, and I told her, 'Switch off the light for me.' Because I wasn't allowed to switch off the light. So I turned her into my flunky. My sister bore it, said ha, ha, ha, he, he, he, but it was this pretend laughter. This nervous laughter. I was 13 and a half and she was 19, and was responsible for me. She may have been pretending to laugh, but she must have been completely devastated.

The rabbi, as it turned out was this rabbi in quotation marks. Does the name Lüben mean anything to you? He used to be a very important Prague rabbi, and this was his grandson or nephew. However no Orthodox Jew, not even close. And then we were sitting at the table, and I didn't take a thing. I don't know whether I maybe ate dry bread, I don't remember any more. I know that they had kosher margarine there, but only because it was cheaper. Someone did some baking and brought vanilla crescents, and I didn't take a thing. I was salivating, but I was disciplined. But then I sat down beside this Lüben and watched him stuffing himself with everything. The next day he was alive, there was nothing wrong with him, he'd survived it all. And then it was Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, and roast goose with dumplings and cabbage had been prepared. Well, kosher or not, I could no longer stand it. Thus it was that my great Orthodoxy fell partially by the wayside.

Besides these customs of mine, my sister was aghast at something else: I was forgetting Czech. When I arrived for my visit, I spoke with an English accent, searched for words and so on. Because she'd learned that there was a Czechoslovak state school in England, she arranged for me to start there. The school that I started attending had originally been set up for the children of government officials, soldiers and airmen, which is why there weren't that many children in it at the beginning. Their numbers gradually started increasing, and so the capacity of the school at Henton Hall was no longer sufficient, plus it was in quite poor shape, which was the reason why we moved to Wales in the fall of 1943.

At boarding school

We were given a former hotel, which had now been converted to a boarding school. It's hard to say exactly how many of us children were there in total. Someone would arrive, someone would leave, graduate, or if he had parents in England, they'd take him and put him into an English school for his last year, so that he'd learn at least a bit of English. I think that there could have been about 150 of us, but that's an estimate. Recently we were discussing how many of us had been Winton's 11 children and someone said that it might have been about 25 percent. It's possible. Thanks to the fact that we were in that school together, we knew about each other. Nothing is known about many other children that Winton saved, and it's hard to search something out.

The countryside there was beautiful. We barely knew there was a war going on, so we were protected in this aspect as well. But for a few exceptions, I think that everyone liked it there, we were very happy there. There were no differences among us, not even in whether someone had parents in England or not. I remember that we had this one boy there, whose father was in the army and his mother had moved to the village where the school was for a short while. But the principal didn't allow her to come visit the boy, because the other children didn't have the possibility of seeing their mothers, so that they wouldn't be sad. The two of them used to meet secretly, but the principal simply didn't want such differences to exist among us.

Also for example the children who had someone in England would from time to time get a package with goodies and so on from them. However, my two best friends and I had no one to send us anything. But one day the mail was being given out and I also got a package. It had no return address, and inside there was a roast chicken and some apples. As I later found out, the principal's secretary was behind this surprise. He'd apparently noticed that we three girls never received anything, and knew that we'd share. Which we of course also did. Each of us remembers to this day how we took that chicken, went in front of the school where there was this open area, a lawn, gnawed at the chicken and threw the bones behind us.

When school was out we'd sometimes borrow a bike and ride around in the hills, especially on weekends. The countryside there is beautiful, gorgeous. The property also had a lake, so it was nice for a walk of 20 minutes or so. The boys had their soccer team, and we girls played volleyball, handball or ping-pong. We spent a lot of time playing sports. Each Saturday evening there'd be some sort of program, and someone had to prepare it, usually the older ones took care of it. It was quite varied, from dance parties, listening to gramophone records through various quizzes, plays, Czech ones as well as English, or discussions. We'd discuss various subjects, the equality of women, about what would be once we returned...

Teaching at this school must have been very demanding. Not only were there no textbooks and the teachers had to write them themselves, but we had also arrived there with very different levels of knowledge. Children may be quick to learn, but they are even quicker to forget, so we'd forgotten a lot of Czech. What's more, we were also all at different levels in different subjects. The school that I'd been attending before this one had very low standards, and even though I'm not the studious type, there I excelled. There they taught only the most basic of the basics. But here it was something different, and I had a lot of catching up to do. For example, I and one other girl in my class had never studied French, while the other children knew it, plus a number of them had arrived in England via France. Even English each one of us spoke differently. The same went for history, geography and mathematics. So to meld all this was no easy task. Disregarding the fact that we were adolescents, far from our parents. Nothing immoral took place, but we did get up to all sorts of mischief.

Once for example, I got a two in conduct. I had a very kind Latin teacher, but she was this type that wasn't capable of keeping order, plus she had a speech impediment. When someone didn't know a word, she'd always say, 'All right, so three times!', which meant writing the word three times. Of course, I never knew the words, so I'd say, 'Three times!' right off the bat. But she got mad and said, 'No, five times!' So the next time I said, 'Three times or five times?' And she: 'Ten times!' So that's what sort of child I was, that's how we amused ourselves.

Once some of us got into a big pickle. Our educators included a Catholic and Protestant priest and a rabbi. The rabbi's name was Stransky. Well, and the Catholic priest used to have his things for services stored in this one shed by the lake where otherwise they kept boats. Some of the boys managed to get inside, and what didn't they do? They drank the wine used for services. It ended up being a big scandal. The interesting thing is, that while the Catholic priest would have been willing to take it as a bit of mischief, the rabbi vehemently insisted on strict punishment. One of the students at our school was also Julius Sidon, the half-brother of the current Prague rabbi, and I think it was he that ended up getting punished. Even though probably unjustly, he may not even have been there, but someone said he'd done it, and so he ended up getting blamed for it.

Another trick we played was when airmen came to do their high school leaving exams. They were heroes, but before the exam they were all nervous.... like everyone. That day some of the guys swapped the signs for the bathroom and the principal's office. And when the airmen went to the bathroom, they'd open the door and there'd be the principal sitting behind his desk. Those were the kinds of things we used to do...

My sister was attending nursing school in England, but alas she didn't finish it, they threw her out. Then she worked at the editorial offices of some Czech or Czechoslovak magazine, but because it was wartime and everyone had to help out in the war effort, she went to work at a munitions factory. Right before the war ended, while she was still in England, she married a Czech soldier.

We were able to stay in touch with our parents only up till the war broke out, so those [first] two months. Then we kept writing with the help of their friends in Holland, but it took a terribly long time for an answer to come back, plus Holland also fell not even a year later. Then there was also the possibility of keeping in touch via the Red Cross, but even including a so-called paid reply, you could write a maximum of 25 words. What can you fit into 25 words? We're fine, we're healthy, and that's about it. After our parents left for Terezin in November 1942, we had no more news of them.

I think that sometime around 1944, the English newspapers began writing about the cruelties taking place in concentration camps. But I guess youth has some sort of protective filter, and I simply couldn't admit to myself that it could have anything to do with my parents. I wasn't even sure whether they even were in a concentration camp. Overall, few people in English society believed that something like that could be possible. In 1945, after the war ended, the school received long lists of those that had survived. Each one of us stood there and looked for someone. I don't remember it much, but a number of my classmates do. My best friend, Vera Diamantova, also got a telegram, that her mother and aunt had survived. We were all overjoyed for her. But not even a month later she got another message, that her mother had died during a death march 12.

After the War

By June of 1945 my sister had already returned to Czechoslovakia. Because she'd taken some sort of quick course in chemistry in England, she was able go to Terezin and help there with delousing and the typhus epidemic. At the same time she tried to find out who in our family had survived. There were places, like for example U Hybernu in Prague, where long lists for survivors hung. People would pin up notes by names like: 'I'm alive.', 'Frank, contact us at such and such address.', and so on. A lot of people searched and for a long time. Every little while the radio broadcast information... there were many ways to help people find each other. Sometimes people found each other, but more often they didn't. Our school repatriated us at the end of August 1945. By then my sister knew that as far as she knew no one had survived. Which however didn't mean that someone couldn't have appeared later; alas no one appeared, not even later.

People who returned from the war and had no place to go were given shelter in some homes, and even we, who were returning from England and had no one here, were supposed to go to some orphanage. Back then my sister walked daily from the last tram stop in Liboc to the airport in order to not miss me, because what could have then happened was that they'd have stuck me in one of those homes, and she wouldn't have known where to look for me, nor would have I. So she walked to the airport every day, and by then she was already pregnant. I arrived on Monday, and the Friday before that my future sister-in-law, which no one knew yet back then, also flew in from England. She and my sister knew each other, and it was from her that Mimka found out that I'd arrive on Monday, so it was only that Saturday and Sunday that she didn't go to the airport.

The return to Czechoslovakia was a complete shock. Much worse than the departure for England. For one there was no one here; aside from my sister and me no one from our family had survived the war. My parents had been deported to Terezin, and my father had continued on to Auschwitz on 28th September 1944. But they didn't take women into that transport. And all the while they had so desperately wanted to accompany their men! No one knew what awaited them in Poland, that is, aside from the fact that it was most likely even worse than in Terezin. They didn't know about the extermination camps. My mother also wanted to follow my father, and left on 1st October [1944]. Whether they met again, I don't know, it's likely that when she arrived in Auschwitz, he was no longer alive.

Another thing was that I was 17 and up till then had been used to someone taking care of me. Either in that family or at school, but now, here, all that was over. We had absolutely nothing. Nowhere to live, nowhere to sleep, nothing. Worries came, where to get money, where to get food coupons, who will give you [financial] support, what school to attend. Now to at least graduate from high school... And no one told anyone anything. No one gave you advice. I understand, it was the end of the war, and everyone had heaps of worries, but that officials could have been a bit accommodating to those who had survived, and especially to us children, no. On the contrary, everyone tried to grab what they could for themselves. From apartments left behind by Germans, and wherever else, everyone was very sharp that way. But that didn't even occur to us, we who had lived in England for so long and were used to true honesty. So it for example took a very long time before we were assigned an apartment, even though as a soldier my brother-in-law had priority.

For the first four months or so I slept where I could. Basically wherever there was a free bed and they'd let me sleep in it, whether I knew them or not. Then finally my brother-in-law also got an apartment and so I lived with them. It was this on the whole nice two-room bachelor apartment, and four of us lived there, aside from me, my pregnant sister and my brother-in- law, also his sister, who'd returned from Sweden. She then soon found a place to rent somewhere, but not long after that the baby was born. Everything was a problem, finding a bed, a blanket, a plate or a pot. The stores were empty, the times were truly hard.

Everyone was convinced that we must have brought back God knows what from our stay in England. Well, we didn't, certainly not my sister and I. We really did have only the utter necessities. I gave my orphan's pension to my sister for the household, it was next to nothing anyways, and I gave English lessons. Money couldn't buy you anything, because there was nothing, so at least so that I'd have tram fare. It definitely wasn't easy.

Sometime around Christmas 1945 I again went to visit that family where I used to go to see their tree before the war. When you walked in, you entered a hall, where this large table stood. And now I look and see my mother's brocade tablecloth on that table. And that wasn't all, I also saw a sewing box that had belonged to my mother at their place. So I said, 'Hey, that's my mother's!' If they'd at least had the sense to hide it, knowing I was coming over. But no, instead they said, 'Your mother gave that to us when she was leaving for Terezin. So that we'd send them packages.' It's possible. Probably. Whether they sent them or not, I don't know. But I remember that back then it really bothered me that they left those things there, when they knew I was coming. All I got back from them were family photographs, those they didn't need.

When she returned, my sister tried to find out where our parents had hidden things. Our parents had probably left a letter with someone, in which they described where things were. Afterwards, my sister told me about having been here and there, and who had refused to return something.

Aside from the photographs, after the war we also got back a Meissen porcelain dining set for twelve, which my uncle had given my mother as a wedding gift. He'd purchased it for a pittance when there had been high inflation in Germany. My uncle had been a photographer, and during the war some other photographer had probably employed him in his studio in Tyl Square. Illegally, because Jews weren't allowed to be employed. In 1946 this one young man came to see us, I don't even know how he found us, that he was working for a photographer, and that we should come see him, because he had something for us. I went to see him, and it turned out that my uncle had hidden these things there with him. Aside from the dining set also two Meissen porcelain figurines and some glasses, which had unfortunately broken. But these people kept even the shards, so that they could return them to us. After the war they started searching for someone from our family, and found out that only my sister and I had returned. They searched for us for a whole year, and I don't even know how they finally managed to find us.

I think that it's absolutely unique that there existed such honest people that expended so much effort to return those things to us properly. While people who knew us, knew that we'd returned from England with nothing, denied everything. I didn't care about the value of that porcelain, for me the value consisted in that it was basically the only thing of my parents' that I had left.

Another example of an honest person was my piano teacher. When I met up with her after the war, she was all unhappy, because apparently one time my father had asked her if she could take care of some ring. But she took fright and refused, if they found it at her place, how would such a poor girl have come by such an expensive ring? Then she felt very guilty about it, that we would have had at least that. She was also all concerned about the fact that someone else had hidden two bars of soap with her. But that person hadn't returned, and so she didn't know what to do with them. So there were honest people to be found, but they were few, very few.

I met my future husband, Robert Klima, four days before my departure from England. He was also a Jew, and along with his brother had emigrated via Poland. In November 1941 he joined the Czechoslovak army and when the war ended, he returned to the islands; they'd gotten a week's holidays to take core of personal matters. I knew his sister, at that time she had a ten- month-old baby and the two of us met at her place. For me it was love at first sight, but he had some Englishwoman. He wanted to talk her into going to Czechoslovakia with him, but she didn't want to go. We didn't meet again until we were in Prague.

After the war I did another two years of high school. I attended a so- called repatriation class, which meant that everyone there was missing a year or two. They'd either been doing forced labor, then there was one young man who'd been in Terezin, and there were about two classmates who had been in England with me. Everyone thought that because I'd returned from England that I must have who knows what, all sorts of clothes...

I know that there weren't any dance classes during the war. And so the mother of one of my classmates decided that we'd attend dance classes together, that she'd take me with them and that she'd be a sort of chaperone for me. I thanked them nicely, saying that I couldn't go anywhere because I didn't have a dress to wear. She couldn't understand that at all, I, who'd come from England. But I really didn't have anything. Not only had everything there been rationed, we didn't even have any way to get those rations, because we had no money. We did get a bit of pocket money from a fund that was called the Czechoslovak Trust Fund, none of us remembers how much it was any longer, but that was just about enough for toothpaste, and maybe some postage stamps. Most of my clothing were secondhand things my sister had gotten from people who no longer wanted them. We were also able to go to the Red Cross, but I was there perhaps only once, for some knitted blankets. Then I unraveled them, the wool got used for something else, which I still have, I think.

Basically no one was capable of comprehending that we were really badly off financially. I was this outsider. Years later, when we had a class reunion from that postwar high school, one classmate, who had emigrated after 1948 and had ended up in Vienna, told me that it was only now that she understood what it must have been like, how I must have felt, when I'd returned as an emigrant. And in order for her to understand it, she also had to become an emigrant, besides her no one else understood it. I lived a life completely different from others.

I also recall one incident with our Czech teacher. Once she gave us an assignment to write a composition on the subject of Czech theater during the occupation. I went to see her, and told her that I couldn't write about it, because I hadn't been here, I didn't know anything about it, and didn't know where to find information... She sloughed me off, saying that I had the radio. That I can listen to the radio. But I didn't have even a radio, I didn't have any home, nothing... So she was extremely unpleasant, and of course it hurt me a lot that she didn't have even a bit of sympathy for me. It didn't even occur to me to tell her my story, about how I had lived or was living.

Then, about 20 years later, I found out that she was also Jewish and that she'd also been in a concentration camp. So I think that she basically had the feeling that I must have been extremely well off in England, while she'd been in that concentration camp. Well, I had been well off, definitely compared to her. There's not doubt about that. On the other hand, she should have realized that I'd been left with no parents, and that my life was no bed of roses either. I guess she wanted to vent some of that anger at me.

After finishing high school I went to university. The Faculty of Education was starting a department for nursery school teachers; I liked children, but teaching elementary school or junior high... I said to myself that if someone was to annoy me like I did that Latin teacher, I didn't want that. What's more, at that time I was already in a serious relationship, and knew that there'd be a wedding soon. Later I completed my teaching degree for elementary school.

Our wedding was in April 1948. I worked for a year at a nursery school, and then our first child was born. My husband worked for the Ministry of Foreign Trade, and in 1951 they threw him out. More or less because he was a Jew, though they didn't say that directly. They threw out a lot of people along with him, in the end he was lucky that they didn't throw him in jail. Plus at that time we had very serious worries about where to live. The notice that we'd been assigned an apartment had been delivered to the wrong address, and so we never got it.

Back then there was also this campaign called 'Action 77,000' 13 taking place, which was actually a disguised method of getting inconvenient people, intellectuals, into the factories. My husband started working at what were back then the Stalin Works, today the Litvinov Chemical Works, and we were assigned an apartment in Teplice, later one in Litvinov, where our daughter was born. I call it a second exile. As a reaction to the 1953 currency reform 14, a strike took place at their company, everyone went on strike, but only he was immediately fired because of it. Why? A Jew and on top of that he'd served in the Western army. So he went to work in the mines and his health suffered as a result.

We of course tried very hard to get back to Prague, which was impossible. They didn't give you an apartment if you didn't have a job, and they didn't give you a job if you didn't have a permanent address. Just like during feudal times, a vicious circle. Luckily my mother-in-law had a bachelor apartment in Prague, and my husband lived with her for some time and thanks to that found a job. He did translations, first for Sentinel, which were the State Technical Literature Publishers, then freelance. Our whole family was able to return to Prague and 'breathe freely' again.

I then worked for six years at Artia, a printing company, and I liked this work probably the best. But after the occupation 15 I became a persona non grata and got fired. I looked around for something to do, and found work at a lung clinic in Veleslavin, where I was a girl Friday. I did everything from translating scientific articles to going to the post office. But then my husband fell ill, and as soon as it was possible I retired, so that I could take care of him. Alas, that lasted for only a couple of months, as he soon died.

I then gave English lessons, which still I do to this day. My other activities consist of traveling around schools, either with the director, Mr. Minac or with someone else, when they show the film 'The Power of Good' [Editor's note: The Power of Good - Nicholas Winton (2001): A documentary film about Nicholas Winton, who just prior to the outbreak of World War II saved hundreds of mainly Jewish children from the Nazis. Directed by Matej Minac (b. 1961), the film was the first Czech film to be nominated for the international Emmy award], and talk about my experiences and feelings. In this way I'm at least partly paying off my debt.

To my shame, I was also in the Communist Party. I joined it in 1946, when I was 18. As I've said, my sister was also quite left-leaning, and joined the Party while still in England, and I was quite influenced by her. A lot of people truly and honestly believed in the idea; we thought that they could help us. Alas, that was not the case. Even the turning point that was 1948 16 was something that I realized only later, once my eyes began opening with the passage of time. The fact that many of our friends from England were jailed or had to emigrate was also a factor.

We definitely didn't consider emigrating in 1948. We'd just gotten married, and didn't realize what was going to be happening. We didn't want to emigrate. In 1968 I seriously considered it. Our son was in England at that time, for one to learn the language, and for another he'd managed to land a summer job, which was unusual. When the invasion took place, we were spending the summer with our family and one of my son's French friends somewhere past Chrudim. The boy expressed an interest in seeing Prague, and our daughter was supposed to show him around, though I don't know how, as she didn't know French and he didn't know Czech. Early in the morning, my husband put them on the bus, and returned saying that the Russians were occupying us. I was shocked that he even let the two of them get on the bus, nevertheless the two of us also got on the first available means of transport and set off for Prague. That was something, transit wasn't working, we arrived at Florenc, and there was shooting everywhere... It was more than an adventure.

I left it up to my husband as to whether we should emigrate or not. I'm the type that first says or does something, and thinks about it only afterwards. Whereas my husband was always deliberate, and carefully thought out every step he took, which is why I left him to decide for us. He thought about it for a very long time, and then said no. Not another emigration. My husband was 48, I was 40, and basically our only qualifications were that we spoke the language [English]. That would have been an advantage at first, but you couldn't make a living with it. All right, others had done it, but it involved a great risk that we didn't intend on taking. Our son didn't want to stay in England, and returned.

The first year here wasn't so bad. The euphoria of the Prague Spring 17 still lingered. A year later, when they really began clamping down, it was worse. The way my husband was persecuted in the 1950s, I was persecuted in the 1960s. I was let go from Artia and on that occasion I said to one 'comrade': 'In 1944 my parents went into the gas. In the 1950s my husband was fired with an hour's notice, now I'm getting an 11-month layoff notice. That's incredible progress, my children have even greater hopes.'

My children were probably like most children. They just swapped roles. Jirka [Jiri] was always kind and mild, while Vera was this little rascal. She exercised, exercised, exercised a lot, did gymnastics, competitively as well. Our son liked to ski, and up until the age of 14, 15 he read a lot, then he somehow stopped enjoying it. Jirka studied electronics, our daughter wanted to attend university, but because of my 'problems' she wasn't given the chance. My children know that they are of Jewish origin, but we didn't bring them up in any consciously Jewish manner. We never observed any Jewish holidays at home.

During totalitarian times, Vera used to meet with a group of young Jewish people, called Deti Maislovky. [Editor's note: Deti Maislovky (Maisel Street Children): young Jewish people who prior to 1968 associated with each other on the basis of their belonging to the Prague Jewish community.] They were children who identified with being Jewish. They used to meet spontaneously to have fun, talk... They may have celebrated some holidays, like Chanukkah for example, but it definitely wasn't anything religious, more of a friendly get-together.

We used to go on vacations according to our financial means; a couple of times we were at this company cottage somewhere near the Ohra, also in Libverda, in Jevany... Mainly around Bohemia, nothing much else was even possible, and we didn't have the money anyways. I didn't get to the West until long years later in the 1960s; first Jirka went to England to work in 1966, then my husband in 1967, I in 1968, and finally Vera a year after me. Then it was impossible once again, only in 1976 my husband and I by miracle managed to travel abroad after giving an oath [to return], but that was an exception.

In 1980 we left one more time, on an invitation, by then my husband was already ill. It was more or less this parting with his brother, who lived in the United States; we met up in England. And in 1985 there was a class reunion of my old school, in which I also managed to participate. That was our first reunion, 40 years later, and it was amazing. Absolutely fantastic, unbelievable. I had the feeling that we hadn't seen each other for four weeks; those who haven't experienced something similar can't comprehend it. Old friendships were immediately renewed, an amazing experience.

We made lifelong friendships at that school. My best friend, Vera Gissing, back then Diamantova, returned to Czechoslovakia after the war, but then re- emigrated to England. We have a friendship that you won't find just like that. I know that if I rang at her door at two, at three in the morning, she'd do anything for me. And I'd to the same for her. And not only she, and not only for her, there are exceptionally strong bonds amongst all of us, because our fates were so closely wedded during such a critical time of our youth.

The narrator of the film 'The Power of Good' is Joe Schlesinger, today a world-famous journalist. He's retired now, but is still active, and lives in Canada now. I was in the United States two and a half years ago, near New York, and he redid his whole program because of me, he had to cancel a TV crew, an interview with who knows how many ambassadors, and came to see me. That's not something someone would do just like that, is it? It again testifies to the bonds that exist among us.

Some of my classmates remained abroad after the war, some of us that had returned emigrated once again. And now we're scattered around the whole world. Literally. In Tasmania, in Israel, in the United States, in England of course... what's interesting is that none of Winton's children are in France. One of our classmates is there, but he wasn't among those whose life Winton saved. So, a person can travel all over the world, as long as he's got money, and everywhere he's got the feeling that he's welcome, that he's not imposing, that people are glad to see him.

It was my friend Vera who wrote me that Nicholas Winton was the one behind our transports. She then arrived here with a video cassette with that English program. A few of us got together here and watched it, along with my daughter and grandson. And to my embarrassment I have to admit that they realized more than I did what it actually contained, contains, what it's about. My grandson had just turned eleven, and although back then he didn't know English yet, his eyes flowed with tears. My daughter as well, because she realized that it affected many children of her son's age.

I met Mr. Winton for the first time in 1990, when we had a school reunion in Wales. He came there. By coincidence he lives not far from Vera, in England, so always when I go there to visit her, I see him. He's an enchanting man, who will be 97 in May [2006]. And he's immensely mentally spry, active... to an unbelievable degree. In May he may come to Prague again, the director Mr. Minac is preparing some sort of continuation of the film about Winton's children, more of us have cropped up.

And what's my relationship to Israel like? Well, I'm definitely not a Zionist 18, not in the least. I consider it to be the homeland of the Jews, which however doesn't mean that I think that every Jew should live there. If he wants to, of course. And because Jews have been struggling and laboring for this tiny state of theirs, they toiled quite a lot there to make something of that infertile soil, I think that they're very much entitled to be left alone there to live in peace. They don't deny the Palestinians the right to live there too, alongside them, but they have to leave them be.

I was in Israel once, only once, still during totalitarian times actually, and the moment the plane touched down, it had a very strong effect on me. I can't express it, but it was a very, very strong feeling. I had the impression that I belonged there, that it's my home, but I can't imagine living there. I never even really considered emigrating there. The possibility didn't even present itself. Perhaps right after the war, but I had wanted to leave England and go home, to Czechoslovakia. Then actually in 1975, when we had our first school reunion, some classmates living in Israel offered to help me with this. But I said thank you very much, but I've already got children, family here... At that age it's hard for a person to change his roots and I don't even know if I'd want it. To have a look, of course, but to live there?

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