Travel

Faina Sandler
Chernovtsy
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: June 2002

According to the family legend our ancestors settled down in Kopyl during the Napoleonic War of 1812. My great-grandmother was a canteen keeper in Napoleon's army and came to Minsk with the army provision transport. Military life turned out to be hard for her. She quit the army and married a local merchant, a Jew. They moved to Kopyl. They opened a small store there and got their own house. They also had children. Since then our family lived in Kopyl.

Kopyl was a small town far away from the railroad. I remember that when my mother, Golda Sandler [nee Abramovich], wanted to visit my father's sister Elena in Minsk the only way of transport was a horse- driven cart. Jews constituted almost half of the population of this town; there were several thousand of them. There was a synagogue in the main square and a cheder right next to it. There was an Orthodox Christian church there as well. The closeness bothered neither the Jewish nor the Belarus population. There were several synagogues in Kopyl, but I can't remember how many exactly. The one in the central square was the biggest - it was a choir synagogue. There was also a city market in this same square. Kopyl was located within quite some distance from other settlements and people sold their products in exchange for other services.

My grandfather on my father's side, Avrom-Ber Sandler, was born in 1871. He was a carpenter. My grandmother was a housewife, which was a usual thing in Jewish families. I don't remember her name; she was just 'Granny' for me. I don't know what kind of family she came from. I only know that she came from Kopyl, too. There were many children in the family. They had two sons and a daughter besides my father. The oldest was Elena, born in 1894, then came Grigory in 1895, and my father, Semyon followed in 1897. Peisah, the last one, was born in 1899. The family wasn't wealthy. My grandmother could hardly get sufficient food and clothing for the family. Except for my grandfather, who was busy in his shop from morning till night, everybody else was helping my grandmother to grow vegetables in her vegetable garden. We mainly grew potatoes, and they saved the family from starving. My grandmother also had a few chickens and a goat.

They lived in a small, miserable house. It had a thatched roof and the goat often jumped onto the roof to eat some of it. They lived a very modest life. My grandmother and grandfather didn't go to the synagogue very often. My father said they prayed at home. They celebrated Jewish holidays in the family, and that's probably all they did. They didn't follow the kashrut. Their children studied in cheder and finished lower secondary school in town. They spoke Yiddish.

My father's brothers Grigory and Peisah moved to Minsk in the early 1930s. Both of them were apprentices to a carpenter at a plant. They married Jewish women. Grigory had two sons, and Peisah had a son and a daughter. Both brothers were on the front. Peisah's family was killed by the fascists in Kopyl on the first day of the war. He got married again after the war and had a son with his second wife. Both brothers were on the front After the war the two they brothers returned to Minsk and stayed there till the end of their lives. Grigory died in the late 1970s and Peisah died in 1984.

My father's sister Elena married a Russian man. She took her husband's last name, Ivleva. He was a high official in the NKVD 1. They lived in Minsk. Elena used to visit us with her husband. They came by car, which was rare at that time. They had a son and a daughter. Elena was a housewife. In 1937 Elena's husband was arrested and shot [during the so-called Great Terror] 2. Fortunately nothing happened to Elena and her children. She attended an accounting course and worked as an accountant at a plant. After Stalin's death in the 1950s Elena's husband was rehabilitated 3. During the war Elena was in the ghetto in Minsk. She managed to escape from there and got into the partisan unit where she stayed until the end of the war. After the war she lived in Minsk with her children. She died there in 1978.

The rules in my father's family weren't as strict as in other Jewish families. All the children were atheists. That's all I can remember. I was very young back then and my father didn't like to talk about his childhood.

I knew my mother's family much better. We lived in the same house with my mother's parents before the evacuation. My grandfather on my mother's side, Avrom-Yankev Abramovich, was born in Kopyl in 1869. He was a religious man, which wasn't surprising because he was a rabbi in Kopyl. He was a respectable man. People often addressed him to ask his advice. Visitors were very often waiting for him at the gate early in the morning.

My grandfather died when I was 4, but I know much about him from what my mother told me. In addition, I still have some memories of my own. My brother was often surprised to hear me talking about events from our childhood. He said that I was too young to remember such things.

My grandfather always wore a long black jacket and a black hat no matter what the weather was like. He had a nicely trimmed beard. My grandmother, grandfather and their children didn't look like Jews. They were tall, fair-haired and had gray eyes. My father and my brother Mihail were also gray-eyed blondes. I'm the only one in the family with black hair and dark eyes. I suffered much in my childhood because I thought I didn't belong to them.

My grandfather was the grandnephew of Mendele Moykher Sforim 4, a well-known Jewish writer. That was his pseudonym. His real name was Shalom Jacob Abramovits. Mendele was born in Kopyl in 1835. He was the brother of my grandfather's father. His family was poor. Mendele met somebody who helped him to learn languages, history, philosophy and literature. He moved to Berdichev and then to Odessa. He lived in Odessa from the 1880s until his death in 1917. My parents told me that all documents, photos and portraits - everything related to his biography - were kept in my grandfather's house. I also know that a Museum of Jewish Culture was opened in Minsk before the war. They addressed my grandfather with the request to give all these things to the museum, but he refused. During the war the family perished, and the house was destroyed along with all the relics.

I have dim memories of my grandfather but very clear memories of my grandmother, Genia Abramovich. She looked after me and was very nice and kind. My grandmother was only one year younger than my grandfather, but she looked much younger. She was born in Kopyl in 1870. She often told me about her childhood. Unfortunately, I can hardly remember those stories. I only remember one story about her mother, who was a well-known healer. She cured people with herbs. My grandmother told me that her mother was very upset that her daughters didn't want to follow into her footsteps. My great-grandmother died taking her secrets into the grave with her. I was very sorry that she didn't live until I was born. I would have listened to her every word. I don't know my grandmother's maiden name or anything about her meeting with my grandfather and their wedding. Only, knowing my grandfather, I'm sure that they had a traditional Jewish wedding. They spoke Yiddish in the family.

My grandparents lived in a big spacious house with five rooms and a big kitchen. There was a big yard and a flower garden, as well as a shed, where they kept a cow, and a vegetable garden. They were quite wealthy, I believe. My grandmother did all the housework herself.

They had many children. I only know the names of the two, who left for America in the 1920s: one of them was called Zelda and her family name was Diamant. Zelda's husband was a farmer. Their daughter, Mildred, was born in America. They were successful. The other one who left for America was called Meyer. He was an engineer. He got married. We received a letter from Zelda after the war. She told us about her life and her daughter and asked us if we needed any help. She also sent pictures of her and her brother Meyer. To keep in touch with relatives abroad was very dangerous at the time. My brother was working at the military plant at that time, had a special sensitive work permit and such facts could have ruined his career. My Mama wrote one single letter to Zelda asking her to stop writing us. Much later, in the 1990s, I was trying to find my cousin, Mildred, but I failed.

Another one of my mother's brothers lived in Belostok, Poland. Mama said that he perished in Auschwitz during the occupation of Poland.

One of my mother's brother and two sisters lived in Kopyl. I can't remember their names. They had children and we used to play together. They visited us with their families. On Pesach the whole family got together. They didn't evacuate during the war and perished in the ghetto. The only date imprinted on my memory and related to my mother's family is their date of death: 1941.

My grandparents strictly observed Jewish traditions. On Friday my grandmother lit the candles and cooked dinner for Saturday. She baked deliciously smelling challah. My grandfather went to the synagogue every day; my grandmother went on Saturdays. They strictly followed the kashrut. They celebrated Jewish holidays. I remember preparations for Pesach. The house was always clean, but before Pesach it had to be all shiny. They took fancy dishes from the attic and washed them. I remember those dishes. I especially remember the bright turquoise salt- cellar. I was mesmerized by it. I remember big bags of matzah that were brought from the bakery at the synagogue. I also remember the big table covered with white cloth and family gatherings on Pesach. My grandmother and my mother spent a lot of time in the kitchen before Pesach to have all the required food on the table on Pesach. I can't remember all the dishes. We, kids, couldn't wait until they were over with chicken broth, stuffed fish, stuffed chicken neck, etc. to take to my grandmother's strudels with jam, nuts and raisins that melted in the mouth. We preferred these to all other Pesach dishes.

My grandfather was reading the prayer, but I don't remember it well. We, children, did not have to be present at this time. After my grandfather died there was no more praying in our house. I remember the very delicious hamantashen with poppy seeds that my grandmother and mother baked at Purim. Chanukkah was memorable for the Chanukkah gelt that we were given. My brother took away the bigger part of my money, but I loved to go to the store and buy two lollypops and some sunflower seeds with my own money - just like an adult. I loved shopping, and the shopping assistant didn't fail to play along with me. He asked me how I liked what I had bought the previous year and invited me to come again. On Yiom -Kippur all members of our family, except for my brother, my father and me, were fasting. According to the Jewish tradition children could avoid fasting, and my Papa didn't find it necessary to fast. As I've mentioned already, they weren't nearly as strict about observing traditions in my father's family, as they were in my mother's. Mama suffered a lot because she couldn't observe all Jewish laws and traditions. She never ate pork or sausage - it was the result of her upbringing. My father didn't care about such things. It was of no significance to him.

I was surprised that my father's and my mother's families were so close because they were so different. They had different standards of life, and the level of education and their attitude toward religion and traditions were also so different. Theirs wasn't just a relationship of two families whose children got married. It was true friendship. Many years later I found out the reason for it. Both my grandmothers had their children almost at the same time. They lived near one another. Grandmother Genia didn't have breast milk, and my father's mother was breastfeeding both babies. This means that my mother and father were in a way foster brother and sister. My mother's parents believed that my other grandmother saved their daughter's life. Their gratitude grew into a friendship that lasted a lifetime.

Since Kopyl was located far from the main roads it was safe from pogroms. The local people didn't take part in pogroms, and the gangs from other settlements didn't reach the town. The Revolution of 1917 5 had no impact on the town either. However, my father was on the front during the Civil War 6. My parents got married after he returned. I don't know whether they had a wedding party. They got married in 1925, and my brother Mihail was born in 1928. The newly weds lived with my mother's parents. Mama was a housewife and looked after my brother. My father took a course in accounting and got a job as an accountant at the peat-bog.

I was born in 1934. I got my name after some of my mother's relative who died when she was young. The name Faina is written in my birth certificate, but I was affectionately called Fania at home. My grandfather and grandmother spoke Yiddish. My mother and father spoke both Yiddish and Russian, and I knew both languages because they spoke to me in either one depending on their mood. My brother also spoke fluent Belarus. I found out that I was a Jew in the kindergarten. Although Mama didn't work I still went to the kindergarten. They believed at that time that a child should get used to getting along with other children. I remember that we sang patriotic songs in a choir and learned poems about Lenin and Stalin. Once a commission came and someone of the commission asked about me, and I remember that our teacher told him that I was a Jew. I came home and asked my mother what that meant. She explained it to me. For a long time my favorite stories were the stories from the Bible she was telling me.

There was no acute anti-Semitism before the war. Nationality wasn't even an issue, my parents told me. I don't remember my friends from kindergarten, and therefore I don't know if they were Jews.

My brother went to the 1st grade of a Russian school in 1935. He was a very smart boy and had no problems with his studies. There were Jewish, Russian and Belarus children in class, and the children communicated in three languages. They understood each other well, and there were no nationality issues between them.

1937 was a very hard year for our family. I've already mentioned that Elena's husband was arrested. But that wasn't all. In the same year Grandfather Avrom-Yankev died. He had prostate adenoma resulting in uremia. He died after suffering a lot in July 1937. We buried him in the Jewish part of the cemetery. We didn't observe any Jewish rituals. Nobody observed any traditions in those years - they weren't popular any more and not appreciated by the authorities. Only his closest friends were at the funeral.

My father told me that there was a time in 1937 when he was very afraid that he would be arrested. I don't know why he was afraid, but there was no way of asking 'why' at that time. It was a small town and some acquaintance from the NKVD mentioned to my father that it would be better for him to hide away for some time. Many of my father's friends were arrested, sentenced or disappeared in prison camps. My father was away from home for about a year. The repression affected even distant locations, although there was no industry apart from the peat shop.

I can't say anything about Hitler coming to power, but Mama told me after the war that it seemed to them an internal affair of Germany, like something that would never have anything to do with them. My parents were concerned when Germany attacked Poland because my mother's brother lived in Poland. After Western Belarus joined the USSR in 1938 my mother established contacts with her brother and his family. [Editor's note: Soviet troops moved into Western Belarus in September 1939, soon after the outbreak of WWII. Arrests started and masses of people were deported to Soviet labor camps.] They all hoped that it would be the beginning of a peaceful life. After the USSR entered into the Non-Aggression Agreement with Germany [the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact] 7 people stopped worrying.

I remember the beginning of the war. It wasn't the Sunday22nd June 1941 for Kopyl. The war for us began earlier, in the night of 21st June. Everybody was asleep, and it was dark when all of a sudden the silence was broken by cannon-balls and flashes and a horrible roar. The buildings were on fire at once. My father's younger brother, Peisah, ran into our house. He had come from Minsk with his family to visit his relatives. A bomb hit his parents' house killing everyone inside. Peisah was alive because he was sleeping in the garden because of the heat. He told us to get ready to leave. There was a cart in the yard. My parents were trying to convince Granny Genia to leave with us. Mama was crying and begging her to get ready. But my grandmother refused flatly. She was saying that it wouldn't be for long and that there was nothing to fear. She remembered the Germans from World War I and believed there was nothing to fear about them. Regretfully, many people who survived World War I were thinking that way. Nobody expected it would turn into such a calamity. My grandmother perished in Kopyl like all other Jews. They were shot and buried in a pit during the first days of the occupation.

We ran away. We were moving at nighttime and hiding in the woods. There were five of us: Mama, Papa, Peisah, my brother and I. We happened to be close to German capture twice. I remember we stopped to eat and rest, and I went to pick some flowers. I remember that all of a sudden a German soldier with an automatic gun rose from the grass in front of me. I screamed and don't remember what happened then. I also remember another night when we came to the road leading to the railway station. German motorcycles and cars were there. We were cut off but we managed to get through. We reached Blykhov railway station and got on a flatcar of a train - there was no other opportunity to leave. When we had just boarded the train the bombing began. All adults ran away leaving me behind in their panic, and I was sitting there alone throughout the raid.

I remember I was crying throughout our trip because I was hungry, but we didn't have any food with us. A military train was passing by and a soldier gave me some bread. There were many people on that flatcar. Nobody knew where we were going to. We stopped in Kirsanov, Tambov region. My father went to the recruitment office and left for the front. The front was moving closer, and we had to leave. We evacuated to Kazakhstan and then to Kyrgyzstan. In Kazakhstan we stayed in a village in the desert. Water was more precious than gold there. People shared their water and bread with us. In winter we arrived in Frunze, Kyrgyzstan. We met our acquaintances there, and they helped us to find a place to live. It was a clay shed for cattle. It had small windows right beneath the ceiling, and the roof was supported by tree trunks. There were many trunks, and Mama jokingly said that we were living in the Column Hall of the House of Unions. We slept on plank beds and stayed in this hut until the end of the war.

My father found us via the evacuation search agency in Buguruslan. He had been wounded in the battles near Stalingrad and sent to Kopeysk in the Ural. He developed gangrene in the hospital where he was staying and his leg had to be amputated. It's a miracle that my father survived. Later he had another surgery. Then he somehow managed to be transferred to the hospital in Frunze. There weren't enough nurses in the hospital. Mama went to the hospital to look after Papa. He was released in 1943 with his leg amputated up to his hip joint, and he walked with crutches for the rest of his life.

My brother and I went to school. I went to the 1st grade in Kazakhstan and then stopped my studies. So, in Frunze I went to the 1st grade again. I could read ever since I had turned 3, so I didn't have any problem. We didn't have any textbooks. We had notebooks made from newspapers and were writing between the lines. There were mainly evacuated children in the class as well as our teacher, Margarita Nikolaevna.

The local people treated us nicely and supported us. There were Koreans, Chechens and Tatars in our neighborhood. Many of them had been deported there. People were living in some kind of holes, but they got along well and had no conflicts.

Mama got a sewing machine at the market. I still have it. Mama could sew and saved us from starving to death that way. I don't know what she exchanged that sewing machine for. We didn't have anything. I remember the dress Mama had. Nurses in hospital where my father was were throwing away used bandages. Mama picked them up, washed and colored them with onion peel and made a dress out of them.

During the evacuation Mama and I fell ill with jaundice. The hospital was overcrowded, so we were taking the treatment at home. When I grew older I heard about the 'method' we used back then and was horrified: we had to swallow a few lice. There was no lack of that 'medication' back then. However strange it may sound, swallowing lice helped. Mama had liver problems for the rest of her life, though.

I remember people coming into our hut to beg for some food. They were so swollen up from hunger that they looked like balloons. Once a man wanted to change salt for some food - and there were lice in this salt. Many people starved to death or died of diseases.

When my father returned he received his invalidity pension. We managed somehow, but it was impossible to buy anything for money. Mama saved us with her sewing. Sometimes she made flat bread from black sticky flour. Since that time I hate melons by the way. I can't even stand their smell. Melon was the only thing there in sufficient quantity, and our basic food was dried apricots and melons. Now theses things are delicacies.

My brother and I grew out of our clothes. Mama was altering them and we managed to have clothing that way.

The climate in Frunze is continental, and winters are cold. We had a Burzhuika stove in the middle of the room. It served for cooking and heating. We, kids, were constantly looking for chips of wood for this stove. We weren't under the risk of violent death, and we weren't living behind barbed wire, but to call it life - oh, Lord, no. We were constantly facing starvation or diseases. There were also cases of violent death. My mother's friend was in evacuation in Frunze with her little daughters. One was a year old and the other one about 3. Well, their mother went to the market to get some food in exchange for a few clothes and was murdered on her way for these rags. A family from Moscow adopted her two girls. Another Jewish family we made good friends with and went to Chernovtsy with after the war, adopted a Jewish boy. I also remember another story: the mother of two boys died. A Russian family adopted the older one, Izia, who was the same age as I. At that time nobody cared about nationality; those kids were orphans that needed a family. The younger brother was a very sickly boy. My mother's friend, Polina, was looking after him. He began to call her Mama, and she couldn't part with him when he got better. He never knew that she wasn't his real mother.

We listened to the radio for news about the war. Sometimes we had newspapers. Newspapers were valuable to us, because we made notebooks from them by tearing them to individual pages and putting those together.

My brother finished school in Frunze in 1944 when he was 16. He passed his exams for the 10th grade. He wanted to learn a profession and go to work. At 16 he entered the Institute of Electric Engineering in Leningrad and finished his 1st year while we were in Frunze.

I remember the dawn of 9th May 1945. Our neighbor banged on our door shouting, 'The war is over! The war is over!' People were rejoicing, crying and kissing each other. I don't know who was the 1st to know, but we heard about it at dawn. That whole day people hugged each other and danced.

We knew what had happened to our relatives because Belarus was already liberated. We knew that none of them was alive. Mama firmly said firmly, 'I shall not return to the ashes of our home. I just can't'. We were thinking of where to go. Our neighbor lived in Chernovtsy before the war. He told us a lot about Bukovina. He said that his friends had told him that the town wasn't destroyed. He convinced us to go there. We arrived on 3rd September 1945.

The institute where my brother studied was to return to Leningrad. We were considering of letting him go there, but it was difficult. There was no money or clothes. We decided that he should be with us. In Chernovtsy he entered the chemical department of the university. Mama made him a jacket from Papa's uniform coat, and he wore that one until he finished university.

It was easy to find a place to live in Chernovtsy. There were many empty apartments. The town had been liberated in 1944, and many families were leaving for Romania. We moved into a large three-bedroom apartment along with another family. We thought it would be easier to maintain and heat the apartment. People weren't eager to have separate apartments then. The town was intact, except for three buildings. There had been Romanian units in this town, and they were careful to leave the town in good condition because they were hoping that once it would be given back to them. So, we didn't have a problem with getting a decent apartment. The problem was clothing, food and heating.

My father got a job as the chief accountant of the Social Provisions Department. Mama made him a jacket, and he wore it to work. Mama also made me a jacket from a blanket. Our first years after the war were difficult, but we were happy that the war was over. Mama fell ill with bronchitis which resulted in pneumonia, which again developed into bronchial asthma. My father was an invalid. His salary and little pension was all our income. Mama helped to provide for the family with her sewing. But we were glad we survived. We enjoyed having boiled potatoes, cucumbers, plums and apples.

I went to the 4th grade of the Russian school for girls in 1945. There were two schools for boys and two for girls. There were 30 girls in my class. We didn't have enough textbooks and used some Ukrainian textbooks. It was difficult at first because I didn't know Ukrainian. But I picked it up soon and managed.

There were many Jewish children at school. There was also a Jewish school, but it was too far away from our home. During the campaign against 'cosmopolitans' 8 it was closed, and the girls from this school came to our class. My Russian classmate told me recently that she learned all Jewish traditions from another classmate from that Jewish school. There was no anti-Semitism at school or elsewhere. Chernovtsy had always been a very tolerant town. Yiddish was heard in the streets. Peasants or janitors could speak Yiddish, German and Romanian.

In the 4th grade I became a pioneer. It was a routinely procedure at school. We celebrated all Soviet holidays at school: 1st May and 7th November [October Revolution Day] 9. Nothing changed in my life. In the morning teachers and children went to the parade. At home we didn't celebrate Soviet holidays. In the evening there was a concert at school for the children and their parents. Firstly, we couldn't afford to celebrate and, secondly, my mother didn't acknowledge those holidays. My brother and I didn't mind having a celebration, but we understood that we couldn't ask Mama about it. MyY parents didn't go to the synagogue in Chernovtsy. My father didn't care about it, and my mother couldn't stay in a crowd of people because she had asthmatic fits. Mama only celebrated Pesach until her last days. She never had enough money and saved for a whole year to have us enjoy the food at Easter. We bought some matzah at the synagogue. We only ate matzah on the first and last day of the holidays and managed without bread on the rest of the days. Besides Pesach we also celebrated New Year's and birthdays.

We lived near the Jewish theater. The leading actors of this theater lived in our house and the neighboring buildings. My friend and I went to their performances. By the way, this was the Jewish theater from Kiev that moved to Chernovtsy because the building of the theater in Kiev had been destroyed by bombing. They moved temporarily, as they said, until the building in Kiev was restored. In the end they stayed in Chernovtsy for good. In 1948, during the campaign against 'cosmopolitans', the theater was closed. I went to see almost all their performances, although I could hardly afford it. Besides going to the theater I read a lot. Our whole family read a lot. We had a huge collection of books that had been left by the previous owners of the apartment. There were books in Yiddish, Russian and French. Reading has always been my hobby.

I became a Komsomol 10 member in the 10th grade. I have never been involved in politics or social activities. I didn't like meetings or social activities and avoided them as much as I could. In the 10th grade my teacher told me that I wouldn't receive a medal or be able to enter university if I didn't become a Komsomol member. I gave in and submitted my application to the Komsomol.

I remember how happy my parents were when they heard about the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Even my father, who usually kept his emotions to himself, began to smile when he talked about it. It was a moral support for them to know that their 'drifting' people had finally found their motherland. I was too small to understand things back then.

I remember 1948, the campaign against 'cosmopolitans', very well. We had a book about Jews, published in Romania. I remember Papa saying that we had to burn it. I was hysterical about having to burn such a book, but he said I didn't understand things and insisted on our doing this. It was dangerous to have such books at home - it was a reason for being accused of chauvinism. My family and my friends' families didn't suffer, but it was a hard time. One couldn't even talk to his acquaintance because nobody knew the consequences. The Jewish school and theater were closed.

My brother graduated in 1949 and got a job assignment in Tashkent. Thanks to him I managed to finish school. My parents wanted me to go to technical school after the 7th grade, get a profession and go to work. They were very short of money. But my brother insisted that I continued my studies if I wanted. His salary was 800 rubles per month, and he sent us 500 rubles. Perhaps, this was one of the reasons why my brother stayed single. I finished ten years at school and studied at university with my brother's support.

I faced anti-Semitism at school for the first time. It didn't come from my classmates, but from their parents. The parents of two girls in our class worked at the NKVD. They were spoiled girls and didn't study well. The mother of one of them came to school and screamed that Jewish girls had the highest grades in the Russian language when her daughter only had a '2' or '3'. She was asking whether it was possible that Jewish girls knew Russian better than a Russian girl. Then I understood what anti-Semitism meant. I had excellent marks in all subjects, and nobody doubted that I was going to receive a gold medal. I passed all 12 final exams with the highest grades, but got a '4' in composition. When I demanded that they showed this composition to me they said that I made no mistakes, but got a lower grade for my handwriting. It was ridiculous. I finished school in 1952 and received a silver medal.

I couldn't go to study in another town. My parents were ill, and I had to be with them. Anti-Semitism on the state level was at its height in Chernovtsy. It was very hard for a Jew to enter a higher educational institution. My silver medal gave me the right to enter university without exams. I decided to study at the Chemistry Department. There were 25 applicants and only five were to be accepted. One of the university assistants was present at our final exams at school, and he helped me to get through. Also, my father went to the rector. He was a veteran and a war invalid. He didn't want to ask for me, but it was the only way out. I was admitted and I was the only Jew in my class.

The Doctors' Plot 11 began when I was a 1st year student. This was a disturbing period, very much like 1937. We were stunned. Everyone realized that it was all schemed. The majority of the population had a nice attitude towards Jews. It was mainly anti-Semitism on the state level. A few years later I had a discussion with a Ukrainian friend of mine. He studied at the Medical Institute. I asked him why Ukrainian people were loyal towards Jews, and he said that they have always been friendly with each other. However, the Russian people, who established the Soviet power in Bukovina and 'liberated' it, weren't appreciated so much.

In 1953 Stalin died. I must have been very naïve. There was something disastrous in his death. Although it was no secret that Stalin was a tyrant we had a weird feeling about how we were going to live without him. My father knew the truth about Stalin and told my brother and me about it. My father witnessed the arrests of 1937 [during the Great Terror] and understood the reason for it. But I couldn't understand what was to happen to us and how life was to continue without Stalin.

I graduated from university in 1957. I had excellent grades in all subjects except for Marxism-Leninism; they gave me a '4' at the exam. There was an assistant professor at the exam - she came from old nobility - and when she saw what grade they were giving me she blushed of indignation. The students I was helping right there at the exams got a '5'. I received a diploma but couldn't find a job.

Whatever vacancies I applied for the response was always that they had already employed someone else. I couldn't find a job for eight months until my brother's friend helped me to get one at the laboratory of a shop. I was paid 45 rubles per month. This seemed a fortune to me. I was happy to have this job, although it wasn't good enough considering I had a university degree. I worked there for 41 years. I faced anti- Semitism at work more than once. They appointed a young inexperienced girl for the position of the chief of the laboratory, although I was the only candidate for this position at that time. In the long run I got the position of an engineer and senior engineer, although I was the first female inventor in Ukraine. I could have been further promoted if I had become a party member, but I didn't want to be one.

I worked in a Jewish team. Our chief and about 90% of the employees were Jews, so my colleagues never expressed any anti-Semitic feelings towards me.

When I began to work in this laboratory I believed it wouldn't be for long. I imagined a different career. I was told by someone that the head of department at Chernovtsy University said once that he would have loved to enlist me for the post-graduate course, but he was afraid they wouldn't have let him do this. Now, after all these years, I think I was very lucky. I worked in a great team with a great erudite boss. I learned a lot from him. I've never liked chemistry though. I do my job appropriately and thoroughly. Speaking about my dream: I would like to work with animals. I love animals, and I know how to approach them. A couple of doves come to my windowsill. I have been friends with them for five years. They eat from my hand. I love cats and dogs, whatever animal it doesn't matter.

In the 1970s Jews began to emigrate to Israel. I remember buying something from a peasant woman at the time, and she asked me why I didn't leave. I said I felt okay where I was. And she said to me, 'Have you read the Bible? You are young and you just don't know that the time has come when God gets all his people together at one location'. Another time I was waiting for a bus. Two Ukrainian women were talking behind me. They were saying with regret that there would be no good doctor or teacher left after all Jews emigrated. People in Chernovtsy say that the town was different before the Jews left.

I never wanted to emigrate to Israel for different reasons. I'm all alone. I have some relatives abroad, but I wouldn't be able to find them. And here I have at least my friends, ex-colleagues and other people that I can socialize with. What would I find in a foreign land? Besides, the climate in Israel is unacceptable for me because I have heart problems. I have thought about it, and I understood that I was going to take my problems with me and have new ones there on top of it. When I was just beginning to think about it my brother was still alive. He worked at the Military Enterprise for many years. In his last years he was head of the shop at the Microelectronics Plant in Sevastopol and had access to sensitive information. Even if he had left his work he would have only been allowed to leave the country after 15-20 years. We were very close. I couldn't imagine leaving without him. My brother died in 1980 when he was still young. My mother died in 1962 and my father in 1978. It's impossible to live alone. I need somebody close. I'm not married, but that's the way things are. I was looking after my parents and lived in the same apartment with them for many years. I couldn't even imagine inviting a man to my home. But perhaps, I just didn't meet my Mr. Right. I would like to visit Israel, this wonderful country. But with my pension I can only dream about it.

Since Ukraine gained its independence the attitude towards Jews has changed dramatically. At first they started talking calmly about Jews on TV, radio and in newspapers. Previously they had even avoided to say the word 'Jew'. Jewish culture is in the process of being restored. Things have undoubtedly improved. Many Jewish newspapers and magazines are published. I don't know how sincere our government is but it tries to be tolerant towards Jews and shows an interest in them.

I read Jewish newspapers and learned about the spiritual heritage of the Jewish people at university. We celebrate Sabbath in the community. I have many friends there. I'm trying to light Sabbath candles at home. I celebrate Jewish holidays at home. What's going on around convinced me finally that there is God. He supports his people. He is there, I know he is.

Glossary

Liana Degtiar
Kishinev
Moldova
Interviewer: Nathalia Fomina
Date of interview: June 2004

Liana Degtiar is a sweet young-looking lady with her grayish hair cut short. She is 71 years old, but she doesn't look a day older than 65. She is energetic, active, her manners are a little cold, but she has a sense of humor. She seems to be imperious in her own way. She can't be bothered to concentrate on the ethnical and customary details that are so important for us, but surprisingly she gave us a colorful description of the life of her family in evacuation in Tajikistan with every little detail. Liana, her husband Ivan Barbul and their son Boris live in a spacious three-bedroom apartment on the tenth floor of an apartment building in Ryshkanovka, a green and comfortable district of Kishinev. This is a typical intelligent Soviet family whose members have broad outlooks and know about art and literature. They have a big collection of fiction and technical books. Their apartment is furnished to serve the purpose of convenience for its tenants. There is a desk by the window: a cozy ottoman in the corner with a lamp bracket over it. The husband and wife care about each other. The husband slightly teases his wife, but he clearly shows his affection for her. Liana offered me some tea and a piece of cake which she made before my visit.

My family background
Growing up
During the War
Post-war
Glossary

My family background

My paternal grandfather, Borukh Degtiar, was born in 1877. He lived in Soroki, Bessarabia 1 [Editor's note: Soroki: a district town in Bessarabia province, today in Moldova. According to the census of 1897 there were 15,351 residents and 8,783 of them were Jews. In 1910 there was a synagogue and 16 prayer houses in Soroki]. I don't know where he was born. He owned a fabric store. My grandfather wasn't highly educated, but he could read, write and count well. He could read and write in Yiddish and spoke fluent Russian and Romanian. My father told me that my grandfather was extremely good in mathematics and could solve complicated problems in algebra just by using mathematical principles. My father, who had graduated from the Electromechanical Faculty of the University of Cannes, couldn't figure out how he managed to do this. Grandfather Borukh's grandsons must have inherited their grandfather's talent to exact sciences. My grandfather had a number of talents. He could sing well and was a cantor at the synagogue. My grandfather and grandmother spoke Yiddish to one another. They were religious, read the Yizkor and I'm sure they followed the kashrut.

Soroki was a Jewish town, but there were also Russian, Moldovan and Ukrainian inhabitants. They got along well and had no conflicts. My grandfather was a very decent man and was well respected by all in the town. I stayed with my grandparents in Soroki when I was seven years old, but I can't remember what my grandfather was like. I think he was tall. My aunts have his photos where he has a moustache, but no beard. He had a brick house with a shingle roof, in the center of Soroki. I don't know how many rooms there were in the house, but there were four families living there before the Great Patriotic War 2. It was a long house with a porch on each side. There was a smaller house in the yard. There was a square verandah in the center of the yard with grape vines twining around it. There was also a deep cellar under the verandah where my grandparents kept their food stocks in summer. My grandfather's store was somewhere else. However, my grandfather proved to be a poor businessman. He used to sell fabric on trust. Some customers never paid back their debts and my grandfather went bankrupt. Then he had to sell half of the house to a doctor or a lawyer. He also sold his little house in the yard.

My grandmother, Beila Degtiar, whose maiden name I don't know, was born in 1878. She was short and had a hunched back from her old age. I can hardly remember her. In a picture where she was probably photographed when she was younger, she wears no wig or shawl. She didn't have any education. She was a housewife and had to work hard having to take care of their six children: five daughters and a son, my father. My grandmother was hospitable, and the house was always full of visitors.

My father's sister Rachil was born in 1901. She finished a gymnasium in Soroki and graduated from the university in Iasi [today Romania]. I think she was a lawyer, but when I knew her she didn't work. Aunt Rachil married Naum Rozhnov. Their daughter Dina, born in 1934, and son Yuzik, Jewish name Iosif, born in 1935, and I were about the same age and we were childhood friends. Uncle Naum must have been a chemist. He worked at a sugar factory in a small town near Bucharest [today Romania]. I liked visiting them. In 1940, when Bessarabia was annexed to the Soviet Union [see Annexation of Bessarabia to the Soviet Union] 3, Aunt Rachil, her husband and children returned to Grandfather Borukh's house in Soroki. Uncle Naum went to work.

During the war they evacuated to Kazakhstan. They lived in the village of Zirabulak near Samarkand where Uncle Naum worked at a sugar factory. They returned in 1948 and moved to Chernovtsy [today Ukraine]. I think Uncle Naum went to work at the sugar factory again and Aunt Rachil was a housewife. Yuzik finished the Polytechnic College in Novocherkassk [today Russia] and worked in Kishinev. Later, he returned to Novocherkassk, and defended a doctor dissertation. He is a lecturer at the Polytechnic College. He is married. His son Ilia lives in Sochi [today Russia]. Dina studied at the Teachers' College in Soroki, but she never finished it. She got married. Dina's husband, Isaac, died a few years ago. Their son Alik moved to America and got married there. Uncle Naum died in 1973 and Aunt Rachil in 1987 in Chernovtsy.

My father's sister Gita, born in 1906, graduated from the Pharmaceutical Department of the university in Iasi and went to work as a pharmacist. Gita married my father's former group mate in the Realschule, Yakov Shtivelman. My father told me that Yakov wrote his diploma thesis on the October revolution [see Russian Revolution of 1917] 4 before finishing the Realschule 5. Yakov was a talented man. He graduated from the Chemical Faculty of the university in Iasi. He and Aunt Gita lived in Bucharest and we visited them. In 1931 their son Carl was born. In 1940 they also returned to Bessarabia. Uncle Yakov worked as a chemistry teacher in the Jewish school in Soroki. He always recalled this school with a warm feeling; they had a great team of teachers there. During the war, Aunt Rachil and Uncle Yakov evacuated to the vicinity of Samarkand. They worked at a sugar factory. Yakov was a chemist and Gita worked at the laboratory, or perhaps, she was a pharmacist. In 1945 their second son Boris was born. They returned to Soroki in 1948.

Carl graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Chernovtsy University. He is a theoretical physicist. He tried to enter the postgraduate course at Moscow State University six times, but failed probably because of Item 5 6. He finally entered the postgraduate course at the Institute of Physics named after Ioffe in Leningrad [today Russia] in the late 1950s. Carl lived in the dormitory during his studies. His co-tenants were Chinese. At that time there were many students from China in the USSR. His friends jokingly called him the 'Chinese emperor.' When I went to Leningrad on business Carl took me to Ioffe's lectures. Carl married a Jewish girl from Chernovtsy, a daughter of his parents' acquaintances. Their daughter's name was Vita. Carl defended his doctor thesis, and worked in a scientific research institute in Kazan, a 'box' [this was the word for scientific organizations doing sensitive work in the USSR]. He was a theoretical physicist. Carl divorced his wife and remarried. His second wife Galia was Russian. Their daughter fell seriously ill and died.

Carl was offered a job at Ternopol University where he taught all theoretical disciplines in physics. Uncle Yakov died in 1984, and Aunt Gita moved in with Carl in Ternopol [today Ukraine]. Her younger son Boris graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Novosibirsk University and worked there at the Academic district. He defended a candidate's dissertation [see Soviet Doctoral degrees] 7. He married Dina, a Russian girl. Some time later they moved to Gelendjik [today Russia] and worked at the Scientific Research Institute of Oceanology. During perestroika 8 the institute was closed. Boris moved to Israel in 1991. Aunt Gita followed him in 1994. Carl also moved there in April 1995. He was 64 years old; he never managed to learn Ivrit and gave lessons in theoretical physics to university students in Israel. Aunt Gita is over 90 years old. I visited them in 1997 in Kfar Saba [today Israel], when Aunt Gita was full of energy. She welcomed her guests, did the cooking and served at the table. Carl convinced me to give a lecture to immigrants about the current situation in the former USSR. Aunt Gita also listened to me. Boris is involved in the organization of specialized schools for talented children in Israel.

My father's sister Dvoira was born in 1909. She married Abram Kogan. In 1931 their son Lyova [affectionate for Leonid] was born. Dvoira had a secondary education and gave private classes teaching German. My father liked telling the following funny story: on his way from France, where he studied, to Soroki, his companion in the compartment, a lady from Soroki, boasted to him of her fluent German. She said she thought Yiddish was very close to German. To prove this she started speaking 'German' which sounded similar to Yiddish. My father asked her, 'But how come you speak such good German?' and she replied, 'But of course I do! My teacher was Dvoira Degtiar!' My father often joked afterward about my aunt teaching German. During the war Dvoira and her family evacuated to Uzbekistan. I don't remember in which town they stayed. After the war they returned to Soroki.

Uncle Abram worked as an economist or accountant at a garment factory. In 1947 their daughter Nela was born. My aunt finished the Pedagogical College via correspondence and became a Moldovan teacher at school. Her son Lyonia [affectionate for Leonid] was a gifted boy, but not quite industrious. At one time he studied at the Mathematical Department of the Teacher's Training College in Soroki. Aunt Dvoira accompanied him to the lectures in social sciences: Lyonia fell asleep and Aunt Dvoira took notes of the lectures for him assiduously. Later, Lyonia graduated from the Moscow Technological College and worked at the 'Elektromashina' plant in Kishinev. He was the manager of the laboratory. Nela graduated from the Polytechnic College in Novocherkassk and got married. They were the first of our family to move to Israel in 1974. They lived in Be'er Sheva. Abram died in 1980, and Aunt Dvoira died in 1988. Nela and her family live in Be'er Sheva and Lyonia lives in Tel Aviv.

My father's sister Fenia was born in 1920. She was believed to be the prettiest and most talented one in the family. She loved music, sang and danced well. Fenia entered a college in Bucharest. When Soviet forces entered Bessarabia in 1940, she returned to Soroki. There was a military unit lodged in Soroki. Fenia met a young handsome officer. His name was Anatoliy Beliayev. He was a Russian from Moscow. They fell in love with each other. This caused a mess in the family: a traditional patriarchal Jewish family member and this Russian guy! They decided to get married and move to Moscow. Grandmother Beila locked Fenia in the house, but her children had more progressive views: they were in love. How could she oppose to their getting married? They convinced my grandmother to let her go, and they left for Moscow. Fenia spoke fluent Russian and Romanian. She worked at a radio station in Moscow. The war began in 1941. Tolia [Anatoliy] went to the front on the first days of the war and perished. Fenia lived with his parents and sister. In early 1941 she gave birth to a girl. Fenia got peritonitis in hospital. She died. Her daughter also died. Anatoliy's sister told me this story after the war. Anatoliy's sister never got married, so there was no continuation of their family.

My father's younger sister Riva was born in 1923. She finished a secondary school in Soroki. When the war began in 1941, Riva and my grandparents stayed in Soroki. They were taken to Pechora Camp 9 in Vinnitsa region [today Ukraine]. My grandparents died in the camp. Riva survived. When the Soviet forces liberated the camp, she returned to Grandfather Borukh's house in Soroki. Riva had two rooms in the house. We also returned to this house from evacuation. Riva got married and went to serve in the Soviet army. After the war she and her husband were demobilized and lived in the village of Kotyuzhany. Riva divorced her husband and moved to Uzbekistan in 1947 to live with Aunt Gita. Later, she and my aunt's family moved to Chernovtsy. Riva finished medical school and went to work as a medical nurse. She married a widower who had a twelve-year-old daughter. Her name was Rosa. Riva couldn't have children. Riva raised the girl, whose two children became her grandchildren. When her second husband died, Riva got married for the third time. Her third husband's name was Ox and Riva adopted another daughter. Her name was Ella. They moved to Israel. Riva lives in Lod. She is a great-grandmother now and is well cared for.

My father, Elih Degtiar, was born in Soroki in 1903. He was called El' Borisovich in the Russian manner [Russians use to call people with the second name - patronymic also, but they used the Russian name Boris instead of the Jewish one Boruch in this case], and at home he was called Elik. His sisters loved him dearly and his wish was their command: 'Whatever Elik says.' My father must have studied in a cheder. He also learned to play the violin for a short time. After finishing elementary school he entered a Realschule in Soroki. There was a five percent quota 10 in tsarist Realschule. My father passed the entrance exams with excellent marks and won the competition. His group mate Yakov Shtivelman from Rashkov later married his sister Gita. After finishing the Realschule, which happened when Bessarabia was annexed to the USSR, my father went to study in Iasi. One year later, he went to study at the Electromechanical Faculty of the university in Cannes, France. On summer vacations my father worked in France. In 1927, he graduated from the university and worked in France for some time. Since he was a Romanian citizen he went back home to serve his mandatory term in the army. He was a sergeant and served at the headquarters in Beltsy. He and his fellow comrade were lodged with the family of the Tsavalers, my mother's family.

My maternal grandfather, Solomon Tsavaler, lived in Beltsy. He must have been born there since his relatives lived there. Solomon was a railroad freight forwarder. He had a house in Beltsy. My grandmother Leya actually had two names, but I only remember one, and I don't know her maiden name. She was Solomon's second wife. His first wife died. My mother had a half- brother from my grandfather's first marriage. His name was Mosia: this must have been an affectionate of Moisey. Mosia Tsavaler lived in Istanbul, Turkey. He and his family perished during World War II. Grandmother Leya died in 1926.

My mother, Sophia Tsavaler, was born in Beltsy in 1908. She finished a gymnasium. She was 18 when her mother died. My mother lived with her brother and worked in Istanbul for a year. She also studied in an English college. Then she didn't like it there for some reason and returned to her father. She worked as a typist in a bank and then became a document operator. My mother was of average height and very pretty. She met my father and after his service was over, they moved to Bucharest where they got married in 1930.

Gowing up

I don't think they had a wedding party. They didn't have a marriage certificate issued by the synagogue [ketubbah], but they had one issued by a civil registry office. They rented an apartment in Bucharest. My father was an engineer in a company. I was born in 1933. Soon after, my father was arrested. He wasn't a communist, but he must have sympathized with communists and probably supported them somehow. He stayed in jail for about a year. My mother hired an attorney. There was a trial, but my father was finally released. In jail he contracted tuberculosis. He couldn't go to work for a while. Since I had never seen my father before I turned one year old, and when he came home, I didn't recognize him, and pointed my finger at a photo, 'This is my father.' Later, my father went to work as an engineer in an electric engineering company.

I have vague memories of our apartment in Bucharest. My nanny and I stayed in the biggest room. There was a dining room with a radio and a big table in it. My parents rearranged the fore-room for a bedroom. They had one big double bed in it. My parents must have spoken Russian at home since I started talking in this language. My parents didn't observe Jewish traditions or celebrate Jewish holidays at home. Perhaps, my mother baked something on Purim or Chanukkah. My mother was a typist at the railroad office. My nanny was Polish I think. She was a devoted Catholic and took me to the Roman Catholic Church regularly. At first I listened to the priest when he pronounced his prayers. Once, I started singing myself, when everybody else was quiet. After that my nanny stopped taking me with her. Later she left us. My mother was desperate as she had to go to work and needed a baby sitter. She told me, as she was wondering what to do about the situation, she saw a young nice-looking girl walking towards her. My mother asked her, 'Where can I find a nanny?' And the girl replied, 'But I can work for you!'

This was how Mariora came into our family. Mariora was an illegitimate daughter of a beautiful gipsy woman and a Romanian landlord. She grew up in his mansion. She could read and write in Romanian, but this was all the education she had. When she came to our house, she was already married. Her husband was a private in the Romanian army. Mariora took care of me and took me out to walk in the park. I picked up some Romanian from her, but I never learned to read or write. I think my Romanian was more beautifully spoken than the Romanian they speak in Moldova nowadays. Mariora stayed with us even when I went to kindergarten. I think this was a private kindergarten. They didn't teach us to read or write, but we learned embroidery and other handicrafts: we made carton toys and decorated them with applications. Mariora was so attached to our family that when we were leaving Bucharest she wanted to go to Bessarabia with us, but it wasn't possible. I often thought about her after the war and still remember her.

My parents' friends and relatives often visited us in Bucharest. My father's younger sisters, Fenia and Riva, often visited us, and Gita and Yakov and their son Carl, who also lived in Bucharest, often came to see us also. Carl was two years older than me. We were friends. Gita told me that she once overheard our small talk. I asked Carl, 'What will you do when you grow up?' He thought a little and said, 'I will be a philosopher.' 'What do philosophers do?' I asked. 'I will be sitting and thinking.' Then I said, 'Ha! What would you eat then?' My father's sister Rachil and my cousin brother Yuzik and cousin sister Dina lived near Bucharest and often came to see us as well. I shall never forget visiting them in their little town on Christmas Eve. It was like a fairy-tale. The trees were covered with snow, and the one-storied houses also had their roofs covered with snow. There were only dim lights in the dark town. People dressed up and sang carols and there were jingle bells ringing. I was four or five years old, but I can still remember how I was impressed by this fabulous beauty.

During the War

In 1939 World War II began. There were rumors spreading about how fascists persecuted Jews taking them to ghettos and concentration camps. When Bessarabia was annexed to the USSR, the residents were given one week to return to Moldova. My parents had no doubts about returning, and I understood from what the adults discussed that we were to go to Moldova because it was too dangerous to stay in Romania. My parents believed that we would only be safe in the USSR. Besides, they wanted to be close to their parents. My father's sisters Rachil and Gita and their families also returned to Bessarabia. We could only take our most necessary belongings with us. My parents had to borrow some money for the trip from their acquaintances. They also borrowed some money for my mother's colleague, my friend Lialia Burliy's father and his family, who were to go with us.

We arrived in Beltsy, where Grandfather Solomon lived, but we didn't stay there for long. I don't know where my parents worked, but I stayed at home with my grandfather and his new wife, a nice and kind woman. I don't know her name. I remember that a dog bit me in the yard and my mother took me to a hospital in Kishinev to inoculate me against rabies. We also had the dog's tests with us to identify whether it had rabies. My mother also obtained a permit for us to go to Kishinev to get medical treatment, if necessary. They prepared a series of injections for me at a clinic, which was located in the center of town. One morning an earthquake in Kishinev destroyed a few buildings, including the clinic. Fortunately, we weren't there at that moment. The dog turned out to be healthy, and I didn't need injections.

In summer I was sent to Grandmother Beila in Soroki. My cousins Carl, Yuzik, Dina and Lyonia, were there too. We played in the yard. We spoke Romanian to one another. My grandparents spoke Yiddish. I picked up some Yiddish, but I didn't mention it to anybody that I began to understand the language. Many wealthy families, including a number of Jews, were deported to Siberia from Soroki in summer. My future classmate Asia's father, a doctor, accompanied the train. Grandfather Borukh didn't suffer any persecution. He wasn't wealthy by that time, and besides, his children sympathized with the communist ideas. I went back to Beltsy. Soon Grandfather Solomon fell ill with pneumonia. He died in January 1941. My mother didn't want to stay in Beltsy. We moved to Grandfather Borukh's house in Soroki. My father went to work as an engineer in the town executive committee.

In June the war began. There were bombings of Kishinev. A bomb killed my parent's friend Marelskiy in the central square at 6am. I think my parents and I evacuated in early July. Nobody expected this war to last long. My grandparents stayed home: they were too old to travel. We took a folder with documents, silver spoons, forks, my grandmother's gold rings, necklace and a chain and locket. We also had a few suitcases with winter clothes. We had to cross the Dnestr on a boat. My father also helped other people to sail to the opposite bank. At this moment an air raid began. Germans were shooting their machine guns. It was a squall of lead. There were many victims, but my father continued helping people to cross the river. He finally picked us to take us to the other side, but we had to leave some of our luggage behind. We couldn't take the luggage while so many people were still waiting to cross the river. I think after we crossed the river, the crossing was closed. We moved to the railroad station in Vapnyarka [today Ukraine]. We walked across the fields, I also had to carry some luggage, and I kept moaning, but I didn't drop it. We seemed to be walking endlessly before we took a train to Vinnitsa.

In Vinnitsa we boarded a train heading east. I don't remember anything about this trip. We arrived at Shakhty in Rostov region [today Russia]. My father went to work as a teacher in a Mining College as he knew Russian well. He and his students descended into a shaft to study electrical equipment. It was time for me to go to school. I had my birth certificate issued in Romanian. Who would have known Romanian in Shakhty? My name was also indicated in my father's Soviet passport. Right before 1st September my father was mobilized to the army. My mother and I went to the recruitment office with my father, when it occurred to me that I had no documents whatsoever mentioning my name or any information about me. We went to the military commandant to convey this problem to him and request for some kind of a certificate with my name included in it. He looked at my father's passport and said, 'Ah, you are a Bessarabian. We don't recruit Bessarabians' [Soviet power didn't trust the former Romanian citizens]. He sent my father home.

On 1st September I went to school, but I don't remember the first day whatsoever. I remember my kind first teacher. She wasn't young. She told me that she had traveled to Finland and that nobody in Finland locked their doors: there were no thieves. Once she sent me home to pick something. On my way back I got lost and was very scared. I was crying when I finally got to school, and she comforted me tenderly: very much like my grandmother. I was sociable and made friends with many children in the yard. I remember two brothers. They were there with their mother. Their father, an officer, was at the front. By the way, another dog bit me in Shakhty, but this time there was no ado about it, there were other problems to deal with. Shakhty was an ordinary town. Children went to school, played in the yard, and people went to the cinema. The only sign of war was that there were many military men in the town. It all ended instantly, when one day, a few months later, the front line came close to the town.

We had to move forward. We took a train to Rostov. There was a big junction station where there were crowds of people. The Germans never stopped bombing, there were air raid alarms. What were we to do? We ran under some tents at the station. Their roofs were covered with some steel sheets. The bullets echoed hitting on them. It was so scary! People huddled up to one another. We finally managed to get on a train heading east. We arrived at Makhachkala [today Russia]. The front line was advancing to the east as well. In Makhachkala we boarded a freight boat. I don't remember how long it sailed for. The deck was full of old people, children, babies and their families who had left their homes. There were attacks on us from the air. I also remember that there were problems with the toilets. There were long lines to the toilets. We arrived in Krasnovodsk [today Russia] where we took a train to Stalinabad [today Tajikistan] where my father received an order to go to work at the Kurgan-Tubinskaya region, Oktiabrskiy district, site of Vahshstroy [Construction of a big irrigation system in the Vahshskaya Valley on the Vahsh River in Tajikistan]. This construction started before the war and there were American engineers involved. Bruno Jasienski wrote a novel about this construction. [Bruno Jasienski (1901- 1938): Polish and Russian Soviet writer, lived in the USSR since 1929. The novel the interviewee is referring to is called 'Man's slough'.]

Our family was accommodated in a barrack in Vahshstroy. These were barracks for eight families. Each family had a room, small fore room and porch. There was no heating but the winters were warm. There were primus stoves for cooking. We slept outside all year round as it was stuffy inside. We were given mosquito nets as there were lots of malaria mosquitoes. Every evening we spread those nets over the transom beams on both sides of the beds, tying them on top and at the bottom to protect us from the wind. However, we all fell ill with malaria. My mother had the most serious condition. Every autumn she was taken to hospital, having acute attacks of malaria. I had fever and was shivering. I went to bed and my parents covered me with all the available blankets for me to get warmer. My mother had quinine every day, and my father and I were given achrichine. Acclimatization was particularly hard with children. I fell ill with measles. Like many other children I had furuncles on my legs.

My mother worked at a sovkhoz 11 named Yakko-Din producing astrakhan fur. She was a typist and then chief of the planning department. She was given a horse which she rode to the mountains where sheep flocks were taken for the summer. She collected data for the district department. My father was a physics teacher at a school. Later, he taught mathematics, chemistry, drawing, astronomy and even German since there weren't enough teachers at the school. At one point he resigned from school to be recruited into the army. He went to the recruitment point in Stalinabad where the medical commission discovered that he had a closed form of tuberculosis. He was released from military service and returned to us. We were happy about it. I also went to this Russian school, the only school in the area.

I don't remember whether there were cards [see Card system] 12 or lists of people in order to get food and bread from a store by standing in a queue. Also, all the children in this village received half a liter of milk every day. It was my chore to stand in the queue for milk with a jar. Occasionally, we received horsemeat, but never any butter or oil. Very rarely were we given cotton-seed oil, which tasted bitter. All other products were supplied to the front. We also received a very small plot of land for a vegetable garden. We had two crops per year. The climate was warm and there was irrigation: all the plots had little aryl canals. Every morning and evening, people made clay dams on their plots to collect water for the plants. We grew carrots, potatoes, corns, lentils, beans, eggplants, paprika, and melons. We had lots of vegetables. I could eat to my heart's content. Each of us could have a water melon three times a day. We dried the water melons on the roof and had water melon marmalade which was delicious. There were also gardens in the village where I had dried apricots, grapes and raisins. There were pistachios growing in the steppe.

There were engineers and technicians, who had constructed the channel and stayed to operate it. There were doctors, and other people who might have been deported here for various reasons; maybe they were kulaks 13 brought here in the 1930s. Many of them were doing well here. There was a railroad 15 kilometers from the village, and its employees also lived in the village. There were mainly Russians living in the village. Jewish families arrived here during the war. My parents had an acquaintance Schreber, a former Polish Jew [see Annexation of Eastern Poland] 14, a husband and wife from Romania. The wife taught German at the school. She had a psychosis which had been caused by hunger before we developed our vegetable gardens: she used to run to the canteen grabbing any food she could reach and didn't pay for it. Later, her husband came in to pay for her. Then her husband went to the front and she stayed behind. Later she reevacuated. There was a Jewish family from Belarus: a mother, father and daughter. The daughter was about 25, when her parents died. There was no anti-Semitism. Life was hard, it was the wartime. Many people were dying. Muslims buried their dead with no coffins. Jackals dug up the graves.

There was some infrastructure in the village: a school, post office, polyclinic, some public catering companies, but they were miserable. People were very poor. Every week there was a Soviet movie shown at the club. We stowed inside and the adults had to pay, I guess. The children were very emotional: worrying and shouting. They got very excited and couldn't calm down for a while. There were other villages around. They had numbers: village one, two, three, etc. There was one German village. Germans were deported here before the war. This village was different from the others: everything was neat i.e. houses, gardens and everything else.

All year round I just ran around wearing my underpants. Only for a couple of winter months I wore some sandals which I had knitted myself. There were ground roads and a thick layer of dust which was knee high. There were many thorns. We ignored the small ones from our feet and took out the bigger ones. When we started bleeding after removing a big thorn we pasted the wound with dust and went on running around. It might have caused stupor, but we somehow were all right. There were canals alongside the roads. There were mulberry trees on the sides of these canals intending to grow silkworms. We, kids, ate plenty of mulberries and dried them for winter. There were fields of cotton around the village. And plenty of nightshade growing on them. We dried them for winter to cook. We did whatever we could to get some food. Our fathers were at the front and our mothers had their hands full trying to provide for the children. Life was hard. Everything was sent to the front.

The water in the aryl canals was brown from clay. We, kids, drank it, though it was unhealthy. I pretended it was 'cocoa.' There was a cemented open pool made in the village for potable water. It was called the 'house.' There were filters for cleaning the water. The director lived beside it. There was another 'house' for swimming. I learned to swim there. One day the younger daughter of the director of the house drowned in the pool of potable water. She was plump and didn't even sink to the bottom. Her body was taken out and the water was pumped out. It took them several days to fill the pool as the water had to be filtered.

In summer, schoolchildren were taken to the cotton fields to gather caterpillars. We had bottles hanging on our necks to put the caterpillars in. Of course, there was no payment for the work. In fall we gathered cotton. We had to bring a certain weight back. We also took some cotton home. My mother removed the seeds to spin it for threads to make some clothes. I remember little about school. I became a pioneer [see All-Union pioneer organization] 15. All the schoolchildren became pioneers in the third grade. I was sociable. My friends were mostly the children in our yard. There were children of different ages, but we ran around and played together. I even learnt some curse words, but my mother didn't know about it, of course. In September 1944 I went to the fourth grade. We had a young teacher. She had just graduated from college and had no experience. Once she started explaining something about mathematics and I argued with her about it. I went home and said that I wouldn't go to school again. I didn't go to school for about three weeks, but we were getting ready to leave anyway.

In 1944, when Soroki was liberated, my father must have written a letter and we received a permit to go back home. My parents resigned from work, received all the necessary documents for the trip, and their work paid for the trip. We also had some bread given to us for the road. I remember that we went back on a freight train. Our trip lasted more than a month, as we were waiting for the trains heading to the front to pass by. When we were passing the Aral Sea we bought some salt. People said that there was lack of salt in Moldova.

We arrived in Soroki in early November 1944. Aunt Riva returned from the camp in Vinnitsa region before us. She told us about Grandmother Beila and Grandfather Borukh. They had perished in the camp from hunger and hardships in 1941. My grandfather left a good memory in Soroki. People came to us after the war for a long time grieving after my grandfather, 'Borukh, oh, Borukh!' When later those Jews who had been deported from Soroki before the war, began to return home, my father used to say that they were lucky. Those, who had stayed here, had perished. Of course, it was hard for them, when they were forced to leave their homes, but they weren't killed on purpose, while those, who stayed at home, were killed. They had no right to live according to the Nazi laws. My father worked at the Agricultural College in Soroki. My mother worked as a planning operator at the Soroki district agency of the local industry where she worked till 1947, when she retired and stayed at home. We were accommodated in my grandfather's house where Riva had two rooms. When we returned she was still in the army. The three of us lived in this tiny apartment which was 27 square meters. There were four other families living in my grandfather's home. The first secretary of the district party committee and his big family lived in this house. We got along well with them. Many Jews returned from evacuation.

Post-war

I went to the fourth grade in Soroki. Our teacher, Yelena Fyodorovna, was very good to us. All the children liked her. I made friends with Ira Treiger. Before 1940 her family also lived in Bucharest. Ira's grandmother lived near Soroki. In 1940 her family went to Ira's grandmother on vacation. Ira's aunt and her adoptive daughter went with them. When the Soviet troops came to Bessarabia and closed the border, they stayed in Soroki. The aunt's husband, a Hungarian, stayed in Romania. Ira's aunt was a communist and had even been taken to camps for her underground activities. When the Great Patriotic War began, Ira's father was recruited to the front. Ira, her mother and grandmother evacuated to Russia, I've forgotten the place. Her mother had tuberculosis and died. Ira's father perished at the front. Ira was raised by her aunt. I had another friend: Lusia Sivolobchik, a Belarussian. We studied and played together. Ira and I went to a music school, when we were in the fourth grade. We attended piano classes. In the ninth grade I stopped going to the music school. I had to prepare for college.

When we returned, the situation with food products was very hard. In the beginning we could have meals in the canteen at my father's workplace or take away food. My father usually ordered take-away and I went to pick it. The college was on a hill. When the ground was ice crusted, I managed to ascend the hill, but going back with those containers of food was quite tricky. I just sat on the ice and slid down. We had to wear miserable clothes. My mother wore my father's railroad uniform overcoat for a few years. There were American parcels delivered to my mother's workplace. The local authorities distributed food and clothes from these parcels. My mother once brought home American tinned meat and a summer dress for me. I don't remember it, though. In 1945 the war was over. All the people went onto the streets in Soroki on Victory Day 16. Many people were crying. Many of my classmates had lost their fathers, and some their mothers. Life was difficult. After finishing the seventh grade, many children went to vocational schools: medical school, agricultural school. In the late 1940s life began to improve gradually.

There was a Jewish, Russian and Moldovan population in Soroki. There were no conflicts. There was no anti-Semitism at school. There were many Jewish schoolchildren. The Soroki of my youth was a small green town on the bank of the Dnestr. I grew up on the Dnestr. I could swim well, but I couldn't jump from the tower. There was a hill outside the town. Therefore, the streets parallel to the Dnestr were longer and the crossing ones were shorter, two to three blocks between the Dnestr and the hill. Odesskaya Street led to the hill. There was a highway on it. There was a Christian church at the bottom of the hill. I remember, when some schoolchildren went to watch the Christmas service, there was a Komsomol 17 meeting at school. How did Komsomol members dare to go to church? I don't think there was a synagogue there.

There were two schools: a Russian secondary school named after Pushkin 18, in the two-storied former gymnasium building, and a Moldovan school, also two-storied. It also housed an evening school. There was a club where they showed movies and had dancing parties. We liked going to the movies, of course. We had parties at school. Later, a cinema theater was built in the town. There was a park in the center, and another park near my school. We went to school across the park. In winter we went to skate on the Dnestr. We read a lot and shared our opinions. We celebrated birthdays together. We often did our homework together also. Successful students helped their school mates who weren't so good at their studies. I helped my two friends, both had the name of Tamara, with mathematics.

When I was in the seventh grade, I visited one Jewish family teaching an older woman Russian. A number of people in Soroki could only speak Romanian or Yiddish. Komsomol members were given Komsomol chores to teach them Russian. I taught her for a whole year till she passed her exam successfully. I also was the editor of our school newspaper: I was responsible for reviewing articles which had been written by others, and also wrote myself. My favorite subjects were physics and mathematics. I liked literature, but I hated history. I had problems with remembering dates, and chronological tables were my weakness. We were in the ninth grade, when our favorite teacher of mathematics died. We didn't like the new teacher and made noise in his lessons. We were fastidious. Our director wanted to offer my father to teach at our school part time. He was well known for his mathematical talents, though he taught technical subjects in his college, but I said, 'I don't want you to teach me. Let someone else do it.' They found a good teacher. His name was Nikolay Ivanovich Zadorozhniy. He had graduated from Moscow State University. He had done a postgraduate course in Moscow.

I finished school with a silver medal in 1951. I had a '4' [out of 5] in Russian composition. I entered the Faculty of Physics of Kishinev University. School graduates having medals didn't have to take the entrance exams. My friend Ira Treiger failed to enter the university. She entered the Faculty of Mathematics of the Teachers' Training College. When I moved to Kishinev, I rented a room from Anna Mikhailovna, the cousin sister of our old acquaintance Dosia Marelskaya. She was a soloist of the Kishinev Opera Theater. In 1919 Anna Mikhailovna's teacher was Lipkovskaya [Lipkovskaya, Lidia Yakovlevna (1882 - 1958): Russian singer, she had a coloratura soprano, sang in the Mariinskiy Theater, lived abroad since 1919, mainly in France]. Her husband died and she lived alone in a communal apartment 19 where she had a small room where only her bed, my bed and a small table could fit. There was no kitchen. She had an electric stove in her room. There was a common bathroom and corridor in the apartment.

Other tenants were a doctor and his family: his cousin brother, a librarian, and his wife from Moscow. They were Jews. They all had tiny rooms. When the period of the Doctors' Plot 20 began in 1953, I remember that our neighbors had many discussions on this subject. They were indignant at the fact that Jews were persecuted without any grounds. Two doctors from Leningrad moved to Soroki to escape from this persecution. One was an obstetrician and the other a venerologist. One came with his wife and the other with his mother. Both were at the front. One of them had even lost his leg due to the war. They went to work in Soroki and were accepted well. There were no demonstrations of anti-Semitism in our university. We had a real international student body there: Russian, Moldovan, Jewish and Ukrainian. We had friends and common interests, but nationality was never an issue. All were equal. When Stalin died [in 1953], we cried. There were mourning meetings at the university. Some crazy students even went to his funeral in Moscow. This was the kind of enthusiasm at that time.

We had four lectures every day and laboratory classes two or three times a week. We were even a little jealous about the philologists and historians: those 'chatter boxes' easily got '5' marks in their exams. However, we still managed to go to the cinema or theater. I liked classical music and attended all the concerts at the philharmonic. I never missed one premiere in the theaters in Kishinev. I also attended the performances where Anna Mikhailovna sang. There was a choir and theatrical group at the theater, but I didn't go there. Our boys were fond of football. They went to all the football games at the republican stadium near our dormitory. At times they stood in queues for nights to get tickets. If they failed to get tickets they came to our dormitory to watch the matches from the windows or sitting on the roof. We had parties at the university and often got together. When we were senior students we arranged parties with students from Odessa and Lvov Universities. I always spent my vacations in Soroki. I had friends there and we went to the Dnestr in summer.

I graduated from the university in 1956, and received a diploma with honors. I got a job assignment [see mandatory job assignment in the USSR] 21 to Soroki, as per my request. I worked at a school. I hated teaching, but there weren't many enterprises in Moldova. It was hard to get a job even in Kishinev. All our graduates went to work in schools. In the 1950s they started building factories and plants in Moldova. The ones they were constructing didn't require significant raw materials: they were garment factories and instrument manufacturing plants. I worked for the three required years at the school and when the Scientific Research Institute of Instrument Making opened in Kishinev in late 1959, I went to work there. Our laboratory dealt in scientific research in the domain of instrument making, and each employee developed his/her subject. We had a great team at the laboratory. We celebrated holidays: Soviet holidays, and birthdays, together. Anti-Semitism was just out of the question. I rented an apartment in Kishinev. There I met Ivan Barbul, my landlord's relative. He was my husband to be.

My husband was born into a religious Jewish family in Rezina in 1929. His name was Isaac Rybakov then. His father, Grigoriy Rybakov, was a teacher at a cheder, and his mother, Feiga Rybakova, was a housewife. There were seven children in the family: Abram, Anyuta, Moisey, Nehoma, Riva, Betia, Isaac, and Shmil. Anyuta joined a group of chalutzim to go to Palestine in 1935. During the war, Ivan's parents and four younger children were taken at first to Odessa [today Ukraine]. They couldn't evacuate from there. Ivan's parents, Betia, Riva and Shmil, perished in the camp in Bogdanovka [a village in Nikolaev region where during the war a camp for Jews with 54,000 inmates was. In Bogdanovka all the Jews were shot, by the Romanian gendarmerie, the Ukrainian police, and Sonderkommando R, made up of Volksdeutsche].

Isaac managed to escape from Bogdanovka and returned to the ghetto in Odessa. He escaped several times from the spots of mass shootings. He took hiding under various names, worked as a shepherd in the Ukrainian village of Gandrabury, Ananiev district, Odessa region. In 1943 Ivan Ilich Barbul, a local villager, and his wife Agafia adopted him. They gave him their family name and named him Ivan. In 1944, immediately after Odessa was liberated, Ivan's adoptive father was recruited to the Soviet army. He perished near Iasi. Ivan stayed in Gandrabury and finished secondary school. His older brother Abram perished at the front near Konigsberg [today Russia] in 1945. His sister Nehoma lived in Chernovtsy. His brother Moisey and his family live in Kishinev. Ivan graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics of Kishinev Pedagogical College. He worked as a mathematics teacher in the village of Raspopeny and later became director of a school.

We met and began to correspond. When Ivan visited Kishinev we spent time together. In summer 1961 we took a boat from Odessa to the Crimea. We arrived at Yalta and then traveled all over the Crimea. We stayed in Gurzuf, took two days climbing mountains, walked to Alushta and went to Yevpatoria. In May 1962 we got married. We had a civil ceremony in the registry office. My colleagues came to congratulate me. They gave us a vacuum cleaner for our wedding. They came to the registry office with this vacuum cleaner in a huge box. I didn't want a big wedding. Even my parents didn't come on this day. We went home from the registry office and made a 'bedlam' there: we laid the table, there was a lot of noise, it was fun. During the following week our relatives and older acquaintances came to congratulate us. Then we went to Soroki where my parents invited their acquaintances.

We rented an apartment. Before my baby's due date in May 1963 I went to my mother in Soroki. At this moment there was a distribution of apartments at my workplace. I received a one-bedroom 'Khrushchovka' 22 apartment on the fifth floor. My husband moved into this apartment. He took our folding bed, books and vacuum cleaner into the apartment: this was all we had. Then he went to Soroki. Later, our neighbors told us that before turning on the gas supply the gas agency employees were to come into each apartment to check the safety, and they were stunned, when they entered our apartment seeing heaps of books, a folding bed and vacuum cleaner. Our neighbors also told me that they were surprised. I arrived two months later with Alexandr. By that time Ivan had bought some furniture: a cot, table and chairs. He also bought a cupboard and a few chairs for the kitchen. At that time it was difficult to buy fridges. My mother gave me hers.

When Alexandr turned one year old, my maternity leave was over and I had to go back to work. I sent Alexandr to my mother and returned her fridge. Then Alexandr came back, and the fridge arrived also. So we sent him to and fro with his baby's basin and the fridge until we finally managed to buy a fridge. My parents helped me a lot. Alexandr went to the kindergarten, but he often had angina and had to stay home. Alexandr was very sociable and liked going to the kindergarten. Even on Saturdays, when he didn't have to go there, he still asked whether he could go. We often went to Soroki. Then my mother began to be ill, and I went to Soroki every Saturday. Ivan was studying at the postgraduate school at the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences in Moscow. He received a postgraduate student's salary and I received my salary and in this way we made our living.

I occasionally went to see Ivan in Moscow. In those few days we went to all the art exhibitions and theaters. In 1968, Ivan defended a candidate's dissertation and went to work as a senior scientific employee at the Scientific Research Institute of Pedagogic in Kishinev. I became chief of the laboratory at my institute and started working on my candidate's dissertation. In January 1969 I achieved my candidate's dissertation and was awarded my scientific degree of a candidate of technical sciences. In fall that year Alexandr needed a surgery on his tonsils. Two months later, in December, my second son Boris was born. My parents came to be with me at that time. There were six of us crowded in this room. Once, Alexandr contracted flu in his kindergarten. My mother was so worried that Boris and I might contract it and separated Alexandr with wet towels from us. However, we all got it. A few years later we received a two-bedroom apartment in Ryshkanovka, a new district in Kishinev.

I stayed for four months at home, and then my staff forced me back to work. We had some complicated order to complete urgently. My mother stayed with Boris until he turned three, and then I had to send him to a kindergarten. Boris hated going to the kindergarten. He was an individualist. On his way to the kindergarten he screamed so loudly that all the housewives looked out of their windows in Ryshkanovka, 'What's going on? Why is this child screaming?' Shortly before he had to go to school we took another try, so that the boy could adjust to the children's collectives. My husband's acquaintances, teachers, came to talk to him and convinced him to go to the kindergarten. My husband made an arrangement with the director of the kindergarten: they invited Boris to morning parties and gave him presents. He finally agreed, 'So you will go to the kindergarten?' 'I will', but on the next day he refused bluntly, 'I'm not going!' 'But you promised!' 'I promised, but I've changed my mind.' However, he had no problems with his academic performance. He studied well, was particularly good at mathematics, but not so good at the Russian language. Like our older son, Boris studied in a mathematical class. I'm a physicist and my husband is a mathematician, and both our sons had a talent to mathematics. Or, perhaps, Grandfather Borukh's genes worked.

We spent our summer vacations with our children at the shore of the Black Sea. We rented an apartment in Chernomorka in Odessa. It was convenient as the sea and town were close by. We usually rented an apartment from the same landlady, but if she had other tenants at that moment, she helped us get accommodation elsewhere. When the children grew older, we went to the Ministry of Education of Moldova camp in Karolino-Bugaz [today Ukraine]. There was a building of a boarding school in Kishinev for children to spend their summers in the camp, and there was a tented camp nearby. We all stayed in the tents for two weeks. Later, they built wooden houses. This was perfect for the boys: they swam and lay in the sun. We always tried to involve the boys in sports, went to contests, played volleyball, at one time I was fond of shooting and attended a shooting gallery. We got together with friends and went to the cinema and theaters. We have a big collection of books in Russian. We like reading. In 1978 my parents moved to Kishinev. They exchanged their apartment in Soroki for one in Kishinev. My mother died in late March 1988. We buried her in the Jewish section of the Doina [cemetery in Kishinev]. My father lived four years longer. He died in February 1992. He was also buried in the Doina.

After finishing school in 1979, Alexandr entered the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University. When he was a fourth-year student he married his co-student Tatiana Yailenko in January 1983. She is from Donetsk [today Ukraine]. Her mother is Ukrainian and her father Greek. She is a very smart and gentle girl. They had their wedding in the dormitory of Moscow State University. Tatiana's parents, her sister, my husband, Boris and I attended their wedding. The wedding party lasted three days and three nights. It took place during the winter exams, so they also sat for their exams. In December their son Lyonia [affectionate for Leonid] was born. Tatiana was a fifth-year student. She took an academic leave and graduated from the university one year after Alexandr. Alexandr finished a postgraduate course in Moscow. In 1988 they moved to Kishinev. By that time, we had built a three-bedroom cooperative apartment, and our children moved into our former furnished two-bedroom apartment. Alexandr went to work at the Academy of Sciences of Moldova.

My younger son Boris graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Kishinev University. He worked at the Scientific Research Institute of instrument making. He became a senior scientific employee at my institute. He still works there. He is single.

In 1992 my husband and I went to visit his brother Moisey Rybakov in Israel. I've always sympathized with Israel. I'm certain that Jews must have their own state. I agree with Solzhenitsyn 23 that Jews had so many problems, because they didn't have a land of their own. Now they have it. My husband and I kept listening to the radio during the Six-Day-War 24 and the War of Judgment Day [see Yom Kippur War] 25. I think they should look for a peaceful way of resolving the conflict with the Arabs. I've always respected Yitzhak Rabin: as a politician, he was a wise man and made a great contribution into the establishment of peace in Israel. His death was a tragedy for the whole of Israel. This was a wonderfully interesting trip. We traveled all over the country. In Jerusalem we were sure to visit Yad Vashem 26. We both lost our dear ones during World War II. We visited all our relatives in Israel. Stores in Israel had plenty of goods while here in Moldova there was such desolation after the breakup of the USSR: empty stores; if they had eggs for sale, there were queues and people bought large quantities to fill up their stock of eggs at home. There were cards to buy clothes. There were anti-Russian demonstrations in Moldova: young fascist-oriented people tore off awards from the clothes of veterans of the Great Patriotic War, and people were afraid of speaking Russian in the streets.

In 1993, Alexandr moved to Leningrad to work at the biophysical laboratory at the Academic Institute. He divorced Tatiana and left her their apartment. We keep in touch with Tatiana. She is a wonderful person. Lyonia often visits us. He is a student of the Faculty of Mathematics of Kishinev University. Alexandr remarried in Leningrad. His second wife, Olga Ivanova, is Russian. Their salaries are hardly enough to make ends meet. It's just enough to commute by metro to and from work. During that time, representatives of Israel went for a scientific conference to Leningrad. They offered Alexandr a job by his specialty at the university in Tel Aviv. Olga followed him. In 1997, their son Ilia was born. At that time I was bedridden with my leg fractured. I broke it in early 1997. Olga had to go to work and I went to Israel to look after my grandson. I retired in 1993, at the age of 60. I stayed there for three months. I walked with a stick, but I visited all my relatives: my father's sisters and nephews had moved to Israel by then.

There is a booming Jewish life in Kishinev now, but I'm not actively involved in it. I occasionally go to the Jewish library, but actually I have many books at home. Hesed 27 Jehudah supports us. Once a month we receive food parcels. We turned them down at the beginning. We thought there were poorer Jews than us, but we are growing older and life isn't getting any easier. Sometimes we receive medications from Hesed and have a free medical check up. We keep thinking about moving to our dear ones in Israel.

Glossary

Piroska Hamos
Matyasfold, Budapest,
Hungary
Interviewer: Eszter Andor
Date of Interview: April 2004

I visited Piroska Hamos not only in her own flat, but at her younger granddaughter's place, where she spends half of the week. She plays with her great-grandchildren a lot; she always manages to be on the same wavelength, even with the younger one, although there are almost ninety years between them. Although Piroska has difficulties getting around and is quite sick, she is mentally very fresh. She reads a great deal; as she says, she can't even fall asleep without reading, and she reads everything: whatever her grandchildren give her to read, even books which she dislikes as too modern for her tastes. She watches the news regularly and, by and large, follows politics even today. She likes nature programs and general knowledge quiz shows. During the interview, she enjoyed telling stories, and told them in great detail, and she has an incredibly good memory; she can remember every name, place and date, some of which are after a period of 80 years.

Family background
Growing up
Married life
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

Family background

Unfortunately, my Mother committed suicide, and she was not the only one in the family. Both my grandfather, grandfather and my uncle on mother's side committed suicide as well. Others from the And from the OblatOblath family, others committed suicide as well, but they were not such close relatives.

My grandfather was Gerson Oblath [1850-1910s]; he also committed suicide sometime around the second half of the 1910s. He was born in 1850, but I don't know where. I don't know whether he was from Ovar, or if he arrived there from somewhere else. He worked in a pub in Ovar. I suppose, he had his own pub, but I am not sure. He was a bearded old man. His beard was not that long, if I remember correctly. I only remember meeting him on one occasion. I must have been about five or six years old, it was in Balassagyarmat, and he had probably come to visit us. He had come from Ovar, and was on the way to Dregelypalank. His oldest son was on holiday in Dregelypalank, and he went there to visit, but he never came back. He was pulled out of the Danube in Szod. I have no idea if he is buried in a Jewish cemetery.

My grandmother's name was Antonia Kohn [1856-1950s]. I learned from documents, that she was born in Nagypeszek in 1856. As a child, I met her many times, because, after we moved to Budapest in 1920, we spent our Christmas, Easter and Summer Holidays in Balassagyarmat. Grandma used to live with my mother's twin sister. She lived with them until the end, first in Balassagyarmat, and later, when they moved to Budapest, then there, too. She was in Budapest during the war, but I don't know where. She must have been in the ghetto. She was old when she died- she was over 80, I know that. She had breathing problems, I remember; by that great age, she was lying down almost all the time. She is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Budapest.
My mother had many siblings. Ignac was the oldest one. We called Ignac Uncle Naci. After him came Ferenc. Then, there was my mom, Jozefin Oblath- within the family, she was known as Pepka- and her twin sister, Aunty Netka. It is interesting, that neither I, nor Aunty Netka's only remaining daughter, ever knew that they were twins. We only found it out completely by accident, based on the birth certificate from the Jewish community. They did look very similar, though. I don't know why they never talked about it. Sometimes I think to myself that it's not certain that they were twins, maybe they were only registered at the Jewish community at the same time, but they were a year apart. This is only an assumption, though. And then there were Jozsef and Miksa, whom we called Uncle Miska, and Aunty Linka. I have no idea when they were born. I don't even know whether they were born in Ovar, but yes, they probably were.
Uncle Naci lived in Budapest; he worked as a chief accountant for Nepszava, or something like that. He was a socialist. One of my mother-in-law's sisters, Aunty Lina became his wife. He had three sons. Uncle Naci became ill long before the war; he had heart problems. Aunty Lina must have been in the ghetto. But I don't know, because, at the time of the ghetto, I wasn't at home.
His eldest son, Andor [1901-1945] was born in 1901. He was a clerk, but I don't even know where, but he was already married. He must have gotten married around 1933 or 1934; their son, Peter, was born in 1935, and lives in Australia too. They used to live in Budapest, I think in Tuzolto Street, but by the time the house was built, they had moved to Matyasfold as well. There was an attic room there, the youngsters and the small boys lived up there. Andor died in 1945 of typhus, supposedly due to the typhus injection. When I arrived home, he was already dead.
His middle son, Jeno [1903-1930s] was born in 1903, and at the age of 33, he got blood poisoning, and there were no penicillin yet at that time, so it killed him. He finished high school; he was a clerk, but he was unemployed for a long time. And in 1930 or 1931, when they were building the house in Matyasfold he managed the construction work. He was unmarried and lived at home.
His youngest son, Pali still lives in Australia. Pali got married here, and his wife had some sort of a dressmaker's shop, and also a clothes shop. Pali worked at BESZKART. And then, something happened; she didn't pay the insurance, and she was supposed to pay some penalty, and I don't know how, but, she escaped from Hungary and left for Israel. Later, Pali went after her somehow, I think he could already go officially. He was a driver in Israel. This happened before the war. Later, they left Israel for Australia. I don't know exactly when it happened, but it was already after 1957, because my sister went there, and at that time Pali and his wife were still in Israel. In Australia, Pali didn't work anymore. He'll be 95 in 2003. His wife died a long time ago.
Ferenc had a grocery shop in Bela Bartok Road, but it was called Miklos Horthy 1 Road back then. Later he didn't work, and Miska took over the shop. Ferenc only had a wife, they didn't have children. When I came back from the deportation, they were already dead. I don't know what happened to them.
About Aunty Netka I know the most, because we spent every summer at their place. Her husband, Sandor Weinberger was a merchant. They lived in Balassagyarmat for a long time, and they owned a textile shop there: a draperers and haberdashery. Sometimes Aunty Netka was in the shop, if she had to help something, or because Uncle Sandor had to go somewhere, but mostly, her husband was there. It was not a big shop, they didn't have any employees.
In Balassagyarmat, they had their own house, but before that they lived in a rented flat. There were three rooms in the house: grandmother lived in one room, the parents in another one, and in the third one, the five children. When we went there in my childhood, this was how it was. They had a beautiful dining room, very nicely furnished; it had a really dark color, maybe even black, with a glass show-case. They didn't have a garden, just a little courtyard.
Aunty Netka had help, Mari. She was a many-skirted peasant woman. She cleaned the house, and did the laundry. But Aunty Netka cooked. I don't remember, where she lived in their old flat, but when they moved to their house, then in the back, there was a room, or maybe it was a room with a kitchen, and Mari lived there. She was with them for decades. Even, when they already lived in Budapest, she used to visit them frequently.
They were well-off, for a while. I think, they moved to Budapest because the shop went bankrupt. In Budapest they made men's shirts at home, Aunty Netka, and the two girls. Her husband dealt with the transportation and administration. When Aunty Netka and her family were already living in Budapest, I was already married, and had children, I got out of this close family circle, so I don't know so much about these things.
As far as I remember the husband of this aunty was a son of a rabbi. They kept a fully kosher household. I don't remember exactly when, but there were milky days, when there were only meals without any meat, I remember that much. For what occasion, I don't recall. And Esther's fasting, they kept everything. They were religious. They were not orthodox, although they are buried in the orthodox cemetery, so they didn't have payes.[Editor's note: thus they were orthodox, but not Hasid]. My mother's sister wore a wig. When they moved to Budapest in the 1930s, she didn't wear it anymore, because of her children. After the war, Aunty Netka didn't wear a wig anymore. She let her hair grow long, she had beautiful snow-white hair. When she went out, she wore a hat. Even with a wig she used to wear a hat.
Aunty Netka had five children: three girls and two boys. Her eldest daughter, Magda, was ten months younger than me, the youngest one, Agi, is 75 now, I think. We loved each other very much. Magda was a friend to both my sister and me. All five stayed alive after the war. Aunty Netka was in the ghetto, I believe. Her husband probably was too. When I came home, he had already died. Aunty Netka lived with her children. She died in 1965. She is buried in the orthodox cemetery, just the two of them, she and her husband, all the other relatives are already buried in the Israelite cemetery in Budapest, because her children were not at all religious, but let's say, even the children observed the high holidays.
Magda lived in America after the war, somewhere near Los Angeles. Her husband had relatives in America. In 1941, there was a world expo in America. Her husband was a jeweler, and he went to this world exhibition, and never came back. Their daughter was a year old when he left, and next time he saw the child was in 1946, because in 1943 or 1944, when they were supposed to leave Hungary with the last airplane, my cousin, Magda got scarlet-fever, and the airplane left without her. Their belongings were going to be shipped there and were already on the way to Lisbon, because they could go with a normal emigrant visa. She was in hiding here, in Budapest with her daughter. The eldest son of Aunty Netka, Gyuri, was a Zionist, if I remember correctly, he later became a communist. But he died at a very young age. The next one was Ella. After the war, she married a policeman. He was also a communist, I think, and a Zionist before the war. Lacika was the fourth child. He worked as a goldsmith, and later he was an international purchaser at Artex (gold and antiques.) He used to go abroad, and he also dealt with the national mint. I know it for sure, that he had some connection with the mint. Agi, the youngest one, used to be a teacher. She lives here in Budapest. Now she's retired.
Jozsef, or Joska, was a doctor. He graduated from university. Before the war, he was the local doctor for Szentendre and its neighborhood. He married a Goldberger girl. She was a very rich, but really ugly woman. He had two sons. They were younger than me. Uncle Joska didn't marry very young. His wife was also much older than me. They lived in Szentendre, in their own house. They had lots of nice pieces of furniture, pictures, they had everything. They were not show-off people. Let's just say his wife wasn't a very nice lady, and Uncle Joska was very busy -he had a big practice. They visited us once in Matyasfold; they had a very good time there, and we also visited them once. They were all deported; nobody from that family came back. After his wife, there were some houses we could have requested, but in the meantime they had been nationalized and renovated and we would have had to pay so much in exchange for the renovation, that nobody in the family could afford it. After the war, we were happy to be alive at all. One of the houses was turned into a maternity home after the war.
A hardly know anything about Uncle Miska. I don't even know, what sort of school he finished, I only know, that he took over Uncle Feri's shop. This was a small grocery shop, its name was Zsigmond Kertesz and co. grocery and spice shop, Zsigmond Kertesz was Aunty Linka's husband, who died at an early age. I don't think they had any employees. They sold cheese, cold cuts, and some spices. If I remember rightly, when you entered the shop, the counter was on the left hand side. But what sort of cash register they had – I don't remember at all. The shop had a back area; my uncle kept the cheese there. In 1929, they still had this shop, I used to go to the Trade High School in Miklos Horthy Road, not far from it. But I went to school in the morning, and when school was over, I went home. I only went to the shop a few times, maybe just once or twice. I think, they must have had it until about the middle of 1930s. Uncle Miska married very late, around 1940, and I think he must have married a well-off woman, because when he was already married, he wasn't in the shop anymore, but in their candy shop on Erzsebet Avenue, next to the Hirado cinema. And very late in life, he had a little boy. He committed suicide before the war, sometime around 1943 or ‘44. And then his wife stayed in the shop. She was from Kisvarda, she had many siblings, and her son, Jancsika stayed in Kisvarda, I think. He was deported from there, with his grandparents and his aunties. He was a little boy, He wasn't even at school yet, I think. And after the war Uncle Miska's wife left for Australia, and died there.
Aunty Linka lived in Budapest. They were also involved in the grocery shop. I don't know, if she had a share as well, but she was in the shop quite a lot. She married Zsigmond Kertesz, one of the brothers of my mother-in-law. I only saw her husband once, he died very early of tuberculosis. They had a daughter. Her husband's sister, Jeta, also became a widow very early, and she lived with them in Buda. She didn't work. She took care of Aunty Linka's daughter, and spoiled her, she didn't raise her very well. Aunty Linka was still alive at the outset of the war. During the war; she was in the ghetto with her daughter. She remarried, but by the time I came back from the deportation, both she and her husband were dead. She died during the war. Exactly how and when, I don't know. But she died in Budapest.
Their daughter is still alive, she is around 80 now. It was a mixed family, because their daughter married a Pole I think, and in 1943 or 1944 he was expelled from Hungary and sent to Russia, I don't know where. They were still here, when her husband died. But she came back after the war, with a child. We meet very rarely, at funerals, and occasions like that. We met quite recently, at the funeral of my sister-in-law, who died at the age of 101.
My grandfather on my father's side was Gabor Schultz [1841-1928]. He was born in 1841 in Szemered. He was a watchmaker and umbrella-repairer. He worked at home. He was a very tall bearded old man. He had a very long beard. I can't say anymore, whether he had payes, or it grew together with his beard. He wore a hat, but I don't know what he wore at home. He usually wore a suit. So, he dressed in an urban style.
I really can't tell you my grandmother's name. I can't even remember her first name. [Editor's note: Based on a document found among family papers, her name was Pepi Kohn, 1850-1928] Grandmother was a housewife. She was as short and shriveled as my grandfather was tall. I don't know how religious they were. I don't know if they went to synagogue. Grandmother didn't wear a wig, at least I can't remember her wearing one. They lived in poor conditions. I know that my dad used to send money to them. We didn't spend too much time with my grandparents. I don't know why, but we rarely visited them. We only went there, when we were there, in Balassagyarmat for holidays, but never other than that.
Grandfather was around ninety, when he died. I wasn't even 16, when grandfather died. Grandmother was a couple of years younger than he was, and there people told us that my grandfather fell over, and his lungs got inflamed when because of lying down, and he died, and a month later grandmother died. She couldn't even attend the funeral, she was sick.
Uncle Samu was the eldest one. He lived in Besztercebanya. I don't remember ever meeting him. I have no idea what his profession was. As far as I know, he had lots of children, but how many, I don't know. I knew one of them, his daughter, Malvin, who came to Budapest, and lived at my father's place, and even worked in the tailor's workshop for a while. After the war she emigrated to Israel. Uncle Samu was, I think, deported together with his family, when the Slovaks were deported.
His eldest sister was Aunty Milka, she is the one I know about, but he may have had more siblings. She lived in Budapest. Her husband was called Adolf Spitzer. He was a tradesman of some sort, I think. She had three daughters and a son, Miklos. We lived at their place, too, when we moved to Budapest in 1920. They lived in Adam Vay Street, on the fourth floor. It was a two-room-and-kitchen flat; it didn't have the modern conveniences. I don't know more, although we even lived there for a while. I met them later too, but not very often. During the war they were probably also in the ghetto. Aunty Milka died after the war. I don't even know, what happened to her. Miklos died in forced labor. One of her daughters, Janka, emigrated to Israel.
Dad's other elder sister was Aunty Giza; we lived at her place, too. Back then, it was called Szerecsen Street, now Ede Paulay Street, where they lived. They also had a two-room-and-kitchen, flat without modern conveniences, but I think they had a toilet inside. I remember, once I slept on my father's tailor's desk, I don't know, why it was there. Aunty Giza's husband, Gyula Spitzer was the brother of Uncle Adolf. Uncle Gyula was a hat maker. She had two daughters, Tera and Manci, and a son, Tibor. The two daughters of Aunty Giza left for Australia after the war. Her elder daughter died five years ago, at 91 years of age. Her younger daughter still lives there, she is about 90 now. The son died in forced labor. I know nothing about the others. Somehow, due to my early marriage, I kind of lost touch with my family, apart from my parents and their brothers and sisters.
Then, the next one was dad, and there was his younger brother, Ignac, who emigrated to America. He was a tailor too. When we lived in Balassagyarmat, they had a tailor's workshop together, which was a shop as well. He was married, and had a son. He had a Christian wife, Aunty Bozske. I heard something about him having to escape after the Commune [Hungarian Soviet Republic] 2, and this is why he left for America. I remember, it must have been just before my mom died, when they came there to say good-bye. It must have been around the End of 1919. We never wrote letters, I don't know why. I know, when we came back from the deportation, Etel [1913-2003] found out their address in America from someone in the family, and wrote to Ignac, and he sent a single package. They sent material for clothes, very nice material, a couple of meters, so, it was enough for the children, for my sister, and for me, for coats and dresses, and everything. But no letter was attached. And my sister wrote and thanked them for it, but there was no further reply. We heard from someone, that his son became a doctor, and they were very well off.
Dad, Armin Schultz [1888-1944] was born in 1888, in Balassagyarmat. Dad, I think, graduated from elementary school. He learnt his trade from some tailor in Balassagyarmat. He was a gentleman's tailor.

Growing up
My mom was called Jozefin Oblath [1887-1920]. She was born in 1887 in Ovar. I don't know what sort of school she finished. She was a housewife. I heard, that she was very good at sewing, and she used to sew bodices and shirts for peasant women, but she didn't work. I have no idea how she meet my dad. I don't even know where they got married either. I suppose, they must have married in 1910 or 1911, since I was born in 1912. My maiden name is Piroska Schultz. My sister, Etel, who is only 15 months younger than me, was born in 1913, and we had little brother, Pistike [1920-1920], who was eight years younger.
I was born in Balassagyarmat, Etel in Ovar, which now belongs to Slovakia, because, my dad, - I just heard this, because I was very little at that time - I don't know how it came about, but he worked in Berlin for a while. But I don't know how long for. And when my sister was born in October, the rumblings of war had already started. And then, dad came home. But mom came home to her parent's house in Ovar, to give birth. I know it for sure, that when dad came home, we came back to Balassagyarmat, because I know, that we lived in Balassagyarmat, in Ipoly Street during the war.
My mom was pretty, very pretty, and her twin sister was also very pretty. And very kind, too. She had a bun. She had nice, brown hair, and she wasn't too tall. At home, she never had her hair tied up. Only, when she worked on something like cleaning, or something like that, but not for religious reasons. She wore a long skirt, I know that, and she wore apron on top of it. I don't remember her face so much anymore. It was such a long time ago.
Mom kept a kosher household. When I was a child, there were separate milky and meaty dishes at our place in Balassagyarmat. We didn't go to the synagogue every Friday, only on holidays. At Pesach, I know for sure that we didn't have any bread. I don't remember, whether we cleared away any breadcrumbs beforehand at home. I only remember, that at her sister, Aunty Netka's place, it was observed carefully. There were separate Pesach dishes, and there were separate milky and meaty dishes, anyway. And I also know, that Etel and I spent the seder at Aunty Netka's. Only we children went there. Mom and dad didn't come. I remember that Mom used to make kneydl for Chanukkah, but there was no celebration. I don't remember if we lit candles, I don't really remember all these things, but one thing is sure, that she didn't attend mikveh, and she didn't wear a wig.
I only have very vague memories of the time in Balassagyarmat, only one or two things are very vivid in my memory: for example once, Etel was sick; on Friday evening the candles were lit and Dad lit a cigarette, which is forbidden, among other things, for Jews at holidays. And mom got angry with him. And Dad suddenly threw the candle holder onto the floor in his anger. My other memory is that when my dad was a soldier, and he came home for a holiday, he took me and Etel, holding our hands to my mom's sister , because he said that Ipoly Street, where we lived, led straight towards the Ipoly river, and the Czechs were shooting from the other bank whereas Zichy Street was zig-zagged. And I remember that in our courtyard there was the Jewish community's matzah bakery, and there was some sort of black, steam engine-like machine, and this steam engine-like thing was bombed and made an awful lot of noise.
Once, when I was already eight, there was a big commotion, and lots of whispering, but we could still hear that Mom had died. Our brother was a five-month old breast-fed baby at the time, and people said all kinds of things, of course, not to us children, but we heard that they could see my dad carrying my Mom on his back and throwing her into the Ipoly. The police questioned him too. Of course, there wasn't a word of truth in it, because Mom committed suicide. I don't remember my poor mother's funeral, but I seem to recall a long wooden box standing on something and there were a lot of people.
I know that she didn't get along with my father. She was unsatisfied with her life, and with my Dad not being religious. She died in 1920. I was only eight at the time, and then we never asked about it. Later, when I had grown up, I was more curious, but then there was no longer anybody to ask what had happened.
The period after that has completely faded, I don't remember anything that happened. I only remember that we were in Budapest. I don't remember the packing, nor the traveling. I have a hazy recollection of sometimes living with one of my father's sister's in Vay Adam Street, and sometimes at my Dad's other sister's, in Szerecsen Street. So I lost a year from school, and so did my sister, because we were sometimes here and sometimes there. We started school here, but we couldn't take exams anywhere, so we had to retake the year. Dad wasn't with us, only our little brother, with a nanny. He died at a very early age, of diphtheria. He was buried somewhere here in Budapest. I saw our little dead brother, when he was buried. He was buried properly, in a Jewish cemetery, but where, I have no idea. It was in 1920.
After that I only remember living in Dob Street, and we had a new Mom and a little sister, who was exactly the same age as Pistike would have been, had he lived. From there on, we lived in normal circumstances. Dad married my step-mother in 1921. My step-mother, Margit Adam [1890s-1956], was also from Balassagyarmat; she was born sometime in the 1890's. I think they had known each other when they were young, but how they got together in Budapest, I don't know. I called her Mom too. We had a very good step-mother. She was trained as a seamstress, doing work to-order, and she had a one-room-plus-kitchen flat, without all the modern conveniences and we moved to her place, when they got married. They were married properly, but I don't remember the wedding at all. My step-mother was a widow when she married my Dad. She was young, around 30. To me, she was old of course, at an ‘aunty' age, because I was around eight or nine years old, at that time. She wore normal, modern dresses. She dressed fashionably. Her hair was heat-curled on both sides, and together in a bun. On the street, she wore a hat, not a scarf.
I don't really remember elementary school. I went to elementary school in such a scattered way: I started in Balassagyarmat, then I went to the school in Erdelyi Street, and Homoki Street, and only the third and fourth years, I attended at Kazinczy Street, when Dad had already remarried, and we lived there in Dob Street. We went to middle school 3 in Dohany Street. In middle school, only the religion teacher was male, all the others were female. I always got ‘excellent' grades and studying was easy for me, Etel had great difficulties with studying, but she also had almost all ‘excellent' grades most of the time. She always tried very hard to keep up with me, but for her, it took a lot of effort, whereas for me it didn't. When I got into this middle school, I think there was only one subject, writing, in which I merely received a ‘good', rather than an ‘excellent' grade, and our class teacher was a bit suspicious that I was such a good student.
She was called Gezane Ban. She taught many classes: Hungarian, history, and needlework. I liked her classes very much. I learned all sorts of needlework from her, starting from tapestry, to sewing with a sewing machine. Then I became her favorite. I was so much of an example, that it even happened, that I was called into a 4th year Hungarian grammar class, to answer some questions, when I was only in the 1st year, to demonstrate that I knew the answer when the 4th year students didn't. Gezane Ban was a very well-educated, very good person. Originally I was going to be a doctor, but in order to do that, one had to take a supplementary exam in Latin after middle school, and my parents had no money to pay for a tutor, but Gezane Ban wrote a letter to the teacher at the secondary school in Prater Street, to ask whether she could perhaps take me. Mom was curious about what the teacher had written; she opened the letter and she stuck it back as it was, so no-one would notice. Gezane Ban recommended me very highly, to this teacher, but then it was added: 'it's a pity that she's a Jew.'
Then there was an old maid, our German teacher, Auguszta Bitto. Back then, German language was obligatory in Middle school, and I did quite well in it, but somehow we didn't like each other. Neither of these teachers were Jewish. I don't remember any of the other teachers, even in Middle school.
There were a couple of Jews in the class, but I don't even remember the names any more really. There were many Jewish girls in the Middle school, but I don't recall any ugly comments at all. Not a single one. Not even in the commercial college. There were not many Jews in the commercial college, where I attended for four years.
I was very friendly with the Salzer girls. They had some sort of a clothes shop in Kiraly Street; they were well-off. I was invited to their place for afternoon tea-parties.
I think they lived in Kiraly Street, they had a nice big flat. They learned to play the piano. There were three girls; the two younger ones were schoolmates of mine, the older one wasn't. Dorottya Kohan, was a poor Jewish girl, and very thin. Then there was Marta Komor, a pretty, red-haired Jewish girl. Girlfriends didn't visit our place very much because our flat was small, and the workshop was there too.
We were often taken to matinees and the theatre on Sundays. We also went to the theatre with Mom. We attended the national theatre a lot. One of my step-mother's sisters, used to live in Akacfa Street, close to the old National Theatre, so in the winter time, we used to leave our coats at her place, so we didn't have to pay the cloakroom fee- we were poor- and we ran all along Akacfa Street, with just scarves around our necks, all the way up to the gods, and we saw many wonderul plays. Dad never went to the theatre. He did go to the cinema though, and he also took us there. But I have no idea what we saw.
We used to swim; our step-mother laid great emphasis on us learning to swim, from the swimming coach in the Rudas Baths. We usually went to the pool with one of old Aunty Milka's daughters. We also learned to ice skate; back then there was no such thing as figure skating and all that, but at school, they often iced over the courtyard and we used to skate around in there.
My step-mother wasn't very religious. She kept high holidays, but there was no lighting of candles on Fridays. We didn't keep Chanukkah either. There was no seder and matzah. At Yom Kippur, she fasted, and when we got older we did too. I don't remember whether Dad fasted at all. At Yom Kippur, we went to the synagogue, but we didn't spend the whole day there, just for the Kol Nidre. I think she baked barkhes on Fridays, but there was no special food on Friday evening, but she didn't cook on Saturdays. We often ate cholent and we liked it. She made the cholent on Friday and heated it up on Saturday. I remember that in the summer, she always cooked something on Friday which didn't have to be heated up on Saturday if not absolutely necessary. My Mom didn't keep a very strict kosher household, but by and large, that's what it was. This meant that the milky and meaty dishes weren't mixed; they were also kept separately in the cupboard. We didn't eat meaty and milky foods together. We never had, for example meaty soups and then Pasta with cottage cheese. We never put meat and butter on the same table together. We had a separate milk jug, because in every normal place- I think, even the Christians do it this way- it's kept separately. The dishes weren't washed up separately though, and Pork was never prepared. She often cooked with chicken and goose-fat. Mom used to buy cuts of goose and chicken at the market. She bought them from a Jew, but whether they were kosher or not, I don't know. A woman used to come and do the laundry, Mom didn't wash clothes. She did cook and clean, though. She was at home. Etel was at home too.
I attended many seders, because in school we had Easter holidays then, and then we kids went to Balassagyarmat, to my natural Mom's twin sister, Aunty Netka, and we attended the full, religious seder there. The seder was led by Uncle Sandor. Gyuri or Laci asked the Mah Nishtanah, I don't remember which one of them. I don't remember either, who had to find the Afikoman. I remember it was meat soup, dumpling soup. What else there was, I don't know. We really liked being there; it was great.
We also spent the summer in Balassagyarmat and always the Easter holidays and Christmas holidays. In the beginning, we only stayed with my Natural Mom's twin sister, Etel and I. My step-sister was much younger than us and she stayed at my step-mother's sister's also in Balassagyarmat. Later, we also stayed at my step mother's sisters', there was more space there. But from morning to night, we were together with my aunty's children. We used to go to the park together. We used to go to the River Ipoly together to swim, so we really stuck together.
For quite a large period of my childhood, we were poor because Dad had no work. There were times when we only had bread and lard for lunch. In Furdo Street- now it's called Attila Jozsef Street- there was a famous gentleman's outfitters, and at the beginning, he used to do work for them. He got work from them and he did it at home. In the beginning, Dad only worked on made-to-measure clothes, and later he stated to do ready-to-wear clothes, he did orders for large companies. Dad worked a lot. He made off-the-peg items. He worked for many companies, but he got the material from them; suits, coats, trousers.
When we lived in Dob Street, Dad only did to-order work, his workshop was at home, and he even had a helper, called Mr Wittmann. My sister Magdi, when she could talk, called him ‘Uncle Boy.' It was a one-room-plus-kitchen flat, next to the back stairs of the first floor of a two-storey building. It was terrible to go to the toilet: it had no light. It was in front of the back staircase, and I was scared to go there. The room was a workshop too. There was bed in there; we slept there and there was a sewing machine and a table and things you needed for sewing. There was a wardrobe too. By the time Mr Wittmann arrived in the morning, the bed had to be done, and we had to be dressed up etc. We could only study in the kitchen, because of the workshop, and that wasn't very good because the kitchen was always dark. It had no windows, and opened onto a closed corridor. Later we rented a room in a flat opposite, and we children slept there and studied there, and then the original one-room flat became the workshop. The kitchen stayed as a kitchen, and they slept in the kitchen, on a convertible iron bed. It was folded up in the morning and opened out in the evening.
Then at sometime we moved to Karoly Avenue. Exactly when, I don't remember anymore, but when I got married, we already living there. There were three rooms there. We lived in one room and the workshop had two rooms. In 1929, Dad already had a big workshop in the flat. He had several sewing machines, and tailoring machines. He did the real tailoring work. Many people worked for him: relatives and strangers too. Not all of them were Jewish. I think they didn't work on Saturdays. I don't know why they didn't move to a bigger flat when things were going better; I wasn't at home any more by then.
We lived well by that time. In 1928 or 1929 Dad even bought a car, which wasn't an everyday thing back then, as it is now. Nobody in the family had a car. Dad didn't get a driving license, because it turned out that he was color-blind. For a while, the car was driven by the son of one of my father's sisters, Miklos. Later, it was driven by the husband of my step-mother's sister, Uncle Rudi, who was unemployed at the time. They used the car for leisure, not for work. They went to Balassagyarmat in it. Then they would call for this uncle. They were on really good terms.
There was a memorable trip once. The car was a big, open one but you could pull a canvas roof over it. Back then, there were no limitations on how many people could sit in the car, it was just as many as could fit in. In the spring of 1928, Dad and the others were leaving for Balassagyarmat, to visit relatives. Uncle Rudi was driving. His wife, Mom and Dad and Dad's two sisters, Aunty Milka and Aunty Giza, came along. They were all sitting in the car already, when Aunty Giza's husband said, ‘Of course, you never take the poor relatives!' Dad replied, ‘Come along, if you want to,' and so he sat in as the seventh passenger. Unfortunately, this was fateful. The car blew a tire, and it turned over and poor Uncle Gyula fell out in such a way, that he was just half out of the car and the side of the car came to rest on his chest. He was still alive, when he was taken to the hospital in Balassagyarmat. He died on the operating table. He was buried in Balassagyarmat.
Later, I don't know exactly when, because I wasn't at home any more- I was married- Dad entered a partnership with Arnold, the husband of Iren, Aunty Milka's daughter, who was also a tailor. They had a big workshop on the corner of Nepszinhaz Street and Kalman Tisza Square; they worked with many helpers, because they got work from wholesalers.
Mom and Dad had already moved away from Karoly Avenue by then. First, they moved to Kertesz Street. This was a two-room flat with basic conveniences, so there was a toilet. In the flat in Karoly Avenue, there hadn't been a bathroom either, just a toilet. We had to wash ourselves properly everyday though; wash our feet, in the kitchen, in a washbasin. We used to go to the baths every week, the Rudas baths. There was a swimming pool, showers, basins and I don't know what else. In the swimming pool, one could also swim, because the water there wasn't too warm. After that, they moved to Dohany Street. I don't know exactly why they moved, but I think it was a question of money; I think it was cheaper. But in this flat already, they had a bathroom. From here, they moved to Almassy Square.
That was a three-room flat; two rooms were quite large, and the third one was also big enough for a complete bedroom. There was a bathroom and separate toilet and a big hallway. There was an alcove, a servant's room. There was also a workshop too. I don't know what happened to the joint workshop. That partnership fell through. The biggest room was six meters by seven meters [18ft by 21 ft] and the workshop was there. There were many workers there.
My sister, Etel, did one year at a commercial college and it included a course on typing and shorthand; before that, she did four years of middle school. Before the war, she worked in an office, in a big joiner's workshop. She married Jozsef Schneller, not long after I got married, It must have been in 1934 or 1935. Her husband was a tailor and became Dad's partner. He was related to my step-mother somehow. In 1936, Agi [1936-] was born, they only had that one child.
My step-sister was called Magda Daimant [1920-1982], but she magyarised later. She became Maria Desi. She was a very interesting child. She was only obedient to her mother, and to nobody else. When Mom wasn't at home, she could be incredibly naughty and impertinent. Basically, we were on very good terms, though. Magda attended the same elementary and middle schools we did. She wasn't a good student and she didn't finish any other schooling after the four years of middle school, but she was a clever woman. She educated herself; she read a lot. I don't really know what she did before the war. They lived together, because my sister Etel used to live with my parents, and Magda lived there as well. They lived in several places in Budapest. The last flat was in Almassy Square. After the war, Magda worked as a clerk in the town hall, and later she also worked as a caretaker at resort by Lake Balaton. But in the end she worked in a cake shop, as a coffee-maid. I think she met her husband at one of those resorts. They married around the end of the 1950s. His name was Dr Imre Horvath, and he was five years her junior. He became a mental specialist, a psychiatrist. But basically Magda supported her husband and he had her to thank for the fact that he was able to finish medical school at all. He died in 1982 and Magda in 1984. They had no children.

Married life
My husband, Imre Hamos [1899-1945] and I were related. We were second cousins; my husband's grandfather, and my grandmother on my mother's side Antonia Kohn, were brother and sister, and we met at an afternoon get-together, at my Aunty Linka's place. I wasn't even seventeen and he asked me to go to skating with him. My parents let me go alone, because he was a relative. Imre's younger sister lived at number 29, Wesselenyi Street, with Imre and his Mom, and I was invited there. He liked me. I had never had a boy courting me before. He was 30 and he wanted to get married. He couldn't find anyone suitable. And then he courted me. He asked for my hand in marriage and I had to decide. I had just finished the 2nd year of commercial college, when I was asked; he wanted to get married as soon as possible. He didn't want to wait. I was a really good student and I really loved going to school. Back then, there was no opportunity for a married woman to go to school. I didn't even graduate from this school, because I decided to get married. But it's not good to marry at such a young age. It was a good marriage, but I left many things out of my life. For example, I would have loved to dance, but my husband hated dancing, so this was completely missing from my life. I still think it was wrong, that my parents let a 17 year old girl decide alone.
My husband was Imre Hahn. Our name was changed to Hamos in 1934. My husband did this; it was around the time when we converted to Christianity, but maybe even earlier. I think Imre's grandparents came from Kiskunhalas. his father was Mor Hahn, I think he was born near to Szeged, in Szentivanpuszta, in 1873. His wife, Eva Kohn, was born in 1872 in Nagypeszek. Before she got married, she worked as a diamond polisher, but that's just what I heard; I don't know any more about her. Imre's father was a printer and a socialist. My husband was born in Budapest in 1899. He was much older than me. His father died in 1914. His mother never remarried. When I became his fiancée, his grandmother on his father's side was still alive. She was a small, wizened old lady; I don't even know her name. I was introduced to her and to one of his uncles. In 1929, when we got married, I was 17 and he was 30.
The wedding took place in December 1929. it took place in the synagogue in Dohany Street. We used to live there in the seventh district. At that time we didn't live in Dob Street any more, but at Karoly Avenue number nine. First we went to the registrar's office in the morning and afterwards to the synagogue. I had nice wedding, a big one. I can't say how many people were there, but it was the closest relatives, many of them. From Imre's side, his mother came, all his Aunties, his sisters and their children; there were many people. My class teacher, from the middle school, Gezane Ban, really liked me and she was very unhappy that I got married. She took the whole middle school class along with her. I got many pieces of needlework as wedding presents. We had a big lunch up in our flat. There were at least 20 or 30 people in the flat after our wedding. There were two long tables in the living room, but what the food was, I don't recall.
I had a really beautiful dress. It was embroidered silk, mid-blue, long sleeved and the collar and the cuffs were sewed with pearls. The fashion at that time was that the dress was shorter at the front and longer at the back, not all the way down to the floor, but long. My step-mother's brother and his wife had a ladies' clothes salon, but it was an elegant outfitter's, not an off-the-peg store; so it was an elegant salon and they made it. But we did have to pay for it.
There wasn't a real honeymoon, as such. We spent the first night in The Royal Hotel. We left the wedding lunch, and the Royal Hotel had a so-called ‘palm garden' at that time, and we met three of my cousins there, who were also Imre's cousins and his best friends. We met there and chatted and spent the night there. Then we came out to Matyasfold, because we had bought the house before, and it was almost completely furnished.
We had a big suitcase and it was full of porcelain and glass and my bride's bouquet was in there too. I can't say any more what else it had in it. I went to the wedding in my father's car and we packed everything into this car a few days after the wedding. Karoly Avenue number nine, had a through-courtyard, leading from Karoly Avenue on one side to Rumbach Street on the other side, by the synagogue. The car was standing at the Rumbach Street gate, and the carpet, along with a lot of other things, was put on the roof. We left for Matyasfold. When we got there, the suitcase was gone. We had left it at the gate. Our Dob Street address was written inside the case. Because we, and also my parents, used to travel with this case when we went to Balassagyarmat, so the name and address was in it. But that's not all; the lucky thing was that Dad's younger sister, Aunty Giza had moved into our old flat in Dob Street, and the honest people who found the case, opened it and saw that these must be wedding presents because of the bride's bouquet, and they took it all there. That's how everything that we had thought lost, was recovered.
The house in Matyasfold was originally in the name of my husband and my mother-in-law, because they shared the deposit and they were going to pay it together. My mother-in-law had a coal cellar. She sold coal and wood, as a retailer. But then she became sick and she closed the cellar and then it wasn't just that she couldn't pay, we supported her completely. And then she wanted to have the house on her son's name. It was in 1939, and for a Jew they wouldn't write it over.
We found a house together before the wedding already. We wanted to go to the outskirts of Budapest, because we bought it together with my mother-in-law and she wanted to live in the countryside. She really liked me. She preferred to stay at my place, rather than her own daughter's. She went to her daughter's for a day or two every month, but then she would call my husband, after no time at all, ‘Come and pick me up, I'm coming home!' She was an old gossipmonger. Her sister, Aunty Lina, also lived there in Matyasfold, and they sat together and gossiped about the family. She was a kind woman. She loved the children dearly. She took them to the cinema when she was still well enough. My mother-in-law wasn't at all religious; she didn't go to the synagogue. She fasted at Yom Kippur.
Originally the house had two rooms, with all the modern conveniences. It was a brand new house, built in 1928. The former-owner of Pesti Hirlap, [a well-known newspaper of the time,] Karoly Legradi bought this land from some wood merchant, and portioned it off, and he built these houses to sell. The builder was a rascal, because he skimped on materials for the house wherever possible. These houses looked really good; they had white french doors, and the rooms had parquet flooring, but he put the parquet on the bare ground, so six or seven years later it all had to be thrown out, because the wood was rotten and the parquet floor had to be re-laid in both rooms.
I didn't receive any money as a dowry, but the whole house was furnished by my parents. I received bedroom and dining room furniture, and kitchen furniture and an oven, two beds for the bedroom, two bedside cabinets, two big wardrobes one of them was for underwear and the other for hanging clothes, and a big mirror. The mirror had two little cabinets in it, made from a nice, light wood, in line with the style of the times, and there was a couch, this was the bedroom furniture. The dining room had a long, simple serving cabinet, with three doors. It wasn't an expensive piece of furniture, it had a sideboard which you could serve food from. There was a showcase and a big convertible oval table, which had two armchairs and six inlaid chairs that went with it. They bought ready made furniture and for wedding presents, I got cooking pots, tea sets, many sets of glasses, a carpet, and a chandelier, I got all sorts of things. So, it was all in this kind of lower middle-class way.
Now the house has three rooms because we built an additional room in 1939. Originally we built it because my the husband of my sister-in-law, Klari, was put on a B-list, and they moved to his other sister's place, and they brought their furniture to Matyasfold. My mother in law who used to live with us, had her bed in the dining room first, and later she lived in the third room. The children slept with us then. There was no children's room; it was a different world back then.
My husband had two sisters, Iren [1901-2002] and Klari [1903-1973]. Iren's married name was Markne Rosner, and Klari's was Lajosne Weiner. Iren was born in 1901 and Klari in 1903.They also married quite early. They must have gotten married at around the same time, in 1921 or 1922, because in 1923, Ibi [1923-1940s] and Tibi [1923-1940s] were born in the same year. Before they were married, both of my sisters-in-law used to work in the offices of the former OTI, The National Social Security Institute. I think they finished four years of middle school. My sisters-in-law were not religious whatsoever. They only kept the fasts, but there was no lighting of candles or anything like that.
Klari didn't work; at that time, if women got married, they didn't work really. Her husband, as far as I remember, worked for General Biztosito. Her husband was put on a B-list. He was made redundant. He got some severance pay. It was around 1938 or 1939, so it might have been because he was a Jew 4. He had no income because he couldn't find another job. They couldn't pay the rent, so they moved to my husband's other sister's place for a while, and they brought the furniture to Matyasfold. Klari's son, Tibi, we don't even know where he ended up. He was taken away for forced labor. Klari was in the ghetto. And my children were with her in the ghetto. And after the war, Klari's work was mending stockings. At the end, she worked as a cashier in a pharmacy until her retirement. She died in 1973.
The Rosners had a shoe accessory shop in Baross Street. They also sold leather. This was a crummy, poky den. It was almost opposite their house. They had a two room flat, but the house itself wasn't very elegant. Just my brother-in law and Iren worked in the shop. Iren had a daughter, Ibi, and a son, Endre [1927-1940s]. Her son was born in 1927; I don't know what he did. Ibi worked in an office somewhere, but I don't know who for. She was deported from the KISOK field- she was buried in Germany. Somebody sent Iren a picture of her grave. Her grave was taken care of for a while. Her son escaped from forced labor somewhere, and the Russians caught him and took him to Russia. We know nothing about him – where and when he died. Iren was in hiding with her husband. After the war, she worked in a food store, later she worked in an office for a long time, until she was about 90. She was 101 years old, when she died in 2002. In the retirement home, there was a big celebration on her 100th birthday. Both of my sisters-in -law were buried in the Jewish cemetery in a common grave.
It was the custom before, to clean every day and every Friday, to do a big clean and wash the kitchen furniture. I didn't do too much cooking, because my mother-in-law lived with us at that time already and she cooked. When I got married, I couldn't cook at all. The first meal I made was inedible. I cooked tomato soup, and no matter what I put in it, it didn't taste good; I added some more sugar, some more roux, but I didn't put in any salt! I did shopping, I took the kids for walks, I did needlework, I sewed, so I wasn't the kind of person who rested a lot. I did read, especially in the evenings in bed. Even now, the book I am reading at the moment is right here. I'm not able to fall asleep without reading.
When I was a young woman, we played cards every Sunday. Many people came: my sisters-in-law, Klari and Iren, my step-mother's relatives, and my cousins, Uncle Naci's sons. Although when we got married, my husband said, ‘There are no close connections with the relatives,' it wasn't like that at all. We moved there in 1929 and in 1930, my natural mother's eldest brother, Uncle Naci, built a house in Matyasfold, and they lived there with their three sons. The two houses were close by, five minutes apart. My cousins were friends with my husband - relatives and friends as well. I liked them very much, they were intelligent, well-educated, well-read people. They graduated from secondary school. Back then, it was a big thing if someone graduated from secondary school.
We also went over to Uncle Naci's place a lot. They liked us – especially Uncle Naci.
Aunty Lina was a strange woman. She liked to put on airs, although she was uneducated. We'd go over after dinner, especially before we had children, and later our children and Andor's son were very close.
We were a very hospitable household. People like to be at our place very much. Many times people came already for lunch, many times they brought lunch with them, and many times we cooked together. The card games continued even after we had the children. The family of my sister-in-law, Klari, also came, although their children were a good few years older than mine. They really enjoyed being here. My sister-in-law's family even spent the summer holiday in Matyasfold. Not at our place, but they rented a flat and my mother-in-law cooked for them.
Klari and I met up almost every week. My children really like her children; it was a very strong relationship. When I was 24, I had an operation to remove kidney stones and while I was recovering, Klari took care of my two children. My husband lived at their place with the children, while I was in Hospital.
Before the war, we used to go to the theatre and the cinema, but not very often. I went to the opera house for the first time as a young married woman; I went to the opera with my husband. In Matyasfold, the IKARUSZ company had a gym and once a week they showed movies in there. We also went to Budapest many times; we went to large cinemas. In Lajos Kossuth Street, there is a cinema that used to be called The Forum; that's where I saw the first talking movie. Many times we took up a whole row, because Uncle Naci and his family, and my sister-in-law's family all came along with us. I think we usually went to later shows. Of course all this was before I had children. But it happened that we asked Klari to come over and mind our young kids, but this didn't happen very often.
My cousins and my husband owned a boat together, and they rented a space for the boat at the first boathouse, next to the Ujpesti Osszekoto bridge. As soon as the weather started to be good they went to lacquer it and put it in order. When I joined their group, then I also went along to tidy up the boat and every weekend, we went rowing on the Danube, in two boats. It wasn't the done thing at the time, to sleep in the same tent with one's fiancée, so they went to Vac or to Horany on Saturday, and I went to join them on Sunday morning and then came home in the evening. That was the program every weekend, when the weather was good. How they settled on this sport, I don't know, but Jeno was a member of the Workers' Sports Association. My husband was also a member. He liked rowing and was very good at it. When we were rowing in a cox-less double scull, if he didn't want someone to overtake us, they couldn't. Later, we gave up rowing.
In the wintertime we went skiing. While my husband was still a bachelor, he even went abroad to Mariazell and to other Austrian resorts. At that time, there wasn't too much snow in the Buda hills, but there was some and the Workers' Sports Association had a cabin up in Nagyszenas and we used to go there. I didn't like skiing so much, because I found myself in a group of people who had been skiing for years and I wasn't very adventurous. I did like going there though, and learnt to ski very quickly.
My husband worked for MEFTER, the Hungarian Royal River and Sea Shipping Stock Company. He had free tickets for boat travel. We went to Vienna with the ship. My mother-in-law was with us too; we had to take this poor soul everywhere. My husband insisted on it. I didn't have anything against her, we got along quite well.
When I was a young married woman, my parents spent many summer holidays at the Danube's Romai-bank, but I never spent any holidays with them. Both of my sisters-in-law had summer holidays every year, with their three children at Lake Balaton, or Nagymaros, by the Danube. I also went there for a week or two, but it was at the time when I had Marika [1933-1999] already. And then the bad times came and these holidays stopped.
My husband only had a secondary school education. Back then a secondary school final exam was worth a university degree now. He had a commercial secondary school final exam I think, because he worked in business, he dealt with salaries and stock-taking, sometimes he had to go to the countryside, to do auditing. He worked for MEFTER, the Hungarian Royal River and Sea Shipping Stock Company; I don't know what position he had exactly, some sort of a clerk. He worked from 9am to 3pm. He came home at three o'clock and we always had lunch then. He didn't go back in the afternoon after that. Sometimes, there was some work related to payroll, which he took home, and I did it. I was at home, I didn't work.
We converted to Christianity because of my husband's office, because he worked for the Hungarian Royal River and Sea Shipping Stock Company. This was a state-owned company and he was picked on at work. A colleague of his, who wanted to the best for him, pushed him to convert to Christianity, so that we would have no problems. In 1934, the Jews were unwanted already. And he liked his workplace. To be honest, I don't know if he was promoted after this. Back then, I didn't really care about rankings and suchlike. He always got a bit more money.
We were christened in the Rozsak Square church in Budapest. My elder daughter, Marika was ten months old then. She was born in 1933. She was also christened. My daughter Judit [1935-2002], was born as a Christian in 1935. Only our godfather was there. We didn't even have a godmother. This colleague of my husband was an older, very religious man. He was our godfather. I don't think we had to go to religious classes. I got some book and I read it; Catechisms or I don't know what. The conversion wasn't too much of an issue. We didn't get together with Christians, so when Judit was born, we didn't even know who the godparents should be. Back then, there were green-cross district nurses, who dealt with children and pregnant women. I asked ours to become the godmother and she accepted. I don't even remember the christening. There was no celebration.
I didn't even want it, my natural mother was not very, but quite religious. She didn't wear a wig, like her twin sister did, but she did keep the Friday evening candle-lighting. I was raised in this religion; I went to these kinds of religious classes. I knew it better than the Christian religion. And my husband wanted us all to be assimilated. I didn't want it and we argued about it for a very long time and then I said that I'd agree to the children being Christian, but I didn't want to myself. But my husband said we couldn't raise two types of children in the family – because at that time, it worked that the girl would have been Jewish and the boy Christian [Editor's note: according to the Hungarian regulations of the time, children born in a mixed marriage, were registered such that boys were registered according to their father's religion, and the girl's according to their mother's.] This colleague pressed my husband very hard. And in the end, I was taken in.
Of course I did everything I could, to provide the girls with the appropriate religious upbringing, especially when they went to school; I went to church with them and they were confirmed etc. But I don't know too much about the Christian religion, even now. During the war, I moaned about what sort of a pope it was who allowed that the Holy water that washes away all sins, didn't wash away our past Jewishness. The Jews, who converted to Christianity, were persecuted as much as those who didn't. I think, the conversion was also just a formality for my husband. He didn't even go to church. He never went to church. My husband's mother was not at all religious. For her, it was all the same. From the catholic religion, we just kept what all the other Jews do: Christmas and Easter, the Christmas tree and presents.
There were two married couples with whom we used to get together, but not very often. They were Jewish. Actually the wife of one of them was Christian. But we didn't even talk about the conversion.
My natural mother was already dead. I lost her when I was little. I had a stepmother, who raised me as if she was my natural mother. They weren't happy about it. It‘s very interesting, that actually the whole family wasn't religious, but they were Jewish, and we kept the Jewish high holidays. My father was the least religious one, but it was he who was most upset when he heard that we converted to Christianity.

During the war
Then the real troubles began: special Jewish regulations, from which we were not exempt. My husband was very bitter, as was I. On the 26th May 1944, we moved to my parent's place in Almassy Square. We didn't have to, but we had the opportunity, because we would have had to go to the ghetto in Pestujhely. But out of those Jews from Matyasfold who went there, nobody came back. Actually, we were lucky, my daughters and I. In Matyasfold, a police officer lived just in front of us, who was the chief officer of the camp in Kistarcsa, which was a holding camp.
They had moved there not long before. They were a young married couple with a little baby. We weren't even on nodding terms. This police officer was completely stunned when he first saw us with the yellow star, because we'd converted to Christianity and my daughters were in school and church was obligatory for them, and I went with them. Until then, we had had no contact at all with him, and after that he approached me, and when it was announced that the Jews and those of Jewish origin from Matyasfold had to go to the ghetto in Pestujhely, he offered to have a look and see what sort of a place it was. A couple of days later, though, he asked if we had any relatives in Budapest, because it would be easier to hide in a big city. He talked us out of going to the ghetto. He even gave us an official document which allowed us to move to my parents' place with all our belongings.
I don't know what happened to him after the war. I do know that they moved to Debrecen, because his wife was the daughter of some factory owner, and they left for Debrecen after the war. By the way, he was also denounced by somebody who he'd sent to Kistarcsa, because he'd had to. He was acquitted. I was there as a witness, but my testimony was not needed.
When Almassy Square number 15, became a yellow-star-house 5, there were 18 of us living in those three rooms. My father was there, my step-mother and step-sister, my sister, with her husband and little daughter. They had lived in this flat originally. There was my also husband and I with our two children. And then another five people arrived there, because my mother-in-law came, and my two sisters-in-law, Iren and Klari, their husbands and their three kids. All three were deported and they all died. My sister-in-laws daughter was deported from the KISOK field. My dad was taken away, we don't even know where he went, because we never received so much as a line from him. In 1944, men had to go to forced labor. He wasn't very old, but he was over 50 already, but he also had to go. After the war, my sister had them search for him, but no information could be found about him at all.
When we moved to Almassy Square in 1944, they weren't working any more. I think they worked before that, but I don't know that for sure. Sewing work could still be done for a long while. The workshop still existed in 1944, but my father didn't get any work any more orders. The workshop was standing empty. We sewed trousers. Etel arranged it, and she dealt with them. We sewed for a company, we didn't make individual trousers. I did the ironing. It wasn't easy because a tailor's iron is heavy and it had to be heated in a little oven. Etel worked by hand, and she arranged things. And there was a machine operator. He was despicable, because when the Germans were already here and we were still working, there was a raid; the Jews were being collected and he informed on us, telling them that we were at home. We had gone down to the cellar by then – at this time my sisters-in-law and my mother-in-law were already living there, because it was a yellow-star house- and we spent a night on top of a coal pile, in the coal cellar, my mother-in-law, the children and I. We heard the Arrow Cross 6 men shouting in front of the cellar window, but they couldn't find us.
The next day we came up from the cellar; we couldn't stay there for ever. Then all along Wesselenyi Street, came a long, long line of people, escorted by Arrow Cross men. They were Jews, who had been dragged out of their houses, all sorts of people: the old, the sick, everyone. We also got into this chain of people- we had to come out of the house. They took us to Tattersall. In the daytime, we lay on the floor, on blankets or coats, whatever one had. Some people even died there. Mom took a bag of food, and that's what we had. Tattersall had some sort of a gate and towards the evening time, it was opened and we were driven into the racecourse. This is right next to the cemetery in Fiumei Road and when they opened the gates, we just saw all those crosses and we thought, ‘This is the end; they've brought us to the cemetery!' It was a terrible sight – the cemetery, all those crosses, but then they let us go up to the grandstand, in case it rained or something. We were there with three children, without anything to eat or drink, because the stuff Mom had thrown into the bag was already gone. We were in our coats. It must have been around October, when the Arrow Cross was in power. Then we sat there and waited for whatever was to happen next. And sometime - late in the evening or in the night, I think it was policemen in army uniforms that appeared, and they announced through the loudspeakers - at least that's how I remember, because we were sitting high up on the grandstand, and we could still hear it - that we could go home. Then the line of people, in their yellow stars, started off again, through the streets at night. It wasn't pleasant to walk, we were also very scared, and that's how we went home.
My husband was taken into forced labor many times; he was in Budapest for a while, but he died in Balf. What they did in Balf, I don't know. He didn't write from there, and I wasn't at home either, anyway. He wrote one time, from somewhere on the way there, and I heard that he was sick from a fellow laborer who came to visit me. They were next to each other, on plank-beds or on the floor, I don't know. He probably found out from my husband, that we lived in Almassy Square, because when we moved away from Matyasfold, we moved away from my parents. He told me that my husband had become sick, and the sick ones, those who couldn't go on, had been shot dead. So my husband was also shot, into a big hole. This, according to his fellow laborer, was on the 31st March 1945, a day before the Russians' arrival. I heard this in 1945 or 1946. Beforehand, I had made enquiries through the newspapers. I think it appeared in Nepszava or Nepszabadsag. [which was called Szabad Nep, at that time,] because my step-mother's relative had some connection, through which I could make an announcement there.
We never received any official message that he had died. I had his death registered. This was because of the house in Matyasfold. It was in two names: that of my husband and his mother. It had to be cleared up because of my daughters. That's when I had his death registered. My mother-in-law had two daughters who could also have inherited it, but they declined, so it was put in the names of my two daughters, but I was the legal beneficiary.
There is a memorial in the Jewish cemetery here in Kozma Street, and who those are buried here, were identified. There is a big long grave, but everybody has their own little plaque. There are nine of them in one grave, and my husband is named there. I didn't know about this exhumation in Balf, I only heard about it when the coffins were already being buried here.
We don't know where my mother-in-law is buried either. She was in a ghetto, with her daughter Klari, during the war. She was liberated there. Right afterwards, in 1945, she died of typhus. When I got back home, she was dead already. Many died of typhus. My sister-in-law told me that her husband dragged her into the cemetery in a trunk, I wasn't at home yet. There was probably no name or anything written on it. When I came home, we tried to find out about her, but no luck. Probably she was buried in a common grave.
Etel's husband was also taken to do forced labor. He died in Fertorakos.
When the Germans came in 7, I was deported. By the time there was a ghetto in Budapest, I wasn't there anymore. It was on posters, that every women under the age of 35, should appear on the KISOK field, complete with food for three days and I don't know what else. So I went to the KISOK field with my sister, but in the evening of the first day, those whose husbands were in forced labor, were allowed to go home, but next day they had to come back and then we didn't go home anymore. It happened some time around the end of November 1944. Both of us went on foot as far as Zundorf- which is somewhere close to Hegyeshalom, on the Austrian border. There, we were driven into railway cattle cars, men and women together, and the doors were closed on us. It was terrible. I can't even describe this trip. We weren't given any food or drink, we couldn't go to the toilet; one of the corners was the toilet. I don't remember anymore how long this journey, this nightmare, lasted.
We traveled as far as Hamburg, there they kicked out all the men, and this freight train pushed on with the women, actually going back. Of course we didn't know anything, because we couldn't see out, so only when the train stopped again, we saw the name of the station: Furstenberg. Actually, it was through this nice, friendly-looking little place, that we arrived to a concentration camp, surrounded by barbed wire, where we were received by dogs and SS soldiers. This was Ravensbruck.
We only stayed here for two weeks. It was horrible. There were four or five of us on a narrow plank-bed. That's where I saw women with shaved heads for the first time, and here Etel cut my beautiful, almost waist-length hair, which was worn plaited around my head, with her nails scissors, which she still had at that time. This was because I was scared of lice, and of being shaved bald. After two weeks, we were put into train carriages again, and we were taken to a different camp. This was Leipzig, as we heard later. Luckily, my sister and I were taken to the same place, but they never knew that we were sisters, because she was called Schneller, and I was called Hamos.
Compared to the circumstances in Ravensbruck, it was much better here. In Ravensbruck, two people lay on one plank-bed, and five people shared one spoon to eat the inedible food. Then I had still been quite particular and I preferred not to eat that slop with a well-licked spoon.
The camp in Leipzig, was actually a labor camp, from which we were taken to work in the factory in shifts, one week at night, one week during the day. The name of the factory wasn't written there, but on the so-called ‘money' we received, the name HASAG was printed. [Editor's note: HASAG was a privately-owned German company, which was the third largest employer of slave labor. From the summer of 1944, labor camps were established next to each HASAG plant in Germany, all of which, were satellite camps of Buchenwald. Mostly women were employed in HASAG plants.]
When we went to the factory, we crossed tramlines, but I don't remember the number of the tram. I think it was a cannon round and bullet factory, because we were sorting little metal cartridge-cases into boxes. We had to check them very carefully. No scratches could be on them.
In the lager, many things happened, which seemed important back then. For example, in the barrack's corridor, was a big tank of sand and a big barrel of water, so that in case of fire, there would be something to put it out with. Once, somebody spilt some water into the sand and the Aufseherin [female overseer] said that she must've urinated there, and she demanded a Strafappell [punishment-line-up.] Every morning at five o'clock, there was an Appell [line-up,] which meant that we had to stand in lines of five people, in the corridor, until they had counted that we were all present. When the Strafappell was ordered, it was freezing cold and snowing outside. Etel and I were washing our hair, and we also washed our stockings, shirts and underwear, and we had to put them all on while they were still wet, and to stand in the snow, with our wet hair, for an hour.
There was a large stone building in the camp – Poles lived in there and there were a great many wooden barracks. Etel and I got into a wooden barracks block for 20 people. There were bunk beds and on them, mattresses stuffed with straw, and a blanket. There was an iron heater in the room, on top of which we could toast the bread we received. Many such rooms opened onto one corridor. In the barracks, the toilet was a long room and along one wall, similar to village latrines, there was a wooden board with five holes in it, so one could do one's business in company, if it so happened.
One could wash in the main building, because there was always nice, hot water in there, a shower and there were hot pipes where one could dry one's washed underwear and wet hair. We had no change of clothes, just the ones we had on us. Three times a day, we received food, such as it was. There were women from a great many different nations there, but mainly Polish, not only Jewish. There were even people saying ‘stinke jude!' [stinking Jew.] The main supervisors were German SS women [Aufseherin] and in the barracks, polish prisoners, Blokovas, who had been there for a longer period, as supervisors. Blokova Hanna always wished us 'Gute Fliegealarm,' [good air-raid] because then we were taken down to the shelter in the factory and we could have a little nap, sitting on the benches.
Once we lived in the main building for a while- I don't remember why they moved us over there- and there were 4-storey bunk beds. Etel and I took the top bunk, to avoid having straw or other rubbish falling onto us. As soon as the lights were switched off, the cockroaches fell like rain, from the ceiling onto the top bunk, so we couldn't sleep the whole night. As it turned out later, the situation wasn't any better in the lower bunks, either. After two or three days, we were almost dizzy at work- we kept falling asleep- and then we were asked what our problem was. I count it as a good point, that the Germans put out cyanide in the room, while we were working. That was a respectable action for these thugs. Later, we also didn't know why, we were moved back to the barracks.
On the day after moving back, when we were returning from the day's shift, Etel slipped away from the line and went into the main building, because she wanted to get a plank for our bed, as one was missing. Meanwhile, there was an air-raid and we had to go down to the shelter, and Etel wasn't there. I was really worried. When the raid was over, we could see that smoke was pouring out of the main building and it was falling down. I was in utter despair, thinking that she had died there, but suddenly she appeared with the plank of wood and told me happily, that the walls had been moving, but she didn't know that the building had actually been hit by a bomb, only when she came out. Many Polish women died in that raid. This happened quite near the end of the war.
We didn't know anything concrete about the situation on the outside. We suspected that things were not going very well for the Germans, even though they wrote on the toilet walls ‘Deutschland soll leben' [Germany shall live] We also assumed something based on the fact that for days, the same faulty cartridge cases always came back on the production line, so they had no material supplies. Sometimes, when we went to the toilet, we could see train carriages with MAV signs on them standing there, and we used to daydream that we could get into one of them maybe it would take us back. But there was no chance of that, because we were escorted, even to the toilets, and we could only go when we were taken there. Then, one day, we weren't taken to the factory any more. We were taken there twice. We were told that we were going to work in the Stadtgartnerei, the city gardening company. I was even looking forward to it, because then at least we would be in the fresh air. But the Stadtgartnerei wasn't that at all, it was just filling-in bomb craters. There were such intense air raids that we were hiding under bushes. Even our guard was scared, not just us.
On 13th April 1945, we were rudely awoken by the Aufseherin supervisor women, in the barracks of the Leipzig camp, shouting, ‘Schnell, schnell!' [quickly, quickly!] we had to line up with all our blankets and belongings -which was hardly anything at all- because this camp was to be evacuated. The invading troops were coming.
That night, the march started in a long, snaking line; We just walked and walked, as we realized later, completely without aim, almost around the clock, for ten days. We were staggering half-asleep, they hardly gave these weak, emaciated, shells-of-people any breaks. On just a couple of nights, they let us lie down, of course, under the open sky, on the bare ground. During the night we could see the flames rising, and we could hear the bombs exploding. As a matter of fact we realized that we were going nowhere, because all the signposts were pointing towards Pirna. Being dragged along non stop, for ten days underneath the open sky, every road led to Pirna. According to German precision, we had to march in orderly rows of five. For ten days, we didn't receive any food or drink, apart from the little piece of bread we got when we started off. We chewed on grass that grew by the roadside. It was in the middle of April. The German peasants were just planting potatoes in the fields, which were in big piles at the edges of the fields, by the road in many places; those who were suffering from starvation so much that they risked digging potatoes out of the piles, were shot dead and their bodies were dragged to the edge of the road, so that the whole line of people after them could see what happened to those who ‘stole' potatoes.
On the night of the tenth day, we were driven into a huge wooden barn, which was full of straw, and we crawled into it to get warm. We had a wonderful sleep, because finally we had a roof over our heads. By the morning, our entire escort had disappeared. Slowly, we struggled up and dared to come out of the barn. When we came out, we could see that hundreds of people, were passing with bundles tied to their bicycles, with packages on their backs, with prams fully packed with buckets, pots and other household items; like a huge exodus, they were just going and going in the same direction- now I know- towards the West. This exodus lasted all day, and we, who were still together from the lager, were just standing around, and waiting for somebody to arrange whatever should happen to us, because based on our clothes, anybody who was interested would have known who we were, but nobody cared about us.
In the meantime, it got dark. We were at the end of a village. The sign said Lorenzkirch, there were a couple of houses there. We tried to get them to let us in, but they'd only let us into the garden. We tried to sleep again, under the open sky, but at least leaning against the wall of the house. We woke up at dawn; in the twilight, it was very quiet. There were only six of us left there. One of the girls said she'd look around. She crawled down the embankment and saw that every sort of smaller and larger vehicles were standing there, fully packed but unclaimed. Apparently, when it got dark, the Germans had only wanted to save their lives, and they left their belongings there on the road. She came back, and brought the plunder; after ten days our first meal was a raw egg each, and some sugar lumps, stuffed into our mouths with our hands. This was the day we got free of the Germans and we were freed.
The second phase of our German travels started. Soviet soldiers appeared and they got us started us off towards the east. After a long march, we arrived at some wooden barracks. We received some good, hot food with rice there. There were basins and a lot of hot water there. Finally, after ten days, we could have a wash, we could wash our hair and after long months, we could lay in a bed, which had bed sheets and covers too. All of a sudden, we were awakened by lots of shouting, that we had to start quickly, because the Germans would arrive soon. Our belongings hadn't dried yet. We threw them on and rushed off with the others – we didn't even know where.
Next morning, the wandering carried on. From there on, there were really just six of us. We went without any escort, through many places. Wherever we went, we were looking for the Red Cross. Where our road led us, we met the soldiers of the Soviet Army everywhere. This was a bit of a barbarian army. Although in the daytime, apart from some exceptions, we had no problems with them, at night, they got drunk and went crazy. They always told us that we should go this way or that way. Finally, we got to a Red Cross camp in Spremberg, where we were put up in houses. We also had lots of experiences on this journey, because we met some Italian boys, and one of them even wanted to marry me. We spent six weeks in this camp. Here we got some food every day: mainly bread and potatoes, sometimes some sugar or flour, and very rarely, some meat. In the lager, I lost weight until I was 38 kilograms, and in those six weeks we spent in Spremberg, I got my weight up to 53 kilograms.
The way we came home was that on the 17th June 1945, they lined us up and started us off, saying that we would be put into train carriages and taken home to Hungary. We had been walking for hours, when a man came on a motorbike and went to our escorts, saying, ‘Turn around! The train's already left!' So we went back. We spent two more days in the camp, and then we were started off once again, but this time we really reached the train. We were in open carriages, and we got some very bad seats, right behind the engine, so when it started, the sparks fell on us, so we had to hide underneath some blankets to avoid being burnt. Then the engine started, and we went across many broken bridges, so if you looked down, you'd have kittens that the bridge might really crumble underneath the train. Then later, we got into covered carriages. I don't remember the stations we stopped at. Here and there we received some soup and some bread. I remember that we were also in Prague. There we were told that we would have to wait a long while, so we were allowed out of the carriages. Then we went out, and I agreed with Etel, that we would beg for food at random, and from one family, we got some very delicious pudding dessert. After the bad soup we'd received at the station, it was wonderfully tasty. Then we went back to the carriages. The train was ordered to one side many times, because the soldiers were still going all over the place. In Bratislava, we received some money. I think we even received some papers from a Jewish organization. It was kind of a repatriation document, to prove where we had been. Whatever we declared, they wrote in. Just once, when we'd been working at the factory, we'd received some payment, and it had this name HASAG written on it. I still had this, and based on these two documents, I received my German pension money.
By the time the train started, it was 18th June, and we arrived home on the 29th June, just a day before my 33rd birthday. The train arrived at Nyugati Station; the tram on the Korut, [the inner city ring road] was already working, I know that. We got on it. People could see how we looked, so nobody checked our tickets – but I think, at that time, no-one was asked for their ticket yet– and we went as far as Wesselenyi Street, and we walked up the Street. A woman who Etel knew came towards us and she was shouting from a long way away already, that Mom, my step-mother, and the children were alive. This was a great experience. We went up to the third floor and into the flat; my children weren't there, because meanwhile, my sister-in-law, Iren had moved back to the flat in Baross Street, Klari moved with her too, and they took the two children as well. Klari and Iren carried on living together until Klari's death. Then we went there. I lived in Almassy Square with the children, as all our belongings were there, until we moved back to Matyasfold.
During the war, many of our belongings had been lost. My most beautiful things and those of my husband and the children were in two suitcases; I was no longer in Budapest at the time, but my husband was still in the city in forced labor, somewhere in Hungaria Avenue, in a school. There was this pig-trader who had been willing to look after everything for us. He took the two suitcases and we never saw him again. My husband took my favorite books to the wholesalers where he used to work, they were hidden there, but I never got to see them again either. I had a Persian lambskin coat that was gone too. I had silver cutlery, which was also taken away. Everybody had an explanation for it. Some said the Romanians took them away, some sold the stuff and lived off the money. But I said, I'm not going to sue anybody, I don't want to take revenge on anybody.

Post-war
After the war, I was left alone with two children. I had to earn money to feed us, and I had no profession. But afterwards I made up for it and did a two-year course. In the end, I became a chartered accountant and certified auditor.
We arrived home on the 29th June 1945, and on the 9th August, I got into the Rokus hospital, to work. I managed to get in there through a friend of one of my cousins, who died. It was called the Institution Supervision. I got into the department where they dealt with the payroll and did other administration for the hospital employees. I did payroll and later, I became an internal auditor. It was terrible at the beginning, because although I had attended commercial college and learned to type, this had back been in 1929, and I was completely out of practice. The first day, I was sat down in front of the machine, and the nurses came along one after the other, and a huge sheet had to be filled out with all sorts of data. It went dreadfully, so I overheard many comments, like: ‘Why would they employ someone like that who's only plucking at the keys?' I wasn't sent away, and I quickly got into the swing of it. I worked there for seven years, and from there I went to the health ministry, where I worked for a very long time. I worked as a chief clerk and I carried out auditing work for a while, and then I became a deputy head of department. When I retired, I was a deputy head of department. So, I only did business-related work, but I never liked it.
Right after the war, I think everybody who couldn't obtain food in any other way, gave away all their clothes and everything, in order to ensure food for their family. So, there was kind of a barter-trade system working. Mom dealt with these things. We were busy because we entered work quickly, both my sister and I. My sister's husband came from Vanyarc, in Nograd county, and his parents were merchants and he had two brothers. One was taken away to forced labor and the other one escaped somehow, and he hid at the home of a many-skirted peasant woman who he later married. He was a good Jewish merchant- he could get hold of anything.
After the war, they provided food for us. And then there was the opportunity to give him our bread coupons and we received white flour in exchange, and Mom baked bread and we were provided with everything from Vanyarc. Mom even traveled on the top of a train. She took not only coupons, but also clothes and whatever was left, to Vanyarc.
We had moved away from Matyasfold on the 26th May 1944. The house stayed there vacant. It was completely derelict. I don't know who had lived there, but when I came back, the view that welcomed me was one of fallen plaster, and no doors, because the doors had been used as a ramp for horses. Later the Christian neighbors told me that the Russians had used it as a stable; it was full of manure – it was in a terrible condition. The front door had been taken away. It was probably chopped up for firewood. The parquet floor in our original bedroom had been taken up, and also probably used as firewood; even the bathroom doorframe had been taken away. So we couldn't move back there. At that time we were still waiting for our men to come home, but unfortunately, none returned: neither the husband of my sister, nor mine, nor did my father, or my sister-in-law's children. The husbands of my sisters-in-law survived. Iren was in hiding with her husband, somehow they could get Christian papers. Klari's husband was in the Ghetto. After the war, he worked at the OMZSA, the Hungarian Jewish Aid Organization. They handed out clothes and food. We also received clothes both for the children and ourselves, we received winter coats and all sorts of things. This was in Bethlen Square. There was also a centre there, where announcements were posted showing who had returned from forced labor. My poor brother-in-law got lice from clothes or I-don't-know-what, and he died of typhus.
Once, a married couple appeared at my workplace in 1946 and told me that they had been to Matyasfold; they needed somewhere to live, and they offered to move there. They weren't going to pay rent, but they offered to put the house back in order. I had two conditions: one, that we should wall up the door into the third room and open a door into the courtyard, and two, that I could go out there with my children in the summertime. We signed a contract and they moved in. They didn't make an ordinary door to the third room, but they put a wooden board there, which could only be closed from inside. And instead of the parquet flooring which had been taken up, they laid down cruddy boat-deck flooring, but one could live there. In 1947, I moved into that one room with two pieces of furniture, but we didn't live there during the wintertime, because it wasn't well suited to it. In the summer, I was there with children, so they could get some fresh air. The tenant worked for BKV and he lost his job. He showed up at the hospital again, saying that he couldn't keep this contract and they could move into a friend's place for free. So then we moved in again, into the whole flat. We've carried out a lot of reconstruction in the house since then, as the children grew up.
In the 1950s, in my family, nobody had anything to fear. Nobody did anything, about which, he needed to be frightened. In fact, I was quite far from the detentions and from the dawn raids made by AVH. I heard about this sort of thing, but it didn't happen near me. At the party members meetings, it was read aloud, if things like that went on. I mainly read about this in the newspaper, but we were far from it. I only knew what was officially announced. We had party members meetings every month. There were many meeting rooms in the ministry, where such things could be held. In the course of these meetings, they related by and large, the political events, those they were allowed to, as well as about ministerial issues. Apart from that, there was nothing special; they didn't mean anything to me. When I was young, not only could I care less about politics, but I didn't even look at the newspapers, I was so uninterested. Indeed, I've never been interested in politics. When I was a party member, I wasn't interested either. One could stay out of it.
I was a party member. I hadn't been back home yet from the deportations, when my step-sister signed me up for the communist party in 1945. In 1956, I didn't want to rejoin the party, because by then so much had come out about what they'd done. In the ministry, one of the communist heads of department – we were on good terms, she had been in Auschwitz- tried to convince me to rejoin. Then I said, 'Look, I'm not rejoining because my sister lives in Australia and I will never denounce her. I also have relatives in America, and I'm not going to denounce them either.' I didn't want to rejoin, but the I went to the cemetery many times, to my step-mother's grave, and I also have many relatives in the Jewish cemetery in Kozma Street. So I went out there, and walked among those big gravestones, the common grave of the forced laborers of Balf and Sopronkohida, and then I thought I would rejoin the party in case , god forbid, something terrible like this were to happen again. I rejoined the party at the last party meeting. My party membership was acknowledged without any special vetting, or difficulties. I was a member of the party until the change of regime, I think.
There were times when I was a party branch leader in the ministry. The party members in the department were my responsibility, we had meetings and for a while, when I had already retired, they entrusted me with the writing of a short piece about what they were discussing in the party organization in Matyasfold.
The 23rd October 1956 8, was the day of my last exam at the ministry of finance. At the ministry of health, my room on the third floor had windows looking onto the banks of the Danube, and I could see students and soldiers and everybody, marching all day, below my window. We were to go to the ministry of finance for our exam at four or five o'clock and we did. There was an army guard at the ministry of finance already. We went in, and after I took my exam, I said that I'd go down to call my sister, so that she could call home. I didn't have a phone at that time yet. They had an acquaintance in Matyasfold, who had one. I went down, and the ministry gate was closed, and they didn't want to let me out, saying there was an alert and we couldn't leave the building individually. I begged so much that they let me out. When I got outside, there was a great din in the streets. They were shouting in the streets, ‘Down with Gero!' 9 and things like that. I was a bit scared, but I went to the phone box.
When the announcement of the exam results was complete, I came out together with a man, with whom I was in the same study group. We wanted to take bus number 45. At that time, the end station of number 45, which goes to Matyasfold, was at Jegbufe. There was no bus, though just chaos and shooting on the street, it could be heard everywhere. The big scene at the radio station was already happening. At the corner of Semmelweis Street, there was a presso- it's still there today- we went in and I made a phone call to my sister to ask her what to do. She said, 'What can you do? Do you want to walk home to Matyasfold? Come here, instead!' So then I slept there. My sister's family had a telephone already and we called my sister's acquaintance from there. It was already midnight, then. We asked him to go over and have a look if they are at home. He called back to say that I could calm down, as they were there. The next day, I still couldn't get home, only on the third day; I got a lift part of the way, and I also walked a bit. When we could go out- because the curfew wasn't always on- we had to go into the ministry to work. Many times, I was picked up by a police car on the Kerepesi road, on the way to Matyasfold, and they took me home. It also happened that I was walking all the way from Matyasfold to work, and back home again. These were the hard times for me.
It was terrible- all those shootings. The first evening for example, we walked along Wesselenyi Street and there was a dead body lying on the corner. My sister's window opened onto Almassy Square, and the whole day, tanks and armed men were moving around. Once for example, we were at the ministry and we were walking, many of us; at the Klauzal Square market, near to Akacfa Street, a truck drove through the street with people shooting from the top of it, and we clung to each other, by the closed market gate.
I never wanted to leave the country. Judit and her husband thought about it. If she hadn't been pregnant at that time, they probably would have left. My sister Etel left on 5th January 1957, she escaped over the border with her daughter and her boyfriend. After the war, Etel worked as a stocking mender or did manicures, but later she just did office work. She worked in the builder's trade union, and in SZOT. When they left, she was a chief accountant in a branch of Patyolat.
From March 1957, we had a telephone. When the 1956 revolution was on, I told myself that come what may, I must have a telephone, because many times we were out of touch. On the day of the revolution, I took my last chartered accountant's exam. I couldn't go home that night, so we called a neighbor, to ask him to check whether the two boys, my sons-in-law were at home- because the students marched out of the university with the teachers- so I could relax. Judit was pregnant, and Marika was there with a small child, so I was worried. In order to receive a telephone, strings needed to be pulled. The ministry helped me. They stated that I was in a field of work in which I might need to be contacted in urgent cases; the minister and the party secretary certified this. I handed in my request in February 1957 and by March, the telephone was installed in the house already.
In the 1950s I hadn't been on officially organized holidays. After that I went many times, though. These were trade union workers' holidays. It wasn't free, but it was very cheap, even considering the wages back then. Everybody could apply for them, but usually there were more applicants than places. The trade union committee decided who could go. They considered work performance and social circumstances. But most people did get these holidays.
I've been to almost all of the most beautiful holiday camps in the country: Galyateto, Kekes, Matrafured, Matrahaza, Sopron, Koszeg. I never applied for summer holidays, because when I was already working at the ministry, I always said that since I had no school-age children who would need to have holidays in the summertime, autumn holidays would do for me. They were always easier to get. I went a great many times. At the beginning, I used to go for two weeks, but after a while, two weeks were too much, and usually after ten days, I just got myself together and came home.
After the war, I used to go the theatre a lot, two or three times a month, because when I was working already, there was usually a cultural organizer. The children were already bigger, so I also took them with me sometimes. We had a season ticket for the opera too; I used to go to concerts a lot. I went to all of the school concerts which were in the mornings, at the music academy, and with all three of my grandchildren, it was I who took them to concerts. Later, Marika and I had a season ticket for the music academy.
I didn't encounter any Anti-Semitism during the revolution. In 1957, when it was already quite peaceful, I received a referral one of these holiday camps, at Karoly Castle in the summertime and there was a getting-to-know-you party. The Jews always find each other in places like that. I found myself in the same room with a Jewish woman, and I think she knew another Jewish man. There were comments, Jewish slurs, so I said that I'd go home, and then that Jewish man did too. So we came home together, well before the holiday was over. Things like that did happen. At my workplace, some knew it openly, others knew it in secret, where I had been during the war. We didn't really talk about things like that. Even with those who had been deported themselves, we didn't really discuss it. We didn't really know, who was Jewish. Nobody showed off about that, about being Jewish, or having been deported. We didn't even talk about it in the family, and now I regret that. We didn't talk about these things so much, not even about the deportation. I think we wanted to bury it, but unfortunately, you can't bury it, not completely anyway. My sister also really regretted that we didn't talk about it.
My daughter graduated from the University of Agriculture, and she had a Candidate of Sciences degree. It never would have occurred to her to attend that university, but one of her secondary school friends went to horticultural college, and somehow she liked it and she took the entrance exam for the agricultural university, and passed it. She attended the same year as her husband, Laszlo Sz… Laci, and they met there.
My daughter's husband's grandparents lived in Slovakia, my son-in-law was born in 1929 in Him, near Kosice and he went to school in Kosice. When the Hungarian resettlement was going on, his parents declared themselves Hungarian and came over to Hungary after the Second World War, and they got a house in Vertesacsa. When my daughter married him, his parents still lived in Vertesacsa. He still lived in a dormitory somewhere, because they were both students. They are not Jewish. Originally, I think they were peasants, but the father worked in the Hangya cooperative farm. The mother didn't work there, but they had a cow and they took butter to market in Kosice, that's what my son-in-law used to tell me. They did farm work here. I think it was some sort of farming cooperative.
They married in 1954, and later in Vertesacsa, where Laci's parent lived, they got married in a catholic church as well. I wasn't there; I don't even know why. Maybe they wanted to do it in secret. They went to Siofok for their honeymoon; my sister was at the builder's trade union, or already in SZOT, and I think she arranged this referral for a one week holiday for them. Later, my son-in-law moved to our place too. They graduated in 1955. They were agricultural engineers- that's what's written in their diplomas. Laci worked at the University of Economics- I don't know what position he had exactly- and in Keszthely, at some sort of Agricultural institution, and also as a professor of agriculture in Godollo.
When Marika graduated from University, she didn't work in her profession, because Marti was still a small child. Marti, my granddaughter, was born in 1955. At that time, maternity leave was very short; then she started working and she worked in many different places: in the Central Statistics Office, and in some research institute in Godollo, and at the end, in the Agricultural Economics Research Institute. She even had a book published about the food industry.
Then a year later in 1955, Judit got married. Her husband was called Ferenc. He was born in 1931 in Tat. His mother was very well-known- they also had some land- but he was a mailman; he carried the mail for the whole of Tat. I didn't know his father; he died at an early age. He may have worked at a mine in Dorog. Ferenc graduated from a technical secondary school. You could attend university after that. Ferenc was accepted at the Technical University in Budapest.
Due to financial reasons, I never managed to become a doctor. I tried to plant this seed in Judit, to become one. After graduating from secondary school, she did take an entrance exam, but not for medical school, but for the technical university, which was absolutely not her thing. She didn't do very well there either. She met Ferenc there. They both dropped out of university. Ferenc took different sorts of jobs. I told Judit, when she dropped out, that she had to study; it just wouldn't do for her to have no profession at all. The Dental Technical Company used to belong to the ministry of health, which had many branches, both in Budapest and in the countryside, and lots of trainees. I was able to arrange for Judit to be accepted as a trainee dental technician. She was also very good at it. At the Dental Technical Company she did dental technician work. Much later, Ferenc received an engineering diploma at the Kando Technical College. In the end, he worked for BKV. He was a works manager, he was in charge of repair works.
At the beginning, Judit and her husband also lived in the house in Matyasfold; the two couples lived there for almost two years, the brothers-in-law used to quarrel a lot, because men always like vying for position, saying, ‘I do this, not you!' Then they were on good terms for years. At the beginning of 1957, Judit was pregnant. My husband's two sisters were both widows, and they lived in Baross Street, in a two room flat with modern conveniences and one of the rooms was rented out to a woman who left them, so they invited Judit and her husband over. Then they moved there. Their daughter, Katika [1957-], was born there already. They started building a house in Matyasfold. They began building it in 1964, when I went to Australia for the first time, and by the time I arrived back, they had divorced. They divorced in October, and in December they moved together again. Then they lived together, in a common-law-marriage for another 20 years. If I remember correctly, they married again in 1995. Ferenc became really sick, and I think that was the reason. He died in 1997, or in 1998 and Judit died in 2002.
Marika's family lived there the whole time; my son-in-law, Laci, still lives there. Once he was offered a job in Kaposvar, where he would have been provided with a flat for the whole family. Marika said that she wouldn't go without me, but I told them I wouldn't go to Kaposvar.
Their elder daughter, Marti [1955-], was born in 1955, Kriszti [1966-] in 1966. They didn't really care about this, but later they thought, it's either now or never- Marika was 34 at the time- otherwise there wouldn't be any more children. It worked and Kriszti was born after eleven years. I was working the whole time, but I spent a lot of time with the children. Marika and her husband took the children with them when they were smaller, and when they were bigger, they left them with me, and they could go on holidays, go out to the theatre, have evenings out, or celebrate New Year's Eve. I looked after my three grandchildren every New Year's Eve.
I very rarely got together with the relatives on my son-in-law's side. Only if they came. I didn't even have time, I had to study and work, I had to keep the household, and I was left here, with the house in Matyasfold, and there was a lot to do in the garden too. I only grew flowers, and there was a lawn, but when my son-in-law married my daughter, he made a little kitchen garden. He works in it even now; he is already 74, but he still works in it. He produces vegetables: tomatoes, corn, sorrel- things like that. It's a small kitchen garden. In fact, that would be my home if my daughter were alive. I had been living there in that house, since 1929.
I retired in 1971, but I worked for another 20 years after retirement, there where I worked before, but only twice a week. When I had retired, I sewed a lot for the children. There were times when almost everything they wore was something I had made- for my daughters and my grandchildren too, and I also knitted a lot. And I worked in the garden.
When I was still working actively, I sometime invited a couple of colleagues to Matyasfold. I also visited one or two, but there were no close friendships. I have a friend with whom I keep in touch only by phone now. She used to be a colleague of mine; we worked in the same department in the ministry. She is also sick; she's 80 years old and I‘m 91. And I have my friend Mari, who's just turned 60, but I met her when I was already retired. She's young, and visits me. Neither of them are Jewish. I had a friend from the Rokus hospital, who was 70 years old when she was hit by an army car. She was my Jewish friend. My other Jewish friend was the widow of my cousin, Andor Oblath. But she also died. Everybody has left me already.
My sister Etel left Hungary on 5th January 1957. She fled across the border with her daughter and her boyfriend. My sister's boyfriend was married. Then he completely disappeared in Australia. Supposedly, he came back to Hungary. Originally, they wanted to go to America. They were in a refugee camp in Vienna. They had a letter of invitation to America already. Aunty Netka's elder daughter already lived there. The official invitation was from them, saying they would receive them. America closed the quota though, so they couldn't go. Then somebody in the camp drew their attention to the fact that a boat was preparing to leave for Australia, and they applied for it.
Somebody was waiting for them in Australia. A worker picked them up, who was already living there. I don't know when he went there – I didn't even know these people. They received them. I think Etel received some aid and she was able to buy a flat in Sydney with it. She never worked in Sydney. Occasionally she sewed, but later she just managed the household. She always used to say that she loved Australia, because she never paid a penny in taxes, but she receives retirement anyway. She learnt English; they needed to speak English in order to obtain citizenship. She did speak English, but not very well. She had many English-speaking acquaintances and card-partners and she could arrange anything she had to in English. She had been reading English-language books for many years. I sent her Nok Lapja, and Fules, because she really liked to solve the crosswords, and I also sent books. Every year, I sent her at least two packages of books. I always wrote to her. Less frequently first of all, but from the 1960's, regularly. A letter would come from there and I ‘d answer straight away.
In 1958, Etel's daughter, Agi, got married to Laci, who is 14 years older then her- he is 80 years old now. Laci left Hungary in 1947 or 1949. Agi didn't work when they arrived in Australia. She sewed enough to cover my travel costs. She worked in order to get me over there. This was in 1964. The next time I was out there, around 1970, she was already working for a large company, and she stayed there until her retirement. She worked in an office. She was the manager of the children's clothing section. She kept stock and she ordered whatever was needed.
I‘ve been to Australia six times. The first time, I went with a ship, and I flew there five times. I think, three or four times, I was there for six months, and twice for two or three months. The last time I was there, was in 1997. Once my children paid for the trip and once or twice, I saved up myself. I received compensation, and it was out of that money. Agi and Etel came home for the first time in 1971. They came many times since then. Etel always stayed, sometimes even as long as three months. She lived there with me in Matyasfold.
She has just died. In October 2003, she would have turned 90. She was buried in a Jewish ceremony in Sydney. In December 2002, it was three years since my daughter Marika died. My daughter Judit died in July 2002.
The foundation of the state of Israel didn't mean anything to me at all. I know nothing about the Anti-Zionist court cases. I didn't know that it happened. I know what is happening in Israel, though. We have many relatives out there, with whom it was mainly Etel who corresponded- it was Etel who did the long-distance correspondence- and there were visitors from Israel too. I've never been there. My daughter Judit went to Israel with her husband, who wasn't a Jew. He was game for anything like that, for example he went to the seder with Judit, which was organized by the Jewish community in the eighth district.
It really upsets me if I hear unfair things about Israel here at home. And it's not just about Israel, but if I hear the word ‘Jew' with a sharp intonation, I could go up the wall; it annoys me a lot. Although I'm not religious, I only trust in god.
Concerning where I belong, I still feel Jewish. Not in terms of religion; everybody I love is Jewish. Unfortunately, I must say that to be Christian for a Jewish woman, is somehow not good. My daughters weren't Jewish, but emotionally, they were Jewish, as I am.

Glossary

Eva Meislova
Prague
Czech Republic
Interviewer: Pavla Neuner
Date of interview: March 2003

Eva Meislova lives in a small apartment in a Jewish pension full of original paintings collected by her father. Her apartment is gracious and full of flowers. In addition to the paintings she has big wooden trunk from her mother. Although she spent most of her life under the communist regime and suffered under the Nazi persecution, she is a very kind and open-minded person and interested in public events. She was keen on all different kinds of sports in her youth and is still in good shape, both physically and mentally. She goes for a walk daily.

Family background">Family background

My paternal grandfather, Jakub Bohm, was born in Batelov, Moravia, in 1861. His father had a drapery factory and died when my grandfather was a kid. When my grandfather grew up he managed the drapery factory with his brother, but they went bankrupt. Later he was a coachman and had a buggy pulled by a horse. He liked to play cards and enjoy life. My paternal grandmother, Veronika Bohmova, [nee Redererova], was born in Celkovice, near Tabor, sometime in the 1860s, but I don't remember when exactly,. Her father was a shammash in Tabor. She had a brother, Ignac Rederer, who gave lectures at the university in Prague. I didn't know him very well; they weren't in touch that often.

When my grandfather got married to my grandmother he moved from Moravia to Celkovice where she lived. Celkovice was a suburb of Tabor at that time. He opened a drapery shop in Tabor. He employed one shop assistant and a few tailors and a foreman in the workshop, which was next to the shop. They sewed clothes for man, mainly uniforms for the garrison in Tabor. My grandparents lived about 15 minutes walk from our place. It was a nice house with a garden, situated next to the river. They didn't have electricity so they used oil lamps, and the toilet was in the yard. My grandfather used to sleep in our house, except for the weekends, because it turned out to be too far for him to go back to Celkovice every day. He stayed in the shop until evening and then he arrived and read the Prager Tagblatt. [This was a German-language daily newspaper.] My grandmother had her own friends but they weren't Jewish because there were no Jewish people in Celkovice. They met and talked but in general they didn't have very much spare time.

My grandmother was a housewife all her life. She had a maid at home for help. She was breeding hens as a hobby. My grandfather wasn't religious at all, he only went to the synagogue on Yom Kippur. He came from an ordinary Czech-speaking family, but he was a big fan of Austria-Hungary. My grandmother was religious but not extremely so; she kept a kosher kitchen, observed Sabbath and went to the synagogue on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. Celkovice was a small village, and my grandparents were living in the same way as the other Czechs. They were concerned about their family, house, garden and business.

Shortly before World War II my grandparents moved to an apartment in Tabor because my grandfather was already too old to work. At the beginning of the war they moved to our big apartment following the order that Jews could only live in certain parts of town. My grandparents went to the concentration camp Terezin 1 with us and died there. My grandfather died in 1942 when he was about 80 years old. My grandmother died a month later because she was old but, I think, also because she was used to him and suffered from his loss.

My father, Alois Bohm, was born in Celkovice in 1885, but he lived in Tabor all his life. Tabor was a calm countrified town without industry, there was only a malt-house and a tobacco factory. Before World War II about 15,000 people lived there. It was surrounded by a beautiful hilly landscape with lots of woods. There was a lake called Jordan, in which we used to swim in the summer. The Jewish cemetery was on the outskirts of town. Due to the mayor of the town there was quite a big Czechoslovak garrison [after WWI]. Barracks were built for the soldiers, and later they served for the Gestapo. There were about 800 Jews in Tabor, but none of them was really religious. The Jews in Tabor were mostly middle-class, not very rich but not very poor either. There was one Jewish factory-owner but most of the other Jews were just small businessmen.

I don't remember if my father studied anywhere. He was a businessman. He got his business license and became my grandfather's partner in the drapery shop. He wasn't religious. He didn't go to the synagogue except for Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. My mother said that he actually withdrew from the Jewish community because they asked him for too much community tax. He smoked a lot and drank a lot of coffee, but he didn't drink alcohol. My dad was this kind of sociable Jew, his 'sport activity' was limited to visiting the coffee shop and meeting people there. I used to go for a walk on a very beautiful, long pathway through the wood on Sundays with my mum. My dad always said to my mum that he would go to the coffee shop to meet people instead and asked her to join him later. So we were walking until four o'clock in the afternoon, and afterwards she met him in the coffee shop.

My dad had one sister. Her name was Julie, and she was a bit younger, two or three years, than him. She married a Christian man named Belohlavek. He was a very religious Christian and went to church very often. He was the director of the Sporitelna Bank in Prague. They lived in a beautiful three- bedroom basement apartment in a noble district of Prague. Their apartment was next to a large garden. We always walked through the gardens when we wanted to get to the center of the city. Uncle Belohlavek and Julie didn't have any children together. My uncle had a son from a previous marriage.

When my uncle was already retired he became quite a strange person. He underwent some rejuvenation cure when he was already over 60 years old. He put on high heels, painted his nails red and wore a corset. He also underwent prostate surgery which wasn't successful and, along with the treatment, caused his death at the beginning of World War II. Aunt Julie turned crazy because of it, walked the streets without the Jewish star attached, and someone reported her. She was in Terezin but I don't know where exactly she was killed. My mum thought that Belohlavek junior reported Aunt Julie because of the property. Belohlavek junior got married to some girl who wasn't good for him, according to his father. They didn't communicate with him and disinherited him. At the beginning of the war their son started to visit them from time to time. After the war he lived in Tabor and worked in a bank, but I wasn't in contact with him, and he didn't show any interest in communicating with me either.

My maternal grandfather, Josef Kraus, came from a Czech family. He was born in Cechtice in central Bohemia, and he also died there before World War II. He had a heart failure, was paralyzed as a result and spent the last ten years of his life bound to bed. I didn't know him very well. He had a small shop selling various products, and I know he tried to work in agriculture because he also owned some fields. My mum said that no seeds ever grew and that each pig they bought died shortly afterwards. So that part of business didn't get them anywhere.

My grandparents had a small village house, which included the shop, situated in the village center. My grandfather wasn't religious at all, and neither was his wife, my grandmother, Pavlina Krausova [nee Fischerova]. She came from Mlada Boleslav and moved to Cechtice after she married my grandfather. She was quite a smart woman with a good knowledge of cultural and historical events. My grandfather and her weren't a good match at all; I don't know where and how she wound up with him. After his death she moved to her sons in Prague. She didn't survive the Holocaust.

My grandparents had six children. The oldest, Rudolf, died as a soldier in World War I. Emil was a dentist. He lived in Karlovy Vary with his wife Eva and their two children. He died in 1933 of blood cancer. Bedrich was a clerk with the Union Bank. His wife's name was Dorotea, and they had two children. Bedrich was murdered in Auschwitz. Then there was my mother, Stepanka Bohmova [nee Krausova]. Next was Frantisek, who lived in Prague and ran a business manufacturing hand-embroidered clothes and evening clothes in the center of the city. The name of the company was Makra and it was successful. They made very beautiful things, and they even sold their products to the Castle [the seat of the government]. The youngest of my grandparents' children was Anna. She lived in Kralupy, near Prague, and was my favorite aunt. Anna ran a shop selling paints and varnishes. None of the siblings was religious.

My mum was born in Cechtice in 1895. Although she came from a Czech family she received German elementary school education. She was a young girl from a good family so she stayed in a girl's boarding school in Teplice, where she lived and studied and was preparing for family duties. It was a German secondary school.

My mother met my father on the train, and it was love at first sight. They had a Jewish wedding, and she moved to Tabor with him afterwards. She was a housewife, and in the afternoons she went to help my dad in the shop. She wasn't very religious. She only went to the synagogue on major holidays and much more to show off a new dress than for religious reasons. There was a big beautiful two-storied synagogue in Tabor, where women had places on the balcony. Praying women were sitting on the left side, and the right side was full of women who just came there to meet and talk. The praying women were rebuking them for disturbing them.

On Yom Kippur we went to the synagogue. When we returned my paternal grandmother arrived. My mum prepared dinner: It used to be barkhes and some chicken. My mother and grandmother fasted but we, the children and my father, didn't. My mum always said to my father, 'You only observe the holidays because of the food.' We didn't go to school on Yom Kippur but the drapery shop was open.

Growing up">Growing up

Our family belonged to the middle class; we were neither rich nor poor. My dad was officially the head of the family, but it was my mum who managed the house and family matters. She got a monthly salary from my dad and organized everything at home and everything concerning us, children. She was very joyful, loved to talk and was very popular in Tabor. People in Tabor were still remembering her a long time after her death. She liked to dress nicely and even had a personal tailor in Prague. She didn't have too much hair so she was wearing hairpieces. She was always very elegant but above all a very happy person. My dad, on the other hand, was a serious person. They loved each other a lot.

I had an older brother, Rudolf Bohm, who was born in Tabor in 1921. He finished a Czech gymnasium but wasn't allowed to continue the studies then because of his Jewish origin [because of the exclusion of Jews from schools in the Protectorate] 2. He was a boy scout when he was small. We had an average relationship, just like an older brother and younger sister tend to have. I remember I was crying when he refused to dance with me at dancing courses. My mum said to me, 'Don't cry and be glad that you have enough other suitors.' Rudolf was a very handsome and smart boy. He was the educational type and wanted to become a psychiatrist. Rudolf was the member of a hakhsharah 3. He spent two summers with them training in agriculture work. They lived there together and shared the money they earned. It was kind of a kibbutz life. The next year, that was either in 1940 or in 1941, my brother was already sent to forced labor. He worked on the river regulation in Sezimovo Usti. He was also working as a manual laborer when Bata 4 started to build houses in our region.

We lived on the first floor in an old house. We had a large apartment, three big rooms and a small one for the maid. We had a living room and a dining room with black furniture. My parents slept in the bedroom, and my brother and I in the living room. We had electricity at home and cold running water. We warmed the water in a high-tile stove, which we used for heating. There was a coal stove for cooking in the kitchen. My dad was always cold, and I recall him reading the Prager Tagblatt leaning against the stove and warming up. During the winter we only heated one room. The apartment was rented because my mum never wanted her own apartment. She always said that you only have to pay the rent and have no other troubles. I never wanted to own a house either. Later someone bought our house, and he planned some reconstruction that my mum wasn't fond off. So she found another modern apartment but in the meantime the Germans arrived, and we had to stay. The owner then made the reconstruction in our apartment and transformed our hall into a small room, into which the Germans moved a Jewish family.

We had a maid who lived with us and helped my mother with the housekeeping, but she wasn't taking care of us. Maids were usually young girls from villages who wanted to earn some money. So they went to work, and then they often got married and left. We liked them but my parents kept some distance. We didn't have Jewish maids or any other Jewish girls for help. Whenever Jewish girls worked for a family, they were only looking after the children. We had a few Jewish friends who were visiting us from time to time but not because of their origin. We knew a few more religious families in Tabor but most of the Jews didn't even observe Sabbath. Jews in Tabor for the most part only observed the high holidays. In those small towns Jews usually lived like the other Czech people. We celebrated Christmas and New Year's Eve like most of the people in town.

A girl from a good family was supposed to play the piano, so my mum bought a piano for me. It stood in the corner of the living room. I wasn't talented at all but I had to play. I also took classes with piano virtuoso Mrs. Marketa Koprova but I was never good. Each day after lunch I played the piano, my brother was fiddling, and when the windows were open we heard my future husband, Jiri Meisl, play the piano too, so in a way we were making music together.

I finished the Czech school in Tabor, where we learned German from the 3rd grade. I think that the school-leaving exam was also in German. We also had religion classes. Then I attended gymnasium but I had to leave after the 5th grade, when we started to learn French, due to the fact that I was Jewish. I was the only Jew in our class. There were a few more Jews at school but not in my class. We had three elementary schools and two secondary schools in Tabor but no special Jewish school. Pupils attended the schools depending on their place of residence. I still visit our gymnasium class meetings today although I hadn't passed the school-leaving exam with my former classmates. They say it doesn't matter because they consider me one of them. Our class was a girls' class and all of them always behaved well towards me. I cannot complain about anything concerning anti-Semitism. My schoolmates didn't regard me as a Jew, and I never experienced any anti-Semitic acts from their side.

When I had to leave the gymnasium, my mum put me into a home economics school, which I fortunately only attended for one year. We were learning how to handle our future family duties, which I really wasn't fond off. My mum apprenticed me to a seamstress and was paying her 30 crowns a month. I liked school, and I always had good marks. I wanted to become a pharmacist. I had private lessons in English, German and French before the war. I was pretty good at sports. I used to go to Rytmika, where we were dancing to music. In winter I went skating and skiing. I also went to Sokol 5 for exercising. I was also a member of the scout group. I went to a summer camp with them two or three times, but I stopped before they could exclude me for being Jewish. I've never felt too much anti-Semitism. I just remember one incident: I was waiting at the doctor's and when it was my turn to go inside, I heard a fascist, a member of the Vlajka 6, screaming that as a Jew I should be waiting and be the last in the queue. After World War II this man was caught and put on trial. I know that because my husband went to see the trial. Later this man had serious health problems, and in the end he was visiting Jewish doctor!

We had a car, a Cabriolet Tatra. [Editor's note: Before 1939 many car factories existed in the Czech lands, the best-known were Laurin & Klement, Tatra, Jawa, Praga and Aero. Cabriolet Tatra was a car for the higher middle class.] We went on trips very often. My most favorite places were Orlik and Zvikov, where we could swim in the summer. [Orlik and Zvikov are resorts situated on the river Vltava, about 50 kilometers from Tabor.] Although my dad was born near the river he couldn't swim, and he was always running along the shore warning us to be careful not to drown. I didn't like car rides because I was always carsick. Even after I got married I couldn't stand traveling by car or train. Once a year my dad and his friend Svehla, who was the director of a school in Borotin, went on a longer trip, for instance to Slovakia, about 400 kilometers from Tabor. They spent a week hiking in the mountains. They had canes on which they put stickers of the places they had visited. Usually we didn't go that far away; not even during the winter because we had enough snow in Tabor to ski there.

We also had a dog, a foxhound, whose name was Maxel, and, after his death a canary. Maxel learned to go to our neighbor butcher, and she always gave him something to eat.

We didn't celebrate Jewish holidays. Uncle Belohlavek was a very religious Catholic, and his family always came for Christmas, which we celebrated. He was rich so he brought candies to hang onto the tree and presents. We ate fish and potato salad. We didn't even know about Chanukkah. We didn't stick to kosher food, we ate pork and everything else. My mum bred geese in the cellar for meat and fat. As to Jewish meals, we only ate cholent and challah on Yom Kippur.

We ate together, the dinner was at 7 pm, and my parents strictly kept this rule. My brother once asked if he could be late. He had a girlfriend and wanted to accompany her home. There was a promenade in the center of town, and my mum told him: 'Take her to the corner at Kubes, and apologize to her that you have to be home for dinner.' We also had lunch together every day. I only had school classes in the mornings, and even when I was in gymnasium and had afternoon lessons, everyone went home for lunch. My dad also closed the shop and went home for lunch and to have a short nap.

We had a rabbi, a cantor, a shochet and a shammash in Tabor. They lived in the former Jewish school. The rabbi taught religion and the cantor assisted in the synagogue. There was a Jewish school before World War I but not in my time. We didn't have a mikveh or yeshivah. Most of the Jews in Tabor were assimilated businessmen. Jews didn't live in any special part of the town. It was only later, during the war, when Jews weren't allowed to live in the center of town.

Neither my dad nor my granddad cared much about politics, and they weren't politically involved at all. My father voted for the Zivnostenska Party 7, but he used to say that the best 'party' is the relationship between a man and a woman. My mum joined a kind of friends club that we used to call 'club of old virgins'. About ten Jewish and Christian women used to gather. They either met in the coffee shop or at their homes and prepared some food and chatted. They also got together on New Year's Eve for a little afternoon party. After World War II my mum was the only Jewish woman from this club who had survived and it wasn't the same as before, so they stopped their meetings.

It didn't matter to us whether our friends were Jewish or not. I had two very good Christian friends, one isn't alive any more, the other one I still visit in Tabor once in three months for four days. Her name is Jaroslava Teclova, and she is my oldest friend. We have known each other from our childhood. Jaroslava was a kindergarten teacher and her husband was a doctor. We went for long walks in the woods very often. She says that since I have moved to Prague, she is getting fat because she doesn't have anyone to go for a walk with. She lives with her son now.

My husband was born in Cerveny Ujezd, near Benesov, in 1921. In 1930 his parents bought a house with a shop in Tabor and moved there. Jiri celebrated his bar mitzvah with his relatives, and I remember that he got his first watch. That was in July 1934. He lived with his parents and his brother Richard. We started dating when I was 15. Jiri was also very good friends with my brother Rudolf. They were in the hakhsharah together, as well as in forced labor and in the concentration camps. Our parents were also friends. He also came from a Czech family. He finished his studies in a two-year trade academy before World War II and worked for a while in the office of the Velim confectionary factory. Then he stayed at home because he wasn't allowed to work anymore.

I had a lot of Christian friends and didn't feel very Jewish, so I didn't notice the growing anti-Semitism. I was entertaining myself in the same way as the others, even some of my suitors were Christians. Step by step we were excluded from our previously normal life, and the Jewish youth began to mingle with people of their own only. First, I think that was in 1940, Jews had to hand in their wireless sets. The next step was that Jews had to move out of the town center; we weren't allowed to use the sidewalks and had to walk on the road instead. [The interviewee is referring to the introduction of the various anti-Jewish laws in the Protectorate of Bohemia- Moravia.] 8 We didn't tamper with the rules because we were afraid to be reported to the Gestapo by Czech Vlajka fascists. We weren't sure who was who any longer; first we thought about someone of being well-disposed, and finally this person turned out to be an anti-Semite. We stuck to the rules and stayed away from the town center.

During the war">During the war

My mum sold the goods from our drapery shop when my father was arrested at the beginning of World War II. Jews had to hand in all their gold. I don't remember exactly when it happened but once in the evening German soldiers came to check our place. We were threatened because my mum had hidden some fabrics from the shop at home. We used to have cushions between the glasses of the windows, it was stylish at that time, and my mum had made those cushions from fabrics from the drapery shop. The soldiers didn't find anything and were quite decent. Actually we didn't know much about what was going on, regarding the deportations because we were far from Prague. When we were taken to Terezin we didn't have any idea about that place. We found out how terrible it was pretty soon though.

In 1939 the rumor was circulating that the Russians were already coming to liberate Tabor. The Germans then organized raids and arrested a lot of Czech people, mainly Jews, including my dad. At first he was a prisoner in Dresden and then he was sent to Oranienburg. [Editor's note: There was a concentration camp in both Dresden and Oranienburg, the first was a subcamp of the Flossenburg concentration camp, and the second a subcamp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.] He was used to smoke, drink good coffee and have a good meal, so he just couldn't bear it. They were also torturing people. My dad died in Oranienburg in 1940. What was interesting was that they sent us his urn from Oranienburg along with his clothes and all his other things including his denture with a gold palate. We also got the death certificate. There was still a Jewish cemetery in Tabor so we took his remains there. Then the cemetery was liquidated and since the urn hadn't been there for a long time we were allowed to remove it and take it to a Catholic cemetery. They had made a space for Jews near the cemetery wall there, and my dad's has remained there ever since.

At the beginning of the war I fell sick and couldn't do as much as before. The pain started in 1939. The doctors said that it was the appendix and sent me for surgery. But the pain remained, and in 1940 I was diagnosed with a tumor on the ovary. I had my last period in Terezin. But we got food with quinine in it there, and it stopped the menstruation of most of the women in the camp.

It was terrible when we were deported to Terezin in November 1942. All the Jews from Tabor and the surroundings received summons for the transport to the ghetto from the Jewish community in Prague. We were put into the school building. There were about a thousand people crowded there. We arrived there in the evening, didn't get anything to eat and slept on straw mattresses for one night. Early in the morning we were taken to the train so that no one would see us. It was bitter cold. We knew we would go to Terezin but had no information about the place. Until then we hadn't suffered physically because my mother had sold all the goods from the shop, so we had had assets to live on.

I lived in L-309, a kind of youth hostel for girls. It was a single-storied house, and I shared a room with twelve girls there. I remember that the cembalist Zuzana Ruzickova stayed in the room next door. This house originally belonged to a woman who was also kept in Terezin. I worked in a laundry situated outside the ghetto. My mum took care of a 5-year-old boy called Kaja. Kaja was there with his father only. They somehow became our relatives. My brother worked in agriculture first, and then in the Kinderheim [children's home]. My grandfather died a month after our deportation to Terezin, and my grandmother died a month after him. The burials in Terezin were the same for all people. The corpses were burnt, and the ash was thrown into the water. We were allowed to take part at the funeral. We said a prayer and received my grandparents' clothes.

In the evening we got a piece of bread for dinner, for lunch we usually had lentil soup. Sometimes we also had millet pudding, which I have been cooking ever since our liberation. It's kind of a piety for me. I say that this is a memory of Terezin I keep. I like millet pudding, but I prepare it better because I cook it with milk, and in Terezin it was only cooked with water. Another time we had a yeast dumpling with special black sauce, which was very tasty. It was sweet and made from black coffee residue mixed with bread and some margarine. I was trying to prepare it after the liberation, but it was never as tasty as it was in Terezin. Sometimes we also had stuffed cake. My mum didn't like the dumplings so I swapped it with her for the cake. We drank water.

Once we were listed for a transport to an extermination camp, and Viktor Kende, a friend of us, helped us to get crossed off the list of people to be transported. In December 1943 we were listed again, just my mum and I, but Viktor couldn't help us this time. My brother and Jiri weren't on the list for this transport but they enlisted themselves voluntarily, so they went with us. Jiri's parents had already gone, but he had been sick at the time so he hadn't gone with them.

We didn't know where we were going to. It turned out to be Auschwitz. We spent about two days in cattle-trucks. In the end the doors were opened, and we saw the notice 'Arbeit macht frei'. [German for 'Work make you free', the words inscribed on the infamous gateway to the Auschwitz concentration camp.] Germans were shouting, and we had no idea what was going on. We had expected that we would be going to a place similar to Terezin. In Auschwitz we were in the so-called Family Camp. [The so-called Family Camp established in September 1943 was an area reserved within Auschwitz for Czech Jews deported from Terezin.] I was carrying barrels with soap, Mum still took care of the small boy who was gassed along with his father later. My brother worked with children in the Kinderblock [children's block] with Freddy Hirsch. [Freddy Hirsch, originally from Austria, emigrated to the Czech Republic before World War II, and was known as a great Zionist and sportsman. In Terezin he took care of children and was very popular among them.]

After half a year I was moved with my mum to forced labor in a Frauenlager [women's camp] near Hamburg. We stayed there for four days, and it was very bad. Once they left us kneeling down the whole day. Then we went to Harburg, which was a suburb of Hamburg, where we stayed in some barns and went to Morburg, a huge oil factory, by boat. We were rebuilding the factory. When the factory was supposed to be reopened air raids started and it was destroyed again. After that we worked in Neugraben [a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp], where we were scavenging through debris; and in Tiefstack [another subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp] we worked in a brickyard. There wasn't enough food. In the evening we got a quarter of bread and my mum said to me, 'You must not eat it all, you have to save half of it.' So we were saving part of the bread but our co- prisoners stole it. From then on we were eating everything at once.

Post-war">Post-war

In 1945 we were taken to Bergen-Belsen, which was a terrible place. I remember tents full of corpses. We were liberated from there by English troops on 16th April 1945. Some women from Czechoslovakia paid for the bus to get their men back home. But their men weren't in this camp. I remember my mum telling me that there was a bus going home and that we had to take it. It took us about two days to get back. The bus was old and just about to fall apart. At night we slept in the open air. I don't remember this personally because I was sleeping but my mum said that our two drivers attacked some Germans at night, killed them and stole tires. Then we came to Prague where we stayed at some first-aid place for prisoners in the beginning. Afterwards we decided to return to Tabor.

We had friends in Tabor called Macaks, and my mum sent them a letter saying that we were alive and asking if they knew anything about Jiri and my brother. She also wrote that she was looking forward to stuffed cakes. When we arrived in Tabor we met our friend Mr. Kratochvil, who had a furniture factory, and he offered that we could stay with him for a while. I didn't know that Jiri was already in Tabor. He didn't know that I was alive either. There was a bakery in Tabor, owned by a family called Lapacka, and Jiri went there to buy bread. Mrs. Macakova was in the shop at the same time, and she told Mrs. Lapackova that she had received a letter from my mum. That's how Jiri found out that I was alive. He didn't know anything about my brother. They had both been transported to Schwarzheide concentration camp in June 1944. Jiri said that Rudolf had been too weak to join the first death march and that he stayed in the camp. He then joined the second march but he was too weak. Jirka Frankl wrote to us that he was with him and that Rudolf had some cigarettes and wanted to change them for some food but without success. All the prisoners were weak and Rudolf didn't want to hold them up, so he sat down on the side of a ditch and was shot.

Back in Tabor we received a large four-bedroom apartment in town from a Jewish family called Mendl. Jiri and his brother Richard received an apartment, too, and Jiri's cousin, Marta Navratilova, was staying there with them for a while. Our belongings had been hidden at different people's places, and we got some parts of it back. We had troubles with one furrier. He had a concave stairway in the house, and my mum had hidden a lot of things there, including carpets and original paintings that my dad was collecting. My mum had made a list of all the things she had actually put there. When we wanted these things back he made difficulties and, for example, just gave us the frames without the paintings. He kept saying that the Russians had confiscated everything, and my mum got upset about his lies and brought him to trial. She won, and he had to pay us 30,000 crowns. He robbed a lot of Jews and made money on them. Except for this we had a very warm welcome after coming back. We also had belongings at some of my friends' who returned everything to us.

Jiri and Richard decided to rebuild the confectionary warehouse. We didn't have very much money but the Orion confectionary factory gave them a credit in the name of their father, and so we got started. I worked with them, and my mum was at home cooking for us and doing the housework.

In April 1946 we had a double wedding, me and Jiri, and Richard and Marta, who was Jewish and had lost her husband during the Holocaust. The wedding was on the same day a year after I had been liberated. I didn't realize until I received a telegram with congratulations from my former co- prisoners.

We shared a house with Richard, his wife and their two daughters, Marcela and Zuzana. was religious and often went to the synagogue. He came to Prague on Jewish holidays. His girls didn't feel Jewish. We had the warehouse and sold goods to small businessmen. We had a Tatra and an assistant driver. We were successful, but we worked really hard for it. I was in the shop or in the office every single day. When communists nationalized the warehouse in 1948, I was actually glad that I got rid of it.

My mum had an apartment in Tabor and lived there with her nephew, who had returned from the camp alone. His name was Harry Kraus, and he was born in 1933. He was the son of my mother's brother Frantisek. Due to the war, Harry had lost several years of compulsory education. My mum sent him to the gymnasium in Tabor after the war, so that he could complete his studies. However, he cared more for girls then for his studies, so she organized an apprenticeship for him in some weaving factory in Ceska Trebova in 1948. He didn't feel comfortable there either, and in the end some friends persuaded him to go to Israel.

It was legal emigration, organized by a man, whose name I can't remember. A group of young people, who had survived the war and stayed alone, went to a kibbutz called Hachotrim. The kibbutz was near Tel Aviv and close to a Czech kibbutz named Masaryk. Hachotrim was mainly an agricultural kibbutz; they were breeding hens there. Well, Harry was kind of a wild person and wasn't able to keep up with the discipline there, so he left. He spent some time in Haifa and then moved to Tel Aviv, where he worked in some laundry.

Harry got married soon after he arrived in Israel at the age of 19. His wife, Lilly Kleinova, was two years older than him. Lilly originally came from Slovakia, her family ran a quarry there. She couldn't have children, so they adopted a three-month-old boy. My husband and I visited them in 1969 for a month, and Harry tried to persuade us to stay for good. But firstly I didn't really like it that much, and secondly we didn't want to emigrate because of my mum, who was already severely sick. We could neither take her along nor leave her. My husband loved my mother, and they had a very nice relationship. We made a deal that we would come back to Prague, and after that we could eventually try to figure out how to manage the aliya. When we returned, the borders were closed, and I'm glad we didn't stay there. My mum died in Tabor in 1962. She had a civil burial. We stayed in the old house but were only three people, so in the end we sold the house and moved to two apartments.

We had a few friends in Tabor, but we were mostly in touch with our own families. Richard and his wife were older, so their daughters spent most of the time with us, and we also took them on vacations with us. We often went to Bulgaria for vacations and later to Slovakia. We also spent some holidays in Zelezna Ruda at a cottage, which belonged to the company I worked for. After the events of 1968 [Prague Spring] 9, Marcela moved to Prague, and Zuzana emigrated to Switzerland.

My husband began to work in a textile factory in Ceske Budejovice in 1948. He was diligent, worked his way up and soon held a distinguished post. However, some communists didn't like it because he used to be a businessman, and they fired him during the program '77.000 persons to manufacture' [the program was actually called 'Action 77,000'] 10 so he had to start all over. There was a silicone fiber production factory in Tabor, so he went to work there with a friend of his. He started as a manual laborer, it was nonstop work, including Saturdays and Sundays. In the end he worked his way up, but again he was told that as a former businessman he could be no more than a foreman. Jiri said to the director, 'Comrade director, you say I cannot be production planner but you let me be a foreman who can influence hundreds of people?' He did become a foreman but slowly worked his way up again, and then he was in a really good position until his retirement in 1981.

I started to work with Jednota, which was a collective consumer co- operative, in 1950. In the beginning I was an assistant in the administrative department, but I worked my way up to the head of the financial department. I worked there for 30 years. I was never voted to become a member of the company union, although I worked there for ages and had a leading position. I was Jewish and my husband a former businessman, and that wasn't the best 'qualification' under the communist regime. But we cared little about it. I continued working there for two years after I retired at the age of 54.

We celebrated Christmas. We knew that there was Pesach and Chanukkah and so on but we didn't celebrate it. We ate matzah on Pesach, but I didn't do any special cleaning at home. We didn't observe the high holidays. Most Jews from Tabor, who had survived the war, had moved away afterwards. We used to go to Prague but only for memorial services to remember relatives who didn't survive.

When the Russians came in 1968 we were both surprised and disappointed, just like everyone else. Their tanks drove into Tabor, and Jiri wanted to go to the square but I was scared. However, I was more afraid to let him go on his own, so I joined him. The streets were full of people but nothing happened. The tanks must have come to Tabor by mistake because people had moved the road-signs giving directions to Prague, so the Russians sometimes ended up somewhere else than they planned. At that time we had visitors, young relatives of Jiri staying with us, the children of his cousin Marta Navratilova: Jirka and Vera Navratil and their partners were spending their vacation in our region. Vera was canoeing with her boyfriend, and when the tanks were on the bridge they did a very stupid thing: They started to throw potatoes from the canoe towards the tanks. Fortunately nothing happened, and there was no shooting. In Tabor the situation wasn't as tough as in Prague. Well, we were checked at our workplaces, so that they could see if we were loyal enough and if we agreed with the invasion of the Soviet army, but that happened everywhere.

I helped at the local organization of the Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters. I didn't feel any anti-Semitism after World War II. We have been registered with the Jewish community in Prague since 1945. There was no Jewish community in Tabor, so we were living there as the almost only Jews and didn't bother anyone. I had a simple and nice life with my husband. We didn't have any children. We were neither rich nor poor, and we weren't involved in politics. We have always lived modestly and what we had was enough for us. We weren't persecuted in any way.

I wasn't very excited about the Velvet Revolution 11 in 1989 and the time after. I'm not a fan of Vaclav Klaus 12 or Vaclav Havel 13. I lived under capitalism before so I know that those who don't work won't eat. And that's what people couldn't understand. They thought that if they jingle their keys on a square everything would just easily fall into their arms. [Editor's note: During the Velvet Revolution people went out on the street and jingled their keys, in imitation of the last school bell before school is over, as if to say that the days of the communist regime were numbered.] And Mr. Klaus was supporting them in this idea. My husband died in Tabor in 1999 and had a civil burial.

I moved to a Jewish pension in Prague a year and a half ago, and I like it very much. No one is really religious here but we get together on Jewish holidays. I have a nice pension so I am not really dependent on the assets I receive from different funds for Holocaust victims. It's nice to get that money, but I'm not upset if the payment is delayed unlike some other people.

I was and I am a believer. I believe that there's someone who directs our life. I think God is 'human', and he's not only there for Jews or Christians but for everyone. However, I cannot imagine that I would ever pray. I believe that when someone is born his destiny is already written. What happened to us probably had to happen. Our fate is to be Jewish.

Glossary">Glossary

Eva Meislová

Praha
Česká republika
Rozhovor pořídila: Pavla Neuner
Období vzniku rozhovoru: březen 2003

PLEASE NOTE - this is only the transcript of the interview, the final edited version will be uploaded later

Kazeta č. 1:

A: Jak se jmenoval tvůj tatínek?

B: Tatínek se jmenoval Alois Böhm a narodil se 18.8.1885 v Čelkovicích.

A: A kde byly Čelkovice?

B: U Tábora, takový předměstí, tenkrát.

A: A v Táboře pak žil celý život?

B: Ano. Byl živnostník, měli jsme obchod se suknem. Tedy jeho otec a pak tam byli partneři.

A: A co prodávali konkrétně?

B: Látky na kabáty a tak podobně.

A: Pocházel z české rodiny?

B: Ano, mluvili doma česky.

A: A jaké bylo jeho vzdělání?

B: Nevím, nepamatuju se, že by táta někdy studoval. Zažádal o živnostenský list a potom se stal dědovým společníkem.

A: A kdy tatínek zemřel?

B: Zemřel 30.6.1940 v Oranienburgu. Na začátku války v roce 39 kolovala po Táboře taková fáma, no nějaký Češi si prostě vzpomněli, že Rusové už přišli osvobodit Tábor a Němci pak udělali takovou razii a zatkli spoustu Čechů a hlavně Židů, mezi nimi i tatínka. Napřed byl v Drážďanech ve vězení a pak ho poslali do Oranienburgu. No a on byl zrovna v tom věku, kdy byl zvyklej denně kouřit, pít kafe, dobře jíst, no jak to tak bývalo. A prostě to nevydržel, oni tam byli taky dost mučený. Zajímavý bylo, že nám z toho Oranienburgu v tý době poslali urnu s jeho poelem, jeho šaty a všechny věci, které mu zabavili. Tenkrát to bylo ojedinělé. I úmrtní list nám dali. Urnu máme ještě teď na hřbitově. Měli jsme ji na židovském hřbitově, který ale zrušili, a že tam byla uložená jen krátce, dovolili jí mamince přenést na ústřední hřbitov, takže je uložený v urnovém háji v Táboře. Vymezili tam Židům místo u zdi. I moje maminka a manžel měli pak občanský pohřeb.

A: Byl Tatínek pobožný?

B: Táta nebyl vůbec pobožný, dokonce prý podle maminky vystoupil i z víry, protože po něm chtěli příliš vysokou náboženskou daň. Pocházel z české rodiny. My jsme chodily jako děti na náboženství, ale do kostela jsme chodili jen na Jom Kippur a Nový rok. V Táboře bylo asi okolo 800 židů, ale nikdo nebyl moc pobožný. Táta hodně kouřil a pil hodně kafe. Maminka si taky občas dala cigaretu, po válce kouřila dost, ale po infarktech jí to doktor zakázal a přestala. Táta byl pravej Žid, sportoval maximálně v kavárně.Když jsme o víkendu, v neděli chodili na procházky s maminkou, to byla taková dlouhá krásná lesní cesta, říkával tatínek mamince, že jde do kavárny, aby za ním přišla. Takže my jsme se procházely tak do čtyř odpoledne a ona pak šla ještě za tátou do kavárny.

A:  A pamatuješ si, že by sloužil v nějaké armádě?

B: Ne, nemyslím.

A: Měl tatínek nějaké sourozence?

B: Měl jednu sestru Julii, která si vzala křesťana pana Bělohlávka, který byl v Praze ředitel Spořitelny. Byla o něco mladší, asi dva nebo tři roky než tatínek. V Praze žila se svým mužem v nádherném třípokojovém družstevním bytě v ulici Na valech.

A: Měli spolu nějaké děti?

B: Děti neměli. On měl akorát syna z prvního manželství.

A: Strýc Bělohlávek zemřel kdy?

B: Bělohlávek zemřel ještě na začátku války. Jí z toho přeskočilo a chodila bez hvězdy a někdo jí udal, ale vůbec nevím, kde po Terezíně nakonec skončila. Ten nevlastní syn Julči se oženil s nějakou holkou, kterou oni nechtěli, protože jim nebyla dost dobrá, tak oni ho úplně vydědili a vůbec se s ním nestýkali. On pak s tou svou manželkou je začal trochu navštěvovat za války a maminka si myslela, že tetu Julču nakonec udal on kvůli tomu majetku.

A: A víš, co s ním bylo po válce?

B: On po válce žil v Táboře a pracoval v bance, ale já jsem se s ním nestýkala, protože se nezachoval dobře a  ani on neprojevoval žádný zájem.

A: Teď se tě zeptám na tvého dědu z otcovy strany, jak se jmenoval?

B: Děda z otcovy strany se jmenoval Jakub Böhm.

A: A kdy se narodil?

B: Narodil se v Batelově na Moravě, jen už nevím kdy. Tam měl továrnu na sukna. 

A: A kde ještě žil?

B: Do Celkovic se přistěhoval, když se oženil s babičkou, která tady žila, a otevřel si v Táboře obchod se suknem, kde pak byl můj tatínek společníkem. V Celkovicích měli dům, tenkrát to bylo takové předměstí Tábora, teď už je to v podstatě Tábor. Když dědovi zemřel otec, zůstali s bratrem a maminkou a bratři řídili továrnu. Jenže zkrachovali. Jeho bratr žil v Německu, ale nic o něm nevím, moc se nestýkali.

A: Kdy zemřel?

B: Děda zemřel v roce 1942 v Terezíně měsíc poté, co jsme tam přišli. Už mu taky bylo přes osmdesát let. 

A: Byl pobožný?

B: Nebyl nábožensky založený. Těsně před válkou se přestěhovali z Celkovic do Tábora do bytu, protože od nich z domu to bylo do obchodu do kopce a děda už nemohl. Pak za války se po nařízení, podle kterého Židi mohli obývat pouze některé čtvrti, přestěhovali k nám, my jsme měli velký byt. Pocházel z normální české rodiny, nicméně byl velký vyznavatel Rakouska-Uherska.

A: A jaký jsi k němu měla vztah?

B: Dědu jsem měla ráda, dost často u nás spal, protože to pro něj do Celkovic bylo už daleko. Ale nějaký zvlášť přátelský a srdečný vztah jsme neměli, ani s tatínkem. To spíš s maminkou.

A: Jak daleko to bylo od vás do Celkovic?

B: Ten dům v Celkovicích byl od nás asi čtvrt hodiny pěšky, byl to hezký poschoďový dům se zahradou u řeky.

A: A jak to tam bylo vybavený? Měli elektriku a tekoucí vodu?

B: Neměli elektriku, svítili petrolejkou a záchod byl na dvorku. Dědeček s babičkou byli talkoví normální jednoduchý lidi. Moc často jsme tam ale nechodili.

A: Víš o tom, že by sloužil v nějaké armádě?

B: To ne, alespoň o tom teda nevím.

A: A jak se jmenovala babička?

B: Babička se jmenovala Veronika Böhmová, rozená Redererová, ale nevím kdy. Narodila se v Celkovicích.

A: A bydlela ještě někde jinde?

B: Ne, tam také žila celý život, než se v 1937 nebo 1938 přestěhovali do bytu v Táboře.

A: A kdy zemřela ?

B: Šla s námi do Terezína a zemřela přesně za měsíc po dědečkovi, jednak byla už stará ale taky na sebe byli celý život zvyklí, tak zemřela taky trochu na ten smutek z jeho ztráty.

A: Měla nějakou profesi?

B: Ne, byla celý život jako žena v domácnosti, jejím koníčkem bylo chování slepic.

A: A pamatuješ si, jestli měla nějakou školu?

B: Myslím, že určitě ne. Ale měla bratra, který přednášel v Praze na Vysoké škole.

A: Byla babička pobožná?

B: Babička Böhmová byla pobožná, držela košer kuchyni, protože byla z pobožné rodiny. Její tatínek byl šamesem.

A: A kde šámesoval?

B: V Táboře.

A: Tak teď k prarodič§m z matčiny strany. Jak se jmenoval dědeček?

B: Dědeček z matčiny strany se jmenoval Josef Kraus.

A: A kdy a kde se narodil?

B: Narodil se v Čechticích a tam také zemřel ještě před válkou. Měl deset let před svou smrtí mrtvici a pak už vlastně všechny ty roky jen proležel.

A: A čím se živil?

B: Moc jsem ho neznala. Měli nějaký obchod ses míšeným zbožím a pokoušeli se dělat do zemědělství, ale bez úspěchu. Maminka říkala, že nevyrostlo nic z toho, co zaseli. Byli důkaz toho, že Židi a zemědělství nejdou dohromady. 

A: Byl pobožný?

B: Určitě nebyl pobožný, což nebyla ani jeho žena moje babička Pavlína Krausová.

A: A kdy a kde se narodila?

B: nevím, vím jen to, že pocházela z Mladé Boleslavi.

A: A žila ještě kde?

B: Provdala se za dědu a žila tedy v Čechticích. Po jeho smrti se přestěhovala ke svým synům do Prahy.

A: Víš něco o jejím vzdělání?

B: Ne, moc jsem u nich nebyla a nic jiného o ní nevím.

A: Jak se tedy jmenovala tvoje maminka?

B: Maminka se jmenovala Štěpánka Böhmová, rozená Krausová.

A: Kdy se narodila?

B: Narodila se 10.5.1895 v Čechticích ve Středních Čechách.

A: A zemřela?

B: Zemřela 6.2.1962 v Táboře.

A: měla nějaké školy?

B: Jako mladá dívka z dobré rodiny byla v Teplicích v penzionátu, kde bydlela a učila se a připravovala se na rodinné povinnosti.

A : A tam se seznámila s tatínkem?

B: S tatínkem se seznámila ve vlaku. Po svatbě (rodiče měli židovskou svatbu) se přestěhovala za ním do Tábora, starala se o domácnost a pomáhala tatínkovi v obchodě.

A: Byla maminka pobožná?

B: Pobožná vůbec nebyla, do kostela chodila akorát na velký svátky a to ještě aby předvedla nějaký nový model šatů. V táboře byla veliká krásná poschoďová synagoga, na balkonech měli místo ženy a nalevo seděli ty pobožný a napravo ženy, které si tam spíš přišly popovídat než se modlit, a ty, které se modlily, je upomínali, aby byli zticha.

A: A jaký byl její rodný jazyk?

B: Maminka pocházela z české rodiny, ale měla německou školu základní.

A: Měla nějaké sourozence?

B: Máma měla pět sourozenců, nejstarší Rudolf padnul jako voják v první světový. Další bratr byl zubní lékař a zemřel už v roce 1933 na leukémii. Jedna teta bydlela v Kralupech a další dva bratři žili v Praze.

A: A jak to u Vás doma fungovalo? Kdo řídil domácnost?

B: Maminka byla krk a tatínek hlava. Maminka všechno řídila, po stránce finanční byli dohodnutý, tatínek jí dával nějakej měsíční plat, a tatínek to dělal spíš z pohodlnosti. Prostě co se týkalo výchovy, to řídila maminka. Někdy jsme dostali facku, ale nikdo nás moc nebil.

A: A jaká byla maminka osobnost?

B: Maminka byla veselá a ráda se bavila,byla velmi oblíbená. I teď ještě na ní v Táboře lidi vzpomínají. Maminka chodila hrozně pěkně oblíkaná, dokonce šila v Praze. K tomu krejčímu jezdila i po válce. Měla vlasy do drdolu, ale měla jich dost málo, tak nosila takové tupé. Maminka byla velice elegantní a hlavně velmi oblíbená a veselá. Tatínek byl naopak poměrně vážný, ale měli se moc rádi.

A. Ty jsi měla bratra, je to tak?

B: Měla jsem ještě staršího bratra Rudolfa.

A: A kdy se narodil?

B: Narodil se  v Táboře 23.6.1921.

A: A jaké měl školy?

B: Vystudoval české reálné gymnázium, ale dál už nemohl pokračovat.

A: Měl nějaké koníčky, nebo byl členem nějakých organizací?

B: Bratr chodil taky do skautu jako já. Ruda byl členem sionistické organizace Hachšara, což byli mladí židé. Byl s nimi dvakrát v létě asi na tři měsíce na zemědělských pracech. Oni tam spolu všichni žili a bydleli a peníze, které vydělali, dávali do společné kasy, takový jako kibucnický život. Jirka tam byl s ním. Další rok, to už bylo tak vo roce 1940 nebo 1941 už museli jako židé pracovat nuceně. Vím, že dělali na regulaci řeky v Sezimově Ústí. Taky byly na pomocných pracech, když tam Baťa začal u n nás stavět bytovky.

A: A jaký jste měli s bratrem vztah?

B: Měli jsme spolu takový normální sourozenecký vztah.Vím, že jsem brečela, že se mnou v tanečních nechce tancovat a maminka mi říkala: "Nebreč a buď ráda, že máš vlastní nápadníky."

A: A jaký byl tvůj bratr člověk?

B:  Ruda byl krásný kluk a hrozně inteligentní, byl takový studijní typ. Chtěl se stát psychiatrem.

A: A on šel s Vámi do Terezína?

B: Jo, ale z Osvětimi šel do Schwerheide a zemřel na pochodu smrti.

A: Tak teď budeme mluvit o strejdovi. Jak se jmenoval?

B:  Můj manžel se jmenoval Jiří Meisl a narodil se 4.7.1921 v Červeném Újezdě u Benešova.

A: A jak se dostal do Tábora?

B: V roce 1930 jeho rodiče v Táboře koupili dům s obchodem a přestěhovali se tam.

A: Byl pobožný, měl třeba bar micka?

B: Jirka měl ve 13 Bar micva, na kterou se sjeli příbuzní a pamatuji se, že dostal hodinky. Bylo to v červenci a myjsme myslím byli s rodiče někde na dovolené. Oni bydleli naproti nám a my jsme spolu vlastně začali chodit už od patnácti let. On se taky hodně kamarádil s mým bratrem Rudou a naši rodiče se taky stýkali.

A: Jaká byla jeho rodina?

B: Pocházel také ze zcela židovské české rodiny.

A: A jaké měl školy?

B: Vystudoval před válkou ještě dvouroční obchodní školu a byl zaměstnaný v kanceláří ve Velimských cukrovinkách. Pak už byl doma a nemohl pracovat.

A: Jirka zemřel nedávno, že?

B: Ano v roce 1999.

A: V Táboře?

B: Ano.

A: Teď
tady máme informace o dětech.

B: My jsme děti neměli. Nemohla jsem. Na zacatku valky jsem docela tezce onemocnela a uz jsem pak nikam moc nechodila. Měla jsem bolesti už od roku 1939 a doktoři usoudili, že je to slepé střevo a tak mi ho vyoperovali. Když ale bolesti neustávali, zjistilo se v roce 1940, že mám nádor na vaječnících. Poslední menstruaci jsem měla ještě v Terezíně, tam ale dávali do jídla chinin a většina žen přestala menstruovat, já už potom nikdy.

A: Měli jste doma služku?

B: Babička i my jsme měli služku, která u nás bydlela a pomáhala s domácností. Prala a vařila, ale nebyla to chůva.

A: A Jaký byl váš byt?

B: Měli jsme velký byt, tři pokoje a kamrlík.

A: A co elektrika a tekoucí voda?

B: Měli jsme doma elektriku a tekoucí studenou vodu. Maminka vybudovala koupelnu s vanou a jednou týdně jsme se koupali. Voda se ohřívala, měli jsme vysoký kachlíkový kamna, ve kterých se topilo. V kuchyni pak byl sporák na uhlí, na kterém se vařilo. Táta byl zimomřivý a vidím ho, jak si čte Prager Tagblatt a opírá se zády o kamna a nahřívá se. V zimě se topilo jen v jednom společném pokoji a spát se chodilo do studenýho.

A: A to byl váš vlastní byt?

B: Byt byl nájemní, moje maminka nikdy nechtěla vlastní byt. Ona vždycky říkala, zaplatíš si nájem a nemáš s tím žádný další starosti. Mě to taky nikdy nebavilo starat se o dům. Těch služek jsme měli několik, protože to většinou byly mladý holky z vesnice, který si chtěli vydělat peníze, tak šli do služby, pak se často vdali a odešli.

A: A jaký jste k nim měli vztah?

B: Měli jsme je rádi, ale rodiče jim vždy vykali a nikdy si je nějak víc nepřipustili k tělu.

A: Služky byly i židovky?

B: Židovský holky spíš chodily k dětem, když už. Ale aby šla nějaká židovská holka za služku, to si vůbec nepamatuju.

A: Židi v Táboře byli chudší nebo spíš bohatší?

B: V Táboře žila střední židovská vrstva, ani bohatí ani chudí, jen jeden pan továrník a jinak spíš samí obchodníci.

A: Stýkali jste se s nimi?

B: Měli jsme mezi nimi i nějaké židovské přátele, s kterými se rodiče navštěvovali, ale ne ani tak kvůli tomu, že byli židi, prostě si byli sympatičtí.

A: A bylo tam hodně pobožných?

B: Bylo tam pár více pobožných rodin, ale většina nedodržovala ani šabat, stejně jako my. 

A: Chodila jsi do školky nebo jsi byla doma?

B: Vyrůstala jsem doma, ale bez chůvy. V Táboře jsem vychodila českou obecnou školu, od třetí třídy jsme se učili německy, z němčiny se myslím i maturovalo.  Pak jsem chodila do reálného gymnázia, ale absolvovala jsem jen pět tříd, v páté jsme se začali učit francouzsky. Scházíme se jako maturantky, ačkoli já jsem s nimi vlastně už nematurovala, tak říkají, že je samozřejmý, že patřím mezi ně. Naše třída byla dívčí a všechny se ke mně chovaly vždy slušně.

A: Vybavuješ si nějaký antisemitismus ve škole?

B: Nemůžu si stěžovat na nějaký projevy antisemitismu. Nikdy jsem si na škole nevšimla nějakých protižidovských akcí, ty spolužáci tenkrát ani nějak nevnímali, že jsem židovka. Maminka mě pak dala do rodinné školy, kam jsem chodila jen rok.

A: Co se dělalo v rodinné škole?

B: Kromě učení se tam šilo a vařilo a mě to hrozně nebavilo. Pak už jsme do školy nesměli chodit a maminka mě dala do učení k jedné švadleně a ještě jí platila 30 korun měsíčně za to, že jsem tam mohla chodit. 

A: Byla jsi dobrá žákyně?

B: Škola mě bavila, vždycky jsem se dobře učila a chtěla jsem být farmaceutkou.

A: Chodila jsi do nějakých kroužků?

B: Docela jsem sportovala, chodila jsem do Rytmiky, tam se tak tancovalo podle hudby, v zimě se bruslilo a lyžovalo, chodila jsem i do Sokola, hodně jsem cvičila. Před válkou jsem chodila na soukromý hodiny angličtiny, němčiny a francouzštiny k paní Polákové. Byla jsem taky u skautů a jednou nebo dvakrát jsem s nima jela na letní tábor. Pak jsem tam přestala chodit dřív, než mě vyloučili. 

A: A jak jsi se vyrovnávala s antisemitismem?

B: Necítím se zas tak židovsky a ani po válce jsem to tak necítila. Asi proto, že jsem žila v českém prostředí a celou dobu po válce jsem nežila mezi židama, v Táboře jsme byli v podstatě jediní. Jen si pamatuju, jak ještě před válkou, jsem čekala u doktora a když jsem byla na řadě vešla jsem do ordinace. Na chodbě pak křičel jeden Vlajkař tak, že to bylo slyšet až dovnitř, že jako židovka bych měla počkat až tam vůbec nikdo nebude. Toho Vlajkaře lidi po válce odchytli a pak byl odsouzenej, to vím, protože Jirka se šel na ten soud podívat. Pak byl těžce nemocný a nakonec chodil k židovskému doktorovi se léčit.

A: Co jste dělali ve volném čase?

B:  My jsme měli Tatru kabriolet a jezdili jsme hodně na výlety. Jezdili jsme pravidelně autem na výlety do okolí, Orlík a Zvíkov asi nejčastěji. Tam jsme se koupali. Tatínek, ačkoli se narodil u vody, neuměl plavat a vždycky běhal kolem vody křičel na nás, abychom se neutopili.

A:  Jezdila jste ráda v autě?

B: Pro mě ty výlety autem byly strašný, protože jsem nerada jezdila, pokaždý jsem totiž zvracela. Ještě když jsem se vdala, nesnášela jsem i auto i vlak.

A: A podnikali jste i delší výlety?

B: Tatínek jednou za rok vyrazil se svým kamarádem třeba na Slovensko. Ale normálně se tak daleko nejezdilo. Ani v zimě, protože u nás bylo tolik sněhu, že jsme vždycky lyžovali v táboře.

A: Slavili jste nějaké židovské svátky?

B: Žádný židovský svátky jsme neslavili. Strýc Bělohlávek byl hrozně pobožnej katolík a…

A: To byl manžel od otcovy sestry?

B: Jo, tak oni vždycky přijeli na Vánoce, ty jsme slavili. Jak byly bohatý, tak vždycky přinesli kolekce na stromeček a dárky. Jedli jsme kapra a bramborový salát. Vánoce vlastně slavili všichni, my jsme ani nevěděli  kdy a že je Chanuka. Doma jsme moc návštěvy neměli. Šabat jsme nedrželi, ani košer jídlo. Jedli jsme i vepřové. Maminka měla ve sklepě husy a chovala je na maso a sádlo.

A: Měli jste nějaké domácí zvÍřectvo?

B: Jezevčíka Maxela a potom, když umřel ještě kanára.

A: A co jedl?

B: Maxel dostával k jídlu naše zbytky, ale chodil vedle k řeznici, která mu vždycky dala něco dobrého. Vozila jsem ho v proutěném kočárku na panenky, ale pak jsme ho musli nechat utratit.

A: Měli jste nějaké jídelní zvyky?

B: Jedlo se společně, večeře byla vždycky v sedm a striktně se to dodržovalo. Bratr jednou chtěl svolení, aby mohl přijít pozdě. Měl holku a chtěl ji doprovodit. V centru bylo  místo, kde se korzovalo a maminka mu říkala doveď jí na roh ke Kubesům (tam to korzo končilo) a omluv se, že musíš být u večeře. Taky jsme společně obědvali.

A: A to jste chodili na oběd i během školy?

B: Měli jsme školu dopoledne a v gymnáziu byly hodiny pak ještě odpoledne. Otec taky zavíral obchod a šel na oběd a zdřímnout si.

A: Jedli jste nějaká specielně židovská jídla?

B: S židovských jídel jsme jedli maximálně šoulet a před Jom kippur jsme měli taky něco speciálního.

A: Byli rodiče nebo prarodiče členy nějaké politické strany?

B: Tatínek ani dědeček nebyli nikterak politicky angažovaní a ani se o to nestarali. Tatínek volil Živnostenskou stranu, ale vždycky říkal, že nejlepší strana je muž a žena.

A: A maminka měla nějaké zájmy?

B: Maminka měla takový kroužek, kterému jsme vždycky říkali kroužek starých panen. Byli tam židovky a křesťanky dohromady, scházeli se v kavárně nebo u některý doma. Po válce se ze židovek vrátila jen maminka a už nějak nebyla chuť tenhle spolek obnovovat.

A: A tatínek měl nějaké kamarády?

B: Tatínek chodil do kavárny s kamarádama. Nepamatuju si, že bychom se nějak jako různé rodiny moc navštěvovali. V každém případě jsme nerozlišovali, jestli jsou naši kamarádi židi nebo ne.

A: Kolik asi žilo židů v Táboře?

B:V Táboře bylo tenkrát asi 800 židů, a měli jsme tam rabína, kantora, šámese, kteří bydleli v bývalé židovské škole.   Nebyla ani žádná specifická část města, kde by se židi soustřeďovali, to až později za války z donucení je vyhnali pryč ze středu města. Rabín vyučoval náboženství, kantor asistoval při bohoslužbách. Židovská škola tam bývala ještě před první světovou, ale za nás už ne.

A: A mikve nebo ješivu?

B: Ani mikve nebo ješivu jsme neměli.

A: Dá se říct, co většina židů dělala za zaměstnání?

B: Většina židů byli obchodníci, s ovocem, galanterií a tak. Jeden byl továrník, ten měl sladovnu.

A: Ty pokoje doma, o kterých jste mluvila, byly velké?

B: Měli jsme doma velké pokoje, obývací, jídelnu, kde byl černý nábytek. A protože dívka z dobré rodiny musela umět hrát na piano, koupila mi maminka klavír, který stál v obýváku. Já jsem byla hudebně nenadaná, ale musela jsem na to piano hrát. Chodila jsem k jedné klavírní virtuosce Markétě Koprové, ale nikdy jsem se to nenaučila. Vždycky po obědě jsem hrála na piano, bratr na housle a když jsme měli otevřená okna, slyšeli jsme jak naproti zase hraje Jirka, a tak jsme vždycky přes poledne koncertovali.

A: A vy jste s bratrem bydleli v tom pokoji?

B: Jo, a pak jsme ještě měli ložnici, kde spali rodiče a my s bratrem jsme spali v tom obývacím pokoji. A kamrlík pro služku.

A: V kterém patře jste bydleli?

B: Bydleli jsme v prvním patře takového starého domu, který pak někdo koupil a plánoval tam nějaké přestavby, které se mamince nelíbili, takže jsme už měli vyhlídnutý modernější byt v centru. Mezitím ale přišli Němci a my jsme tam už museli zůstat. Majitel pak z chodby udělal ještě pokoj, kam nám pak nastěhovali jednu židovskou rodinu, což bylo dost nepříjemné.

A: Měla jsi židovské nebo víc křesťanské kamarádky? Všimla jsi si vzrůstajícího antisemitismu?

B: Měla jsem křesťanský kamarádky a ani jsem se nějak židovsky necítila, takže jsem si nějakého vznikajícího antisemitismu nevšimla. Dělala jsem to, co ostatní, chodila jsem do tanečních, i někteří moji nápadníci nebyli židé. Postupně už nás pak všechna možná nařízení protižidovská vyloučila z normálního života a stýkala se ta židovská mládež jen mezi sebou. Já jsem měla svoje dvě křesťanský kamarádky, jedna už nežije, ale za tou druhou ještě pořád jezdím do Tábora, je to moje nejstarší kamarádka.

A: Měli jste nějakou představu, co se s židy děje nebo, co se na ně chystá?

B: Vlastně jsme nic moc nevěděli co se děje, ani co se týče transportů, to se všechno rozhodovalo v Praze. Když jsme šli do Terezína, neměli jsme prakticky vůbec představu, jak to tam vypadá. Že je to hrozný, jsme zjistili až na místě.

A: Jak to probíhalo, když jste museli do transportu?

B: Když nás pak odváděli do transportu do Terezína, bylo to hrozný. Soustředili nás ve škole, tam jsme byli jednu noc, spali jsme na slamnících a pak nás vedli brzo ráno, takže tam ani žádní obyvatelé u toho nebyli. Věděli jsme, že jdeme do Terezína, ale jak to tam vypadá, jsme neměli zdání, šuškanda žádná k nám nepronikla. Do té doby jsme ani nějak fyzicky netrpěli, rodiče vyprodali všechno zboží z toho našeho obchodu, takže jsme měli z čeho žít.

A: Vy jste šli všichni dohromady a kdy?

B: Deportovali mě, babičku, dědu, maminku a bratra na podzim 1942.

A: Jak jsi tam bydlela?

B: Bydlela jsem na L-309 v takovém mládežnickém domě, kde bydlela samá mladá děvčata a pracovala jsem v prádelně, která byla mimo ghetto, tak nás tam vždycky vodili. Maminka pracovala na slídě, štěpení slídy. Starala se tam o malého chlapečka, asi pětiletého, který tam byl s tatínkem a oni byli vzdálení příbuzní.

A: A bratr?

B: Bratr pracoval napřed někde v zemědělství a potom v Kinderheimu. 

A: A prarodiče taky pracovali?

B: Dědeček za měsíc umřel a babička měsíc po něm. Jednak už byla stará a jednak na něj byla prostě zvyklá.

A: A jak to s vámi pokračovalo?

B: Potom jsme se jednou, nevím přesně, dostali do transportu a po mohl nám Viktor Kende, s kterým jsme se hodně kamarádili, prostě nás vyreklamoval. V prosinci 1943 jsme byly zařazeni znovu, ale jenom já a maminka, a to už nám Viky pomoct nemohl. Můj bratr a můj muž v transportu nebyli, ale přihlásili se dobrovolně, takže šli s námi. Manželovi rodiče byli už tenkrát pryč, on byl tenkrát nemocný, měl příušnice a s rodiči nešel.

A: Jak jste žili v Osvětimi?

B: V Osvětimi jsme byli v tzv. druhém rodinném táboře. Já jsem pracovala jako menáždienst, nosily jsme sudy s polívkou. Maminka se tam pořád starala o toho malého chlapce, kterého pak i s otcem zplynovaly. Bratr taky pracoval s dětmi v Kindrblocku s Freddy Hirschem. Po půl roce nás s maminkou převezli na práci. Dostali jsme se do Frauenlagru u Hamburgu.

A: Jak dlouho jste tam byli?

B: Tam jsme byli asi čtyři dny a bylo to tam hrozné. Jednou nás nechali klečet celý den. Jirka  s bratrem odešli 5.6. do Schwerzheide. Potom jsme odjeli do Harburgu, to bylo předměstí Hamburgu, tam jsme bydleli ve stodolách a lodí jsme jezdily do Morburgu, což byla velikánská továrna na oleje. Tam jsme pracovaly na obnovení továrny, já čirou náhodou v kantýně. A když už se ta továrna měla otevírat, přišel hrozný nálet a továrna byla zase zničená.  Pak jsme pracovaly v Neugraben, kde jsme odklízely trosky a v Tiefstack v cihelně, tam byl taky velký nálet.

A: Co jste dostávali k jídlu?

B: Jídla moc nebylo. Večer jsme dostaly čtvrtku chleba a moje maminka mi říkala: "Nesmíš to sníst, musíš si půlku nechat." Tak jsme si vždycky půlku nechaly, až nám to potom spoluvězni ukradli. Tak potom na to přišla, že je lepší to sníst najednou. V 1945 nás odvezli do Bergen Belsenu.

A: Jak to tam vypadalo?

B: Tam to bylo hrozné, to byly stany a ty byly plné mrtvol.

A: A tam vás osvobodili?

B: Tam nás 16.dubna osvobodili Angličani. Pak jsme se dostali do Prahy, kde jsme byli v nějaké záchytné stanici pro vězně a rozhodli jsme se, že pojedeme do Tábora.

A: A jak dlouho jste jeli domů?

B: Pár dnů snad. Oni nějaké ženy vězňů z Bergen-Belsenu poslali a zaplatili autobus pro své muže a když ten autobus přijel, zjistilo se, že oni už tam nejsou. Pamatuju se, že jsem ležela někde na marodce a maminka přišla, že odjíždíme do Prahy. Ten autobus byl strašně starej a nefunkční, v podstatě vrak.

A: A kde jste cestou spali?

B: Vždycky se na noc zastavilo a spali jsme pod širákem. Pamatuju si, že maminka vyprávěla, jak jednu noc, já jsem to nezažila, já jsem spala, naši dva řidiči zavraždili nějaký Němce a ukradli jim pneumatiky.

A: A věděli jste o Jirkovi a ostatních?

B: To je dobrá příhoda. Měli jsme dobré známé Macákovi, kterým maminka už dříve napsala, že jsme živy a jestli se vrátil bratr a Jirka a že se těší na buchty. V Táboře po příjezdu jsme potkali nějakého známého, pana Kratochvíla, on měl továrnu na nábytek, ten nás pozval, abychom u něj ten den přespali. To jsem ještě nevěděla, že můj muž už je v Táboře. On to taky nevěděl, jestli jsem živá. V Táboře byli nějací Lapačkovi, měli pekařství a on si k nim přišel pro chleba a současně tam přišla ta paní Macáková a ona té Lapačkové vypravovala, že jí maminka psala, že jsme živé a zdravé. Tím se to můj muž také dozvěděl.

A: A bratr?

B: O mém bratrovi Jirka nic nevěděl, protože prý už byl dost slabý a nešel tím prvním pochodem smrti a zůstal ve Schwerzheide. Pak ještě vypravili jeden pochod a na ten se přihlásil, jenomže nestačil. Jirka Frankl nám tehdy napsal, že on s ním šel, že měl Ruda nějaké cigarety a že to tam chtěl směnit za jídlo a že se to nepodařilo. Protože byli všichni slabí, tak nechtěl aby ho podpírali, tak si sedl někde u příkopu a oni ho zastřelili.

A: Kde jste tedy po válce bydleli?

B: Dostali jsme velký asi čtyřpokojový byt ve městě po židovské rodině Mendlových. Jirka  se svým  bratrem Richardem taky dostali byt a ještě s nimi bydlela sestřenice, Marta Navrátilová.

A: Měli jste schovaný nějaký majetek?

B: Měli jsme poschováváno spoustu věcí u jiných lidí, tak i něco z toho jsme dostali. Měli jsme potíže u jednoho kožešníka, u kterého bylo duté schodiště a maminka tam schovala spoustu věcí, včetně koberců a obrazů, který tatínek velmi sbíral, originály. Ten kožešník říkal, ať si tam všechno schová, ale maminka sepsala vše, co tam dala. Pak když jsme se vrátili, tak nám třeba z těch obrazů dal jenom rámy. Tvrdil, že mu všechno sebrali Rusové a maminka se naštvala a dala ho k soudu.

A: A jakto dopadlo?

B: Soud vyhrála a on nám musel zaplatit asi 30.000, což bylo tenkrát spoustu peněz. On okrad spoustu židů a hodně na tom zbohatnul.

A: Jak se k vám lidé chovali po návratu?

B: Po návratu nás přijali velmi dobře. Měli jsme taky věci u mých kamarádek, které nám všechno vrátili.

A: A co jste po válce dělali, šli jste ještě studovat?

B:  Rodiče Jirky  měli v Táboře původně velkoobchod s cukrovinkami a dům, tak se bratři rozhodli, že ten obchod obnoví. Celkem moc peněz jsme neměli po návratu, ale továrna Orion, továrna na cukrovinky, jim dala úvěr na zboží na jméno jejich otce, takže jsme začali. Já jsem byla s nimi zaměstnaná, maminka byla doma a vařila nám a hospodařila. Pak jsme se s Jirkou vzali a přestěhovali jsme se do toho domu po rodičích. Po válce jsme neměli tolik peněz, takže jsme měli společnou svatbu s Jirkovým bratrem Richardem.

A: A kdy byla svatba?

B: Vdávala jsem se 16.4.1946. Mí spoluvězeňkyně se scházeli na den našeho osvobození a poslali mi telegram ke svatbě a vlastně jsem si uvědomila, že se vdávám ve stejný den, kdy mě osvobodili.Pak jsme bydleli v jednom domě s Richardem, jeho ženou a jejich dětmi, Marcelou a Zuzanou. Jeho žena zemřela v roce 1972 a Richard se pak ještě oženil. My jsme tedy měli ten obchod s cukrovinkami, který nám celkem dobře prosperoval, nadřeli jsme se tam tedy dost.

A: Jak velký byl ten obchod?

B: Byl to velkoobchod, kupovali jsme ve velkém a prodávali malým obchodníkům.

A: Měli jste nějaké zaměstnance?

B: Měli jsme Tatrovku auto a závozníka. Musela jsem být celý den v krámě nebo v kanceláři. Když nám to v 1948 znárodnili, byla jsem vlastně ráda, že jsem se toho zbavila.

A: Mluvila jsi o nějakém příbuzném v Izraeli.  Jak to s ním bylo?

B: Maminka dostala byt v Hanušově ulici, měla u sebe ještě synovce, který se sám vrátil, byl to syn jejího bratra. Jmenoval se Harry Kraus, původně bydlel u svého strýčka v Praze, ale to prostředí nebylo pro něj moc vhodné, on měl bar. Tak si ho maminka vzala k sobě. On byl rozený 1933 a chodil málo do školy, tak ho maminka dala v Táboře do gymnázia, ale on spíš koukal po děvčatech a škola mu nešla. Potom ho maminka dala učit do České Třebové do nějaké tkalcovské továrny, to už byl ale rok 1948. On byl takový "hlavou proti zdi", takže se mu tam taky moc nevedlo a potom ho nějací kamarádi přesvědčili, aby šel do Izraele, kam se nakonec legálně vystěhoval.

A: A jak žil v Izraeli?

B: Nejdřív byl v kibucu Hachotrim, ale prostě se nemohl srovnat s tou disciplinou, tak potom odešel. Jeden čas byl v Haifě a pak se přestěhovali do Tel Avivu, dělal v nějaké prádelně a celkem se jim nevedlo špatně.  My jsme u něj taky byli se podívat.

A: A nenapadla vás v té době emigrace?

B: Ne, že by nás emigrace nenapadla, ale nechtěli jsme kvůli mamince, byla těžce nemocná, takže jsme jí nemohli opustit a ani už ji vzít s sebou. Manžel jí měl taky moc rád a měli jsme takový hezký vztah, takže bychom jí nemohli opustit.

A: A kdy jste tam vlastně byli?

B: V Izraeli jsme byli v 1969 na návštěvě a bratranec nás přemlouval, abychom tam zůstali, ale mě se tam moc nelíbilo. Letěli jsme tam a zůstali asi měsíc. Ale dohodli jsme se, že pojedeme domu a eventuálně to nějak uspořádáme, ale když jsme se vrátili, tak akorát zavřeli hranice. Ale já bych tam stejně nechtěla žít.

A: Pamatuješ si na události v roce 1968?

B: Když přišli v 1968 Rusové, byli jsme překvapení a zklamaní, asi jako všichni. Do Tábora prijeli tanky a Jirka se tam chtěl jít podívat a já jsem nechtěla, aby šel sám, tak jsem prekonala strach a šla jsem s nim. Oni se tam vlastně dostali náhodou.

A: Jak to?

B: Protoze jim lidi prehazovali na cestach ukazatele smerem na Prahu a tak se kolikrat dostali uplne jinam. Tak taky dorazili do Tabora. Tou dobou u nas take byli mladi Jirkovy pribuzni Jirka a Vera Navratilovi, kteri v okoli travili dovolenou se svymi partnery. Vim, ze cele dny chodili na mista, ktera Rusove obsadili a diskutovali s nimi. Vera byla se svym pritelem na vode a kdyz jeli tanky s vojaky pres most, udelali takovou hloupost, ze po nich hazeli bramborama. Nastesti se jim nic nestalo. V Tabore to nemelo tak ostry prubeh jako v Praze. Potom nás v podniku proverovali, jestli jsme loajální a souhlasíme se vstupem Sovětských vojsk, to se delalo vsude.

A: Měli jste po válce nějaké židovské přátele?

B: V Táboře jsme měli jedny přátele, on byl napůl žid, ale to nebylo podstatné. Nejvíce jsme se ale stýkali v rodině, jak jsme bydleli dohromady s Richardem a jeho rodinou. Oni byli jako rodiče už starší, takže jejich holky byli skoro pořád s námi, jezdili s námi i na dovolenou.

A: A Richard byl pobožný?

B: Bratr byl poměrně pobožný, chodil často do synagogy, ale holky nemají k židovství žádný vztah.

A: Kam jste s holkama jezdili?

B: Jezdili jsme hodně na dovolenou do Bulharska a na Slovensko. V Železné rudě jsme měli chalupu a tam jsme také byli často. Po 1968 se Marcela odstehovala do Prahy a Zuzana emigrovala a my jsme zustali v tom uz starem dome sami tri. Tak jsme se s Jirkou prestehovali do bytu a barak jsme prodali druzstvu, ktere za nej Richardovi dalo druzstevni byt.

A: Kde Jirka pracoval po znárodnění?

B: Po 1948 pracoval manžel v rozdělovně textilu a protože byl pilný a pracovitý postupně se vypracoval a byl v Budějovicích v celkem vysokém postavení. Jenže některým komunistům to nešlo pod nos a v průběhu akce 77.000 lidí do výroby ho vyhodili a tak musel začít od začátku. V Táboře byla továrna na silonová vlákna a tak se tam ještě s jedním známým přihlásil. Začínal jako spřadač, dělalo se tam nepřetržitě, soboty, neděle a to mu nevyhovovalo, protože buď spal nebo byl v práci. Nakonec se zase vypracoval na plánovače výroby, ale v 50. letech řekli, že ho jako bývalí živnostník nemůže dělat. Ředitel si ho zavolal a dali ho dělat mistra zase na tři směny a on tomu řediteli řekl: "Soudruhu řediteli, plánovače výroby dělat nemůžu, ale mistra, kde můžu ovlivnit stovky lidí, to dělat můžu?". Tak dělal mistra, ale pomaloučku se zase vypracoval, až nakonec skončil jako vedoucí odbytu. To bylo skutečně dobré postavení a tam to dotáhnul až do penze v 1981

A: A ty?

B: Já jsem nastoupila v roce 1950 do Jednoty, to bylo lidové spotřební družstvo. Původně jsem tam dělala takové pomocné administrativní práce, ale dotáhla jsem to až na vedoucí všeobecné finanční účtárny. Byla jsem tam 30 let až do důchodu.

A: Cítila jsi nějaký antisemitismus?

B: V podniku mě nikdy nezvolili do Závodního výboru nebo do nějaké funkce. Pracovala jsem tam léta a měla jsem vedoucí postavení, ale byla jsem židovka a můj muž bývalý živnostník. Ale my jsme to všechno brali tak nějak sportovně.

A: Kdy jsi šla do důchodu ty?

B: Do duchodu jsem odesla v padesáti ctyrech letech. V Jednote jsem pomahala jeste asi dva roky jako duchodkyne a pak jsem taky vypomahala na okresnim Svazu bojovniku za svobodu.  Jinak jsem se po válce s  žádnými konkrétními projevy antisemitismu vůči sobě nesetkala.

A: Byli jste členy obce?

B: Na zidovske obci jsme byli zaregistrovani uz od 1945. V Tabore zadna zidovska organizace nebyla a my jsme v Táboře žili jako židi prakticky sami, takže jsme nikomu nevadili ani nebyli na očích. Díky tomu jsem k židovství ani nijak výrazně nepřilnula. Měli jsme s manželem hezký život, takový jednoduchý. Nebyli jsme bohatí ani chudí a podle toho jsme také žili. Nebyli jsme ani nijak politicky angažování a nemůžu říct, že bychom byli nějak perzekvovaní.

A: A jak se díváš na Sametovou revoluci?

B: Po revoluci se mi to moc nelíbilo, já nemám v lásce ani Klause ani Havla. Já už jsem kapitalismus zažila, tak jsem věděla, že kdo nepracuje ani nejí. A to lidi neuměli pochopit, mysleli si, že když zazvoní klíčema, tak jim spadne všechno k nohám a pan Klaus je v tom podporoval. Takže mě ta revoluce moc nevzala.

A: Jirka zemřel kdy?

B: Manžel zemřel 17.7.1999 v Táboře. Děti jsme neměli.

A: A jak dlouho bydlíš tady?

B: Před rokem a půl jsem se přestěhovala do židovského Penzionu v Praze a moc se mi tu líbí. Není tu nikdo pořádně nábožensky založený, ale slavíme tu židovské svátky. Žili jsme s mužem vždycky skromně a vystačili jsme s tím, co jsme měli.

A: Ty dostáváš nebo jsi dostala prostředky ze všech fondů co tu byly pro oběti holocaustu?

B: Já mám pěkný důchod, s kterým vystačím, takže nemůžu říct, že bych byla závislá na těch penězích, co dostávám z různých fondů pro oběti holocaustu. Je to příjemné, ale nerozčiluju se jako ostatní, když náhodou dojde ke zpoždění.

A: Věříš a věřila jsi v Boha?

B: Byla jsem a jsem věřící člověk. Věřím, že existuje někdo, kdo řídí náš život, nějaká vyšší moc.

A: Myslíš, že je bůh žena nebo muž?

B: Bůh je podle mne muž a není jen židovský nebo jen křesťanský, je pro všechny. Ale, že bych se modlila, to si nedovedu představit.Věřím, že když se člověk narodí, má už svůj osud napsaný. To, co se nám stalo, se asi stát mělo. Náš osud je, že jsme Židi.

Kazeta 2   Eva Meislová

A: Tak teď se vrhneme na fotky. Popiš mi, prosím, fotku číslo 1.

B: No, jsou tu rodiče Jirky před jejich obchodem. Jirka tam stojí vedle nich, jako mladík.

A: A co to má za kalhoty?

B: Pumpky, v tom se tenkrát chodilo, byla to taková moda pro mladý.

A: Pamatuješ si, kdo to fotil a kdy?

B: To si bohužel nepamatuju.

A: Tak fotka číslo 2.

B: To už je po válce, to je Jirka na zahradě v Celkovicích.

A: A ta chalupa v Železné rudě?

B: To byla od Jednoty,od podniku, to nebylo naše.

A: Fotka 3.

B: To je maminka a Jirka, když jsme se brali.

A: To bylo v roce 1946?

B: Jo.

A: A kde,měli jste třeba židovskou svatbu?

B: Ne to bylo v Táboře na okrese.

A: Fotka číslo 4.

B: To je bratr někdy po maturitě. To se fotilo ještě před válkou a vím, že to pak maminka po válce nechávala takhle zvětšovat. Je z ateliéru Kliment.

A: A jaký byl Rudolf?

B: No, on byl hrozně krásnej a veselej kluk. Chtěl být psychologem, on byl akový hodně studijní typ. Byl strašně hodnej.

A: Fotka číslo 5.

B: To je maminka za mlada, někde na dovolené nebo na výletě.

A: Víš kdo a kde to fotil?

B: To fakt nevím.

A: Fotka číslo 6.

B: To je fotka jak jsem byla na tom skautském táboře.

A: A kde a kdy to bylo?

B: Myslím, že v Červené Řečici, kdy to nevím, ale počkej, bylo mi asi šestnáct let.

A: To vedle je maminka?

B: Jo, oni tam za mnou přijeli na návštěvu.

A: Vy jste spali ve stanech?

B: Jo, s podsadou.

A: A co jste tam dělali?

B: Hráli hry, učili se vázat uzle, koupali se a tak.

A: Fotka číslo 7.

B: To je tatínek. On jezdil každý rok se svým kamarádem řídícím Švehlou na pěší túry. Vždycky někde týden chodili po horách. Většinou jezdili na Slovensko a celý týden fakt chodili.

A: Švehla byl řídící školy?

B: Ano, v Borotíně.

A: A co to má za hůlku?

B: To je hůlka a na ní jsou štítky,které se přilepovali podle toho,kde člověk byl.

A: Fotka číslo 8.

B: To je na chatě u Hermíny Meislové, to je Jirkův tatínek a maminka. Ale to tam dávat nebudeme.

A: Fotka číslo 9.

B: To jsem já s maminkou na procházce v Táboře, to už je po válce.

A: Jste tak elegantně oblečené.

B: Jo, maminka byla hrozně elegantní a taky to byla nedělní procházka.

A: Fotka číslo 10.

B: To je děda od tatínka, pak Rudolf a já.

A: To je v Celkovicích?

B: Jo, na zahradě.

A: Rudolf je tu trochu tlouštík, že jo?

B: On byl tlustý a pak najednou ve třinácti letech zhubnul.

A: A to vzadu je váš dům?

B: Ne, to je sousedů.

A: Fotka číslo 11.

B: To je babička, děda a já zase v Celkovicích.

A: Fotka číslo 12.

B: Tohle je bratranec Harry se synem Michaelem,kterého si adoptovali, když mu byli tři měsíce. Oni s Lilly nemohli mít děti, ona měla RH faktor, krev ten její plod vždycky sežrala, byla asi desetkrát v jiném stavu, ale prostě to nešlo.

A: To vypadá jako jeho bar micka.

B: No jo, Harry nám tu fotku poslal a na rub napsal „žrádla byla fůra“.

A: A kdo je Lilly a jak se poznali?

B: Lilly je ze Slovenska, její rodina tam měla nějaké doly a přežila a potkali se v Izraeli. Brali se vlastně hned, Harrymu bylo devatenáct.

A: A on je syn Františka?

B: Jo.

A: A ze kdy je ta forka?

B: Asi z roku 1980.

A: A tohle, fotka číslo 13.

B: To je Jirka o Vánocích.

A: A fotka číslo 14?

B: To je naše svatba.

A: A co jsi měla za kytky?

B: Jo, to bylykonvalinky.

A: A co je to za lidi.

B: Tady je Sylva, ta z Argentiny, a plukovník Fink, který šel Jirkovy za svědka, on byl Jirkův vzdálený strýc, on přišel se západní armádou a byl to jeden z nejbohatších lidí v Táboře. Byl před válkou advokátem. Pak tam je pan Hofman, ten plešatý,byl to řezník a pak pan Freuned,žid z Tábora.

A: A kdo to fotil?

B: To byl pan Schlée, to byl pouliční fotograf, co chodil po oslavách.

A: Fotka číslo 15.

B: To je taky ze skautského tábora. Máme tu na sobě kroje, holky chodili v sukních.

A: A to jste tam byly jen samé holky?

B: Ne i kluci, ale ty měli samostatný tábor hned vedle.

A: Mám ještě pár dodatečných dotazů. Co si vybavuješ při vzpomínání na dědu?

B: Dědův táta umřel, když byl děda malej kluk. Děda po tom jezdil jako podomní obchodník, měl vozík a koně. Taky si rád zahrál karty a užíval život.

A: Babička Veronika měla bratra, který přednášel,pamatuješ si co?

B: Veronika měla bratra, který přednášel, moc se nestýkali. Jmenoval se Ignác Rederer. Já jsem ho moc neznala.

A: A jak vypadal ten váš obchod, s čím tatínek obchodoval?

B: Byl to obchod se suknem, měli jsme příručího. K tomu jsme měli krejčovskou dílnu a zaměstnávali jsme několik krejčích. Do Tábora přišla armáda československá před válkou a my jsme měli velké zakázky a šili jsme uniformy. Zaměstnávali jsme krejčí v domácnosti a byl tam také mistr. Šili jsme tam spíš kabáty a pro muže.

A: Co dělala babička?

B: Babička byla v domácnosti.

A: A děda teda nebyl doma přes týden?

B: Děda bydlel přes týden u nás, aby nemusel šlapat. Do večera byl v krámě, večer si přečetl Prager Tagblatt.

A: A co dělala babička ve volném čase?

B: Babička měla své kamarádky, ale ne židovský, tam žádný židovky nebyly. Sešli se a kecali. Moc volnýho času neměli.

A: Říkala jsi, že babička byla pobožná?

B: Babička byla pobožná, ale s mírou. Sama se modlila a držela košer kuchyni. Děda chodil do kostela jen na Yom Kippur. V těhle malých městech se žilo normálně, jak žili Češi, tak žili i židi. Babička šla ještě na Nový rok.

A: Takže táta byl taky pobožný?

B: Tátu nevychovávali v pobožnosti. Ten vůbec do kostela nechodil. Židi se sjížděli akorát na velký svátky.

A: Kde bydlela Julie v Praze? Co to bylo za čtvrť?

B: Na valech byla ulice v Praze 6 v Dejvicích. To byla nóbl čtvrť. Bydleli kousek od Stromovky. Strýc byl strašně spořivej a tak jsme chodili vždycky do města přes Stromovku pěšky. Bydleli v přízemí.

A: A Bělohlávek byl hodně pobožném, že?

B: Chodil často do kostela, i když byl u nás v Táboře.

A: On zemřel před válkou a jak vlastně?

B: Bělohlávek zemřel, byl operovaný na prostatu a nechal se omlazovat, nevím, jak se to dělalo. Bylo mu už přes 60 let. Byl zvláštní, nosil kramflíčky a maloval si nehty na červeno. Ke stáří zblbnul, už byl v důchodu. Nosil korzet.

A: On byl homosexuál?

B: Nebyl homosexuál, ale byl šíblej. Nepovedla se asi operace prostaty a s těmi omlazovacími kůrami dohromady to  asi způsobilo, že zemřel, to bylo na začátku války.

A: Teď ještě k rodičům od maminky, říkala jsi, že měli nějaké pole?

B: Nikdy se jim nic neurodilo, měli nějaké malá pole, bydleli na vesnici a moc se jim nevedlo. Maminka vždycky říkala, že koupil prase a to jim chcíplo. Měli šest dětí a měli se co otáčet.

A: Pamatuješ si jací byli?

B: Babička byla velice vzdělaná, jemná dáma, moc se k němu nehodila. Nevím, kde k němu přišla. Ona byla z města a on z vesnice. Maminka tam jezdila, ale já ne.  Měli venkovský dům na náměstí s tím krámkem, který maminka po válce dostala a hned ho za lacino prodala.

A: Teď potřebuju vědět víc o maminčiných sourozencích, jak šli za sebou a jak se jmenovali?

B: Emil, dentista, Rudolf padl v první světové válce, pak byl Bedřich, který byl bankovní úředník, tenkrát se říkalo disponent, pracoval pro Union banku a zemřel v Osvětimi 7.března. František měl výrobu ručně vyšívaného prádla, ubrusy a ložní prádlo v Praze v Truhlářské ulici číslo 5 v centru, dělali velmi krásné věci, dodávali dokonce i na hrad. Jmenovalo se to Makra.

A: A sestra byla Ana?

B: Anna, bydlela v Kralupech a prodávali barvy a laky.

A: Takže nejstarší byl kdo?

B: Nejstarší byl Rudolf, pak Emil, Bedřich, maminka, František a nejmladší Aninka.

A: A Rudolf byl čím?

B: Padl jako normální mladý voják, nevím, čím byl.

A: Navštěvovali jste se ?

B: K tetě do Kralup jsme jezdili na prázdniny a k Bedřichovi do Litoměřic taky. Ten žil nakonec v Praze. Měli dvě děti a  manželku Doroteu.

A: A koho jsi mělanejraději?

B: S Aninkou jsme se nejvíc stýkali a měla jsem ji nejradši.

A: Byl někdo z nich pobožný?

B: Nikdo z nich nebyl pobožný.

A: Scházeli jste se při nějaké příležitosti všichni najednou?

B: Maminka vždycky za někým jezdila, nestýkali jsme se všichni dohromady u příležitosti nějakého svátku.

A: Ta dívčí škola, kam maminka chodila to byla židovská škola?

B: Dívčí škola v Jihlavě nebyla židovská škola, normální rodinná německá škola. Další stupeň po základce.

A: A kam by jsi zařadila svojí rodinu, byli jste bohatý nebo chudý nebo jak?

B: My jsme byli střední měšťanská vrstva. Ani bohatý ani chudý.

A: Jak to u vás chodilo třeba při Yom Kippuru?

B: Na Yom Kippur maminka dělala večeři, barches, kuře v nudličkách. Maminka vždycky říkala tatínkovi „Ty světíš svátky jen podle jídla“. Když jsme přišli z kostela, tak k nám přišla taky babička, maminka dělala bábovku a dělala se svačina. Barches je vodou zadělaný jakoby na vánočku, podává se to třeba k masu.

A: A to je sladký?

B: Není to sladký.

A: A postili jste se?

B: Maminka se postila, my děti ne.

A: A chodili jste do školy, když byl Yom Kippur?

B: Do školy jsme nechodili tenhle den.

A: A Jirkovi rodiče?

B: Jirkovi rodiče byli pobožný dost, když byl svátek, měli zavřený obchod. Tatínek měl otevřeno, ten nebyl vůbec pobožně vedeném.

A: Kolik židů si měla ve třídě?

B: Ve třídě na gymplu nebyl ve třídě ani jeden žid. Ani na základní.

A: To byly soukromé školy?

B: Státní školy to byly. Na gymplu bylo pár židů, ale ne se mnou ve třídě. V Táboře bylo víc škol. Na Starým městě byla obecná škola a na Novým taky. Bylo to podle toho, kde kdo bydlel. Obecných škol jsme měli tři, gymnázia dvě. Tenkrát nebyli žádné soukromé školy.

A: Dodržovala jsi nějaké zvyky po válce sama?

B: Já jsem nedodržovala žádný svátky po válce. Po válce byla jen modlitebna. Maminka ještě dělal večeři a postila se, ale po její smrti už jsme to neslavili.

A: Teď mi prosím vysvětli, coto byla Živnostenská strana.

B: Živnostenská strana byla strana živnostníků. Byla to malá strana, která snad ani nebyla ve vládě. Tenkrát byla hlavní strana Národní socialisti.

A: Maminka měla ten svůj klub. Jak že jste jimříkali a co dělali, kolik jich bylo?

B: Klub starých pannen, asi deset žen, scházeli se u některý z těch kamarádek, dělali svačinu a tlachali. Taky se scházeli odpoledne na Silvestra. Udělali si takovej mejdanek. Když jsem byla vdaná, tak jsme s Jirkou chodili na Silvestra tancovat. Před válkou jsme tak čekali do půlnoci. Tatínek vůbec nepil. Po válce už se nescházeli, ty židovky se nevrátili a už to nebylo ono.

A: Jak bys hodnotila židy v Táboře před válkou?

B: Skoro všichni židi v Táboře byli asimilovaní.

A: Teď mi, prosím, popiš ty protižidovská nařízení.

B: Šlo to krok za krokem. První bylo, že jsme museli odevzdat rozhlasový přijímače, to bylo asi ve 1940. Potom jsme se museli sestěhovat, židi nesměli být v centru a nesměli jsme chodit po chodníku, museli jsme šlapat po silnici.

A: A nezkusili jste to vzdorovat?

B: Každý to dodržoval, protože se bál, aby ho ty Vlajkaři neudali. Bylo jich tam dost. U koho si člověk myslel, že je mu nakloněný, tak pak se z něho třeba vyklubal antisemita. My jsme dodržovali ty nařízení, takže jsme do toho města vůbec nepřišli. Žili jsme tam spolu na tom předměstí a stýkali se mezi sebou. Maminka vyprodala obchod a zavřela ho, potom, co tatínka zavřeli. Meiselům dali německého správce. Museli jsme odevzdat všechno zlato, co jsme měli. Jednou, nevím kdy, k nám přišli Němci. Maminka si nechala spoustu látek, jak v okně bývali takový ty polštáře, tak udělala polštář a byly v tom ty zabalený látky. Dělali u nás vojáci německý šťáru, měli jsme hroznej strach, ale byli celkem slušný. Už nevím, proč to dělali.

A: A kdy tam přišli?

B: Přišli večer.

A: Odkud jste dostali předvolání do Terezína?

B: Do Terezína jsem dostali předvolání z Prahy z židovský obce, celej táborském okres jsme se soustředili ve škole. Tam jsme byli všichni. Tam jsme jednu noc přespali a druhej den ráno jsme měli transport.

A: Kolik vás vy té škole bylo?

B: V tý škole nás bylo kolem tisíce lidí, byli jsme úplně namačkaný. Večer jsme tam přišli ani jsme nedostali najíst. Byla už dost zima, měli jsme nějaký ruksaky. Tenkrát jsme byli mladý, to se líp snášelo, než třeba děda a babička.

A: Kde si pak žila v Terzíně?

B: Já jsem bydlela na L- 309, tam byli samý mladý děvčata. To byl dům, který původně patřil nějaký pani, která tam s náma taky byla zavřená. Já jsem se s ní seznámila někde v nemocnici, když jsem měla záškrt.

A: Říkala jsi, že ten malej Kája byl jakýsi váš vzdálený příbuzný, kdo teda byla jeho matka?

B: Švagrová od maminčina bratra Franty. Oni jí zavřeli pro nějakou blbost a ten její muž tam sám s tím chlapečkem.

A: Kolik holek vás bylo na pokoji v tom domě?

B: Na pokoji nás bylo  12 na kavalcích. Vedle bydlela Zuzana Růžičková, cemballistka, stejně stará jako já. Byl to jednoposchoďový dům.

A: Co jste tamjedli?

B: Dostávali jsme kaši prosa jeden den, jindy jeden kynutém knedlík a na tom byla taková černá omáčka, ta nám strašně chutnala, taková sladká, dělalo se to z logru, z černýho chleba a do toho byly kousky margarinu. Vždycky jsme si říkali, že si to budeme dělat, až se vrátíme, ale nikdy se nám to tak dobrý nepovedlo. A jednou byla buchta. Maminka nejedla ty knedlíky, tak jsme si to vyměňovali. V poledne byla většinou čočková polívka a večer čtvrtku chleba.

A: A co jste pili?

B: Voda tam tekla a tu jsme pili. Já ještě z piety pořád tu kaši z toho prosa vařím, docela mi chutná, já říkám, to mám jako vzpomínku z Terezína. I s Jirkou jsme si jí vařili. Tenkrát jí vařili do vody a já ji vařím do mlíka, takže je lepší.

A: Když umřel děda a babička, měli nějaký pohřeb?

B: Oni mrtvoly spalovali a házeli popel do moře. Ty, co zrovna v tý době umřeli, tak měli pohřeb, my jsme se tam pomodlili a hodili to do moře. Jejich oblečení jsme dostali.

A: Pak, když jste jeli z Terezína, věděli jste, že je to do Osvětimi?

B: Nevěděli jsme vůbec kam jedeme, jeli jsme v noci asi dva dny. Najednou otevřeli ty dobytčáky a tam byl nápis Arbeit macht frei a teď tam lítali ty kápové a my jsme vůbec nevěděli, co se děje. Možná, že to někdo věděl, asi ty co se už tenkrát zajímali o odboj. My jsme mysleli, že jedem do něčeho podobného jako Terezín.

A: Jak jste se konkrétně dostali zpátky do Čech po válce?

B: Nějaká ženy z ČSR vypravili nebo zaplatili nějakej autobus, aby ty muže odvezl. Jenže oni tam ty muži nebyli, tak maminka najednou přišla a říká, jede autobus do Čech, tak pojedem s ním. Jeli jsme asi dva dni. To byla taková kára na rozpadnutí. Spali jsme venku pod širákem. Maminka říkala, že naši dva šoféři přepadli nějaký Němce ještě v Německu v noci a zabili je a sebrali jim gumy od auta. Já o tom nevím, já jsem spala. Pak jsme přijeli do Prahy.

A: Marta, Richardova žena, byla taky židovka?

B: Marta byla židovka z Prahy, byla vdova. Měli jsme dobrý vztah.

A: A jak se s Richardem seznámili?

B: Seznámili se přes jejího bratra Eduarda, který bydlel v Praze se svojí ženou a Richard za ním přijel. U nich zůstávala i Marta a tam se poznali.

A: Kterého sourozence maminky byl Harry syn?

B: Harry byl syn Františka.

A: Takže přežil jen on?

B: Ze všech sourozenců přežila akorát maminka, Harry a já. Bedřich a vdova po Emilovi šli do plynu 7.3. 

A: Harry šel po válce do Izraele, to bylo nějaký hromadný nebo organizovaný?

B: Po válce to byla taková vlna a řídil to nějakej chlápek trochu starší, mladý kluci, který se vrátili sami, to bylo organizovaný a šli do Hachotrim. Maminka byla docela ráda, protože on byl Harry těžko zvladatelném. Oni šli legálně, měl několik beden s sebou. Oni pak všichni bydleli v Hachotrim. On byl dost nespoutaném typ a nemohl si tam zvyknout. Jeho žena se jmenovala Lilly Kleinová a oženil se s ní v 19, brzy potom, co tam přišel.

A: Kde je Hachotrim?

B: Hachotrim je blízko Tel Avivu. Blízko kibucu českého Masaryk. Hachotrim byl zemědělskej a chovali strašně moc slepic.

A: Ta chalupa v Železné Rudě byla podniková?

B: V Železné Rudě to byla chata od Jendoty, tam jezdili i jiný lidi. Bylo to pro lidi od podniku.

A: Co jste s Jirkou slavili?

B: S Jirkou jsme slavili Vánoce, na Yom Kippur jsme nechodili do kostela. Všichni židi se buď odstěhovali nebo byli starý, když tak jsme jezdili do Prahy na modlitbu za mrtvý. Rudolf byl pobožnější a jezdil sem do Prahy na svátky, my jsme jezdili, když byla ta vzpomínková tryzna za ty mrtví, kteří 7.3. šli do plynu. Pesach ani Chanuku jsme neslavili. Jen macesy jsme si kupovali, věděli jsme , že je Pesach, ale ani jsem nedělala  žádný zvláštní úklid.

A: Zuzana emigrovala kam?

B: Zuzana emigrovala do Švýcarska.

A: V 68 byl v Táboře nějakej větší bugr?

B: V Táboře tam sověti byli přes noc a pak odjeli zas na Prahu. Nic se tam nedělo, bylo tam hodně lidí, všichni se šli podívat. Ale bylo to v klidu.

A: Teď mi , prosím,popiš Tábor před válkou?

A: Tábor před válkou bylo takový klidný provinční město bez průmyslu, byla tam sladovna a tabáková továrna. Starosta se zasadil o to, aby tam byla vojenská posádka. Postavili tam nový vojenský kasárna a tím se ten život trochu zpestřil, ale jinak to bylo provinční.

A: Kolik tak žilo lidí?

B: Před válkou tam bylo tak 15/ 20 tisíc lidí a teď je tam asi 32 tisíc lisí, oni k tomu připojili i ty okrajový vesnice jako Celkovice. Když jsem se vdala, toužila jsem se stěhovat do Prahy, ale Jirka tam chtěl zůstat, neuměl si představit žít v Praze. Měli jsme tam jedny přátele položidovský a žili jsme s tím bratrem hodně dohromady. Je tam nádherná příroda v okolí. Je tam velkej rybník Jordán a tam se chodilo koupat, byla tam plovárna. Na kraji města byl židovském hřbitov. V kasárnách byla československá posádka, docela velká, po válce to přestavili a říkalo se tomu Pentagon, RVHP tam mělo nějaký sportoviště. Z části kasárna bylo Gestapo za války. Tábor má moc krásný okolí, hodně lesů. Ale jsem celkem ráda, že tam nejsem. Nikdo mě tady nezná, v Táboře když jsem šla, tak všichni po mně koukali, nebo jsem si to aspoň myslela.

A: Jezdíš tam někdy se podívat?

B: Já tam jezdím každého čtvrt roku od úterka do pátku. Zůstávám tam u té své dlouholeté kamarádky, známe se ještě dřív, než když jsme chodili do školy. Ona byla učitelka v mateřské škole, Jaroslava Teclová, měla za muže lékaře. Žije se synem. My jsme spolu dost chodili na delší procházky do lesa a teď jí to chybí, že tam nejsem.

Rena Michalowska
Warsaw
Poland
Interviewer: Maria Koral
Date of interview: October 2005

Mrs. Rena Michalowska has a one-bedroom apartment in a post-war building in Warsaw. She lives alone. Most of her closest family lives abroad. Mrs. Michalowska is a keen participant in various intellectual and cultural events. We met five times. Each time I saw her, Mrs. Michalowska observed that going back into her past and describing the lives of her family and friends is very painful to her. I had a feeling that above all she wanted her memories to be recorded somewhere, not only in her memory. Mrs. Michalowska likes reserve and matter-of-factness, but her recollections are very vivid and filled with strong emotions. She insisted, several times, that she never tried to hide her origins. She signed our agreement with no reservations, which is not a rule in the Polish interviews. She was particularly troubled by the subject of anti-Semitism in post-war Poland. She was proud and moved to tell me that her granddaughter, who's lived in the US for some time now, has sent her an artwork demonstrating her remembrance of her Jewish roots.

Family background
Growing up
During the War 
After the War 
Glossary

Family background

I was born in 1929 in Tysmienica, near Stanislawow [today Iwano-Frankowsk, Ukraine, ca. 120 km south of Lwow]. I have no idea who my great- grandparents were, what their names were, where they were born and where they lived. I can't remember any conversations about the third generation back. My closest family are those I can remember, that is, my father's parents and his three sisters.

If my grandparents weren't born in Tysmienica, they must have been born somewhere in the neighborhood, in the small world of Galicia. 1 My grandmother was referred to as Toni, which must have been a diminutive from Taube. Her family name was, I think, Schrager, but I won't swear to that. I have no idea when she got married. My grandfather's name was Leon; that must have been Lejb, Fischbein. What he did earlier, I don't know, but as far as I can reach with my memory, he was always said to work in the horse trade. It probably amounted to going around to horse trade fairs. Everybody made fun of him for being completely inept; they said he usually loses money on his horse transactions - he never made any profit. To my mind, it was my grandmother who provided financial support to the family. I know from stories I heard that she started out by washing, starching and ironing all those things one used to attach to shirts: collars, fronts, cuffs. She was good at it. I remember her say, 'I got those sent even from Stanislawow, and Lwow.' When she gathered a little capital, she bought two cows and made dairy products from the milk. These were not educated people. They focused on surviving, living, and having their children survive.

My father, Jakub, was the oldest, born in 1902. His sisters, from the oldest to the youngest were: Chana, Hesia - I can't remember the Jewish name again - and Eta, Etel. I have no idea which years they were born in. I have a vague memory that there were also two brothers who died, as babies or children. This subject was avoided, not to cause my grandmother pain.

I don't know where and how my parents met. My grandparents on my mother's side were probably also from Tysmienica. I don't know what they did. My mother had a very interesting Jewish name, Judenfreund [literary 'Jewishfriend']. Her name was Mina. She was also born in 1902. My mother didn't remember her own mother well, because she died soon after my mother's birth. My mother had a sister, much older than herself and a brother whom I haven't met because he died young of consumption. I can't remember their names. Her father also died of consumption. But has ever anyone diagnosed them? It's like in this joke, 'When does a poor Jew eat chicken? When the Jew is sick or the chicken is sick.' How much of a doctor's diagnosis was there? He was sick and he died. My mother became an orphan at the age of 12. She went to elementary school in Tysmienica. When her father died, my mother lived with a distant aunt in Stanislawow, who - that was an embarrassing thing - used to be kept by various rich men. I don't know how long my mother lived there. She was supposed to be taken in as an orphan, out of pity, but she was basically a servant at her aunt's house. Was it there that she met my father, or in Tysmienica? I don't know anything about their wedding, but I assume some rituals were observed. My father adored his mother and he wouldn't want to disappoint her by simply signing marriage papers at the magistrate. They may have had a wedding with a Rabbi, most likely in 1927 or 1928.

The land around Tysmienica was flat, I can't remember any rises or hills. So was Lwow [now in the Ukraine] and Stanislawow, plains all around. Nothing stood out except for the little river, Wrona. There was a railroad, but the distance to it from the town square was so great that it made more sense to travel by carriage, only 10-12 kilometers to Stanislawow. I suppose Tysmienica was a typical little town with a town square and some streets going out of it. No street lights. There were pavements, but not everywhere. Not all streets had cobblestones, some were plain beaten dirt roads. Once a week there was a fair and then the traffic was immense! Carriages would come from the neighboring villages. I can still remember the sound of the wheels sheathed with metal, rather than rubber. The cobblestones were uneven, of course, so from early morning, particularly in the spring and summer, when the windows were open, one could hear the horses' hoofs and the metal wheels.

The population of Tysmienica was several thousand: Poles, Jews, Ukrainians. The street language was Polish-Yiddish, I think. Among the inhabitants of Tysmienica was a colony of Armenians; that was quite exotic. The group was big enough to have their own church. Maybe people came to that church from all the small towns and villages around Tysmienica? There were also two Orthodox churches - one in the town square the other basically outside of town - and a Roman Catholic church. Everything was close at hand. I remember one synagogue, also close by, and there was another, I think. It was a white building, but I can't tell whether it was wooden, painted white or covered with lime, or stone. I know there was a Jewish cemetery. I've never been there. I don't know whether it's a ritual or a custom that children are not taken to the cemetery. Luckily no one from my close family died, I didn't have a funeral to go to. As far as I remember women didn't go to the cemetery, only to the funeral home. I can't remember very orthodox Jews in Tysmienica: those that would wear long side curls and the like. They did wear those... I don't even know what they are called [tallit katan]. There was a Rabbi or two, three Rabbi. There were some Jewish store- owners. They owned general stores, with barrels of herring next to barrels of paraffin-oil. There were some furriers - tanners and sheepskin coat makers. I remember one Jew who was considered very rich, I think his name was Blum. He had a textile store. He or one of his sons also had a hardware store.

Growing up

My parents lived on the street parallel to that side of the town square where my grandmother lived. A spitting distance, I'd say today. I can't remember the name of that street. The house where I lived with my parents was the only house in town which went above the ground floor, it had two floors. It was a brick house, with a gallery which run along one side. There was a one-story annex, perpendicular to it. At the end of the gallery there was a toilet - no water of course. There was a big courtyard with a garden divided into three sections. We lived on the second floor. It was a rented apartment which consisted of a large kitchen, a dining room and a room one entered from it. There was an unpainted wooden floor in the kitchen - I think a girl came once in a while, not very often, to scrub that floor. In the two rooms the floor was painted brown. I can remember a lampshade with beads - on top of an oil-lamp of course, there was no electricity.

What I do remember - and that must have been quite an accomplishment on the part of my parents, or my father's stubbornness to save enough - is a Telefunken radio we had. There was this big box on the desk, with a round speaker and under the desk there sat a huge battery on which the radio run. We had tile stoves in the rooms and the kitchen was heated by a coal stove. Obviously the house had no plumbing. A special water carrier brought water in barrels, pulled by a horse. I can still hear this man going round - I think he was a Jew - and calling: 'Waaater, waaater, who needs water...' He would unplug the barrel, which was stopped with a wooden peg, and poured water into buckets. He had a special plank for carrying those buckets on his shoulders and he'd bring them up the stairs. I don't know where he got the water from. Maybe straight from the river?... There was one kind of tub for the laundry and another one, resembling a bathtub - oblong in shape, tin, covered with zinc, with a wooden stop - for taking baths. When it wasn't used we put it behind some curtain. And so, we took a bath, once a week, I'm afraid. As in any typical small-town Jewish family, first in went I, then my father and my mother last, in the same water. Such was the hierarchy.

My mother didn't have a profession, she took care of the house. I believe my mother was a very pretty woman. She had large dark eyes, dark brown hair and - something I will never forget - a shapely nose. Since her own nose was thin, long but quite thin, she used to say to me, 'You know what? Why don't you squeeze your nose from time to time, maybe it will become thinner.' She was a shapely woman, with a pretty, oval face, as you can see on the pictures. Her problem were the large - really large - breasts. She dressed in modern clothes. She even wore a type of corset, laced up in the back. I remember that, because sometimes she she'd ask me for help: 'Would you pull a little here, please?' My mother called me Niunia. Apparently I named that myself. My original name is Regina. She spoke very good Polish: without an accent, without deforming it and with perfect grammar. Despite the fact she finished only 6 grades of elementary school, as she herself emphasized, she was a polyglot, as most of the people from Tysmienica were; she spoke good Yiddish, Ukrainian, Polish and relatively good German. My parents spoke to each other in Yiddish.

My father could write and read in Yiddish, so he must have gone to cheder as a child. He was circumcised and most likely he had bar mitzvah. I'm sure he also went to a Polish school. In addition to that, he studied at the teachers' seminar in Stanislawow. He was an extramural student, commuting to some classes and taking exams. I think it was a Polish school because it gave him teaching qualifications. What kind? I can't say. Maybe general? First he was getting ready for the Kibbutz, through an illegal relocation to Palestine 2. Then he came across the communist movement. He was a young man, very young, when he joined the KPP section 3 of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine 4. He had no stable employment, because - as I like to joke today - he was a professional communist and no one would give him a job at a public institution. In such closed communities everybody knows everything about everybody else. As far as I remember, my father did someone's accounting. He occasionally gave lessons, usually Polish to Jewish children. I even have a souvenir of that, a little scrap that was saved. When I was born or turned one, the Rabbi, who was very grateful that my father taught his son such good German (the boy even went on to study in Vienna), gave my father a silver knife, a fork and spoon [with RF initials].

My mom was so dominated by my father, that she maneuvered, somehow, between his views and what was left of her desire to stick to the tradition. She had candleholders and sometimes on Friday she lit the candles when my father wasn't there. When she heard him coming up the stairs she blew them out and put them away. She had a Pesach dish set and she even brought it out; I guess she had my father's permission for that. The food was Jewish, but not kosher.

I think that only Jews lived in our house. I don't know who was the owner. At the same floor, in an apartment smaller than ours, there lived two women, probably spinsters, who did some sewing. I remember hearing the noise of the sewing machine. They liked taking care of me and feeding me and my mother was angry at them that I don't want do eat at home, but eat at their place; and that I shouldn't be eating up the little that they have. So it came to that my mother secretly brought food to their house, so that I would think it's theirs and like it and eat it. A floor below, in an apartment like ours, there lived a man who was a doctor or a lawyer. That was a richer household than ours and I wasn't welcome there, I think, either because we weren't as rich or because my father was a communist. They were very middle class and cherished their status. Since they were Jewish, they couldn't have held my Jewishness against me.

My mother's sister lived with her family in Tysmienica. They had a tiny store. I don't remember her husband's first or last name. I only remember him as a shrunk, cowering little man. I remember nothing else - no facial features, only this cringing nervous figure. There were two children, a girl and a boy, I think. We didn't see them often. Was it because they were so poor, while my grandmother on my father's side was considered quite wealthy, with her own business and her own house?...

I used to spend a lot of time at my grandparents' - my father's parents - house. The house stood at the town square. It was a one-story brick house. There were two small rooms up front and I remember a cement floor. There was a kitchen and then, as far as I remember, the entrance to my grandparents' bedroom with the windows facing the courtyard shared by several other houses. There was another room, with the window facing the street, where my father's sisters lived. Further on, there was some kind of hallway, a vestibule or a pantry, also quite large. I also remember something like a barn, where the cows were kept, though that was before I was born. Then, occasionally, horses were kept there which my grandfather bought or sold, though none of these horses stayed for good.

I remember this barn so well, because at the age of 4, 5 or 6 I had terrible whooping cough. My grandmother immediately bought a goat. She milked that goat three times a day and I had to drink a glass of its milk, still warm from the udder. I was bribed with a piece of chocolate. Until today I can't stand the smell of goat-milk diary products; it makes me remember my childhood when I was made to drink goat's milk. I had one doctor, but there may have been more in Tysmienica. I know I had measles, chicken-pox, and maybe contagious hepatitis. There was a dentist in town, we used to go to his office. The doctor and the dentist were Jewish. I think you had to pay for the visits. Since nobody in the family worked at a public institution, I assume we all had to pay with our own money.

We were all supported by my grandmother. She was a woman of middle height. The most striking aspect of her appearance were, I think, the almost violet eyes next to black hair. She dressed in normal clothes, not what you would call the outfit of a Hasidic Jewish woman. She wore mostly long sleeves and mostly longish calico dresses. I remember her always wearing a clean apron. I usually saw her at work.

At some stage, before the times I can remember, she gave up on the cows, and milk was delivered by the peasants, Polish or Ukrainian, because Jews in Tysmienica, the town itself, rarely kept farm animals. Or maybe Jews from the neighboring villages brought the milk? I really don't remember. I think my grandmother didn't buy from that many sources, or she wouldn't be able to use all that milk. She probably depended on the same, reliable deliverers for half-product. There was a room where that milk was kept to turn sour. I remember those clay bowls and the wooden spoon you used to scoop up the cream from the top to put it in a separate dish. Then, the sour milk from several bowls was placed in a cooking pot. At the beginning my grandmother did that by herself. But as far back as my own memory goes, there were three women working: my grandmother, one of my father's sisters, and a Polish woman, Miss Rozia. I have to say Miss Rozia, for even if my grandmother called her Rozia, when I called her that, my grandmother would reproach me: 'She may be Rozia for me, but for you she is Miss Rozia.' I can still see those three women, how they place a big pot with the sour milk on the coal stove for the milk coagulate, how they take if off the stove and pour it out to strain it. I can see all that; more, I can remember how I couldn't resist trying the cheese. I loved cottage cheese, so sometimes even before it was shaped into crescents, I would dip my hand into it and get slapped and get yelled at, 'Keep your hands out of this!' The kitchen was very large, with an always scrubbed table and floor. In the hallway there was a bucket for the ashes, mostly wood, because coal wasn't used that often in the stove. They poured water over the ashes and left them standing for a few days to make lye, later used for washing the tables and floor in the kitchen. I remember how clean everything was in that kitchen and I remember, even today, the smell of the wet wooden planks of the floor, the smell of unseasoned, unpainted damp wood.

There was another room behind the kitchen with a press for squeezing out the liquid from the cheese. I can remember how I was getting in the way trying to help. There was also a churn for making butter; today they probably have such things only in museums. The butter had to be beaten in the churn, then rinsed, then placed in forms. Later my grandmother modernized and bought a hand centrifuge for extracting cream and a barrel, hanging on a metal bar, with handles on both sides. Two people stood on both sides, making the butter. I always observed the whole process with fascination. In the front of the house, there were two rooms: one in which there was the barrel and the centrifuge and one in which my grandmother sold her products and where the peasants brought the milk.

Both Jews and Poles bought those products from her. Once my grandmother took me to a very old Armenian woman. On the way she told me that the woman is a countess, and that I'm supposed to kiss her hand when we meet her. Once every week or two my grandmother went there to do the bills; the products were always picked up by the countess's servant and my grandmother added them to the bill. It wasn't far off, somewhere in the vicinity of the town square. The room was, I'd say today, rather gloomy and dark, very crowded with lots of furniture and knick knacks. This tiny little dried-up creature sat in a deep armchair. Since my grandmother told me to kiss her hand, I remember the many rings. And the fact she wore mittens [used in reference to fingerless gloves].

My grandmother took notes in a little book, but I don't think she wrote in Polish. My grandparents spoke exclusively Yiddish to each other. There were even days when my grandmother would say to me: 'Enough is enough! If you don't speak Yiddish to me, I won't understand you, I won't answer.' But she could speak both Ukrainian and Polish fluently. I don't know whether she made grammatical mistakes or not, but I can't remember her speaking a broken language. The clients were not all Jewish, anyway. My grandmother spoke Polish to Miss Rozia who lived with my grandparents. My grandparents took care not to work on Saturdays and on those days Miss Rozia did the necessary chores. I remember her as an older woman. She was either my grandmother's age or a little younger.

My grandmother kept a kosher house and when she came to visit us at our home, which was not kosher, she only drank tea from a glass. If there was sugar in cubes, she put a cube in her mouth, if there was none, she drank her tea without it. She didn't use a spoon, for while a glass doesn't make things unclean, the metal spoon does. She never ate anything at our place. I remember how the meat was koshered in her house. It was placed in a kind of wicker, sieve-like container, salted and kept like that, I don't remember for how long. Then it was rinsed and prepared, cooked. But where did they get the meat? I have no idea. There were a few butcher stores in Tysmienica, one of them run by a Pole and one by a Ukrainian. There was also a Jewish slaughterhouse. Once I insisted to go with my grandmother, so I remember the slaughterhouse very well. I remember it because afterwards I couldn't sleep for several nights and I'd wake up with a very unpleasant feeling, all because I insisted to go in and I saw how the butcher cuts the hens' throats and how he holds them afterward.

My grandmother made Jewish dishes. There was not much variety, but then Jewish cuisine is not particularly known for its variety, unlike the French- Italian cooking with its finesse and broad range of choices. She baked and cooked, but I never saw a cookbook and I don't remember any recipes. Among the dishes she made there was herring, mostly pickled, meat balls, chopped liver, of course, potato pancakes, beef roast and chicken stew. Veal was a delicacy that was quite rare, because it was very expensive. On Friday my grandmother baked challot.

All Friday evenings I can remember I spent at my grandparents. The evening begun when my grandfather came back from temple. He went alone, Grandmother went less often, she was much more busy. I remember how she put on a scarf to bless the candles. I can't remember if my grandfather wore a yarmulka when he came to the table or not. He usually wore a cap, but at home I saw him very often with a bare head. My grandmother prayed over the candles and my grandfather did that at the beginning of the dinner. After the candles were lit and the prayers were said, my grandfather broke the freshly baked challah and gave everyone a piece. There was a dish with salt on the table. I remember I was supposed to begin dinner with breaking a piece of challah and dipping it in salt. Such was the ritual. Then eating started and there were things one said, but no, I don't remember what they were. I'm not sure if there were always starters; almost always there was fish, either jellied or stuffed, I can't remember fried fish. Then there was broth with noodles made by my grandmother, which were yellow, made with egg yolks only, thinly cut. I can still see my grandmother making those noodles, I never saw that after the war, because where would I see it. An onion, slightly roasted on the stove, gave the broth a special golden tinge. There was boiled chicken and boiled beef. My father and grandfather liked very much what later would be called 'beef with a flower': meat with some fat around it. Another thing were potato latkes, similar to the potato pie they make in central Poland. Only my grandmother and my mother made them flat. It was a simple dish: in a flat baking pan, one placed pancakes made of grated potatoes mixed with eggs, flour, salt and onion and baked them. They were very tasty, both hot and cold. I can't remember my grandmother making chulent. I can vaguely remember something like that, which I didn't like, because it was quite fatty. But then, there was goose neck, stuffed with flour and lard, with cracklings, baked for a long time in the kind of potato mixture one used for the potato latkes.

I saw my grandfather mostly on Friday evenings and on Saturdays. On Saturday mornings he went to the temple again, this time with my grandmother. The temple was close by. Now everything seems to me as if it was a few steps away. One Saturday my grandmother woke me up very early and said, 'Niunia, tell me honestly, did you take Grandfather's moustache brush?' - she was right of course - 'Grandfather can't go to temple, because he can't brush his moustache.' My grandfather was tall, well-built, had reddish brown hair and no beard but an ample mustache. He had a special brush for the mustache, which looked like a regular big brush, only was smaller. And since I recently got this doll in a dark dress, I borrowed Grandpa's brush to comb her hair...

All of the seders were also held at my grandparent's house. But I remember them somewhat vaguely. For example, I can't remember my father asking the questions, and if he didn't, I don't know who did. I can't remember ever answering. I remember broth with dumplings which simply dissolved in your mouth. And matzah. Matzah was always fresh for Pesach, as there was a Jewish bakery in Tysmienica, near the town square. If there was matzah left from Pesach, my grandmother made 'matsebray,' pastry made from matzah crumbs. I know the recipe. Matsebray: dampen the matzah with water and mix with beaten egg. If you want it spicy, you can add salt and pepper, or you can make it sweet, with sugar or fruit preserves. Fry it on a pan. I remember the 'kuczki' celebrations [Sukkot] and all the booths built in the courtyard from tall corn stalks, for lots of corn grew in that area. A number of houses shared that courtyard, but I think each family had their own booth. There were tables made of wooden boards, and one sat down to eat at those tables. That's one of my memories. I also remember how my grandmother lit the candles [for Channukah], but I don't remember getting presents, maybe some pennies. But I remember Purim very well and the triangular cookies shaped like Napoleon's hat. I can remember their taste to this day. I don't know the recipe, only that it was shortcake made with honey. Those 'humentash' [Yiddish], or Hamman's pocket [ear] were filled with poppy seed mixed with raisins, sugar and honey. My grandmother made those, as the celebrations were held mostly at her house.

My mother was also a very good cook. She must have cooked the same things my grandmother did. She made everything based on memory and intuition. I remember her gorgeous strudel, pastry made without eggs, with flour, olive oil and water. It required a tremendous amount of work. You had to knead the dough long and well and then roll it out very thin. You then stretched it on a tablecloth until it was thin like paper. The pastry was filled with: cherry preserves, nuts, raisins, a little bit of apple went in as well, sugar and vanilla. The richness of this filling was unbelievable. After you sprinkled it with bread crumbs and laid it out on paper, you rolled up the pastry and put it in the oven. My mother's cooking was typically Jewish. I think she didn't cook pork, she was simply not accustomed to it.

I remember how my father used to make a show of taking me to the butcher's and buying a ham sandwich. At my grandmother's, he sat at the table without a covering for his head. His parents let him get way with that. But when he once lit a cigarette on a Saturday in front of my grandmother, there was a huge row and he was scolded like a bad little kid. They knew he wouldn't want them to draw me too much into this religious thing, so I think they didn't take me to the temple too often. After all, my father started his affair with communism even before I was born. Even if my grandparents were surely very simple people - apart from having taught themselves to read and write in Jewish, they had no education - they were full of dignity and understanding, especially for my father. I gather from their manner of behaving and from what I remember, that they tolerated what he did. And more: when my father wasn't working, I think my grandmother simply supported me and my mother. My father was formally the co-owner of his brother-in-law's (his oldest sister Chana's husband's) little store, but from what I understand that was merely the cover for the police, even if my father did show up over there once in a while.

The store was small, situated at the town square. It was not a grocery but a general goods store. There were basically a few pieces of everything there: from underwear to shoes. I can't remember any clothes, only some haberdashery, shoes, stockings, some underwear. The kind of shop you can find in a small town: three pairs of shoes and underwear elastic. I remember what that store looked like, because I liked to go there and watch, or play with buttons, for example. The store was long and narrow, with a counter to one side, some shelves behind the counter and some space for the clients by the entrance. It was mostly my uncle who worked there, my aunt helped occasionally.

My father's sister, Chana was a big woman. My father was about 1,76 meters and she was as tall as him. I remember a hefty woman, with pretty large breasts and quite wavy black hair. I remember her from the time when she was already married, so her hair was gathered, rather than loose; she must have worn it in a bun or something. Her husband's name was Icchak, I think, but I can't remember his last name. I am sure that, following my grandmother's example, they ate kosher, but they were only mildly religious. Their daughter, Bronia, was 2-3 years younger than I was; I can't remember the name of her little brother.

The middle sister, Hesia, stood out, because she wasn't that tall. I remember straight, shortly cropped hair, but nothing characteristic otherwise. She didn't get married. When it came to her, everybody gave up on that. She had her own room in the family home, which, I think, she shared with the youngest sister, Eta. Hesia stayed there frequently, but she worked in Stanislawow, at a Jewish dentist's office, as, you would say today, a dentist technician. She must have had some professional education, which she must have gotten in Stanislawow, for it wouldn't have been in Tysmienica. Once she even took me to the office. I was very impressed. She warmed something up over a gas burner. She was making dentures and showed me her work. She had great manual skills. When she was not is Stanislawow making various crowns and such, she was at home embroidering, crocheting or knitting. I used to have a white organdie dress with an embroidered front which she made for me. And even some shirts. I'm not sure if she wasn't the one who knitted the mauve dress with ivory-colored ruffles that my grandmother wore to her youngest daughter's wedding.

Eta, Ethel, was similar to the oldest sister, only slim. A tall, slim brunette. She lived with my grandparents the longest time. She helped my grandmother with cheese-making. At some stage, she took over the major burden of the physical work. I think they were already worried that she's an old maid when she was 20. She got married in 1938, probably through a matchmaker. I can't remember a man around, I guess she never had time for that. A sudden wedding, and she was gone. I have no idea what her husband's name was or what he did. I only know he was from Stanislawow. The wedding took place in Tysmienica. There was a chuppah, a rabbi and dancing. I can still see my grandmother and grandfather dancing a dance at that wedding called broyges, which you could translate as 'angry, upset with each other.' They didn't hold each other's hands only each held a corner of the same scarf. That's where I remember my grandmother in the dress the color of dark wine. The young danced as well, but that wasn't as much of a shock as my grandmother: all of a sudden she's not working but dancing! I spent my entire childhood watching my grandmother work, and that was the only time when I saw her dance.

When I was 4 or 5, my father decided that an only daughter, surrounded by three aunts, a grandmother and a mother, cannot be raised at home only. There was a parish in Tysmienica, where some nuns lived. And they had a nursery there to which I was sent, for a very, very short time. That career was short-lived, for one day I came back from that nursery with a song on my lips: 'Wzieli do wojska Moska pejsatego. Aj, aj. Aj, waj, waj' [a derogatory song about a Jewish man; literally: 'They took one Moshe with side curls to the army. Ay, Ay. Ay, vay, vay.'] I was not sent back to the nursery.

Mostly I hung out at my grandmother's workshop watching how all those products are being made. But I remember holidays away from home which I spent with my mother and grandmother in Carpathian mountains. I was no more than 6 then. The place was called Dora and was located near Jaremcze [around 60 km south of Stanislawow]. Jaremcze was a well-known health resort and Dora was close by, but not that famous, so it was cheaper. We spent our summer there - grandmother came for a short stay and me and my mother stayed longer. I think the house we stayed in was not a guest house, that we simply rented rooms from some local people and my mother did the cooking. What does a child remember? Images. There was a period of storms and my mother was terribly afraid, because thunder really travels in the mountains. So she hid in bed, under the pillow. I sat at the doorstep and watched the lightning, while my mother screamed, 'Come inside and close the door or you're going to be struck by lightning!' I remember a swift-flowing river, Prut. It was shallow, but very rapid. I bathed in it, and once I even started drowning. A local boy, slightly older than me, got me out. That is the only summer away from home which got stuck in my memory.

I went to school in 1936. I guess there was only a Polish school in Tysmienica. I think it had 6 grades. I remember only girls in my class, so there must have been a parallel one for the boys. Or maybe the whole school was for girls, for there was another building. That's all submerged as in a fog. One-story building, without a gym, only some beaten dirt. There were not more than twenty of us in one class: Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian. I think that maybe the Ukrainian children took religion classes at the Orthodox Church and the Jewish children went to the Synagogue. I didn't. About two weeks into the first grade, the girl who was placed at the same desk with me by the teacher, raised her had and said, 'Ma-am, my mother wants me to sit with someone else, not with Reginka [diminutive from Regina], because Reginka is Jewish.' So the teacher moved her somewhere else and I sat with another 'Jewish' girl. I remember another girl from school, Wanda. She was Polish and her family was one of the richest in town. Her father had a large workshop in which he employed people making embroidered sheepskin coats. Wanda found me after the war.

Nothing gave me any problems at school. Even if at home everybody spoke Yiddish, my aunts, my grandmother and my parents spoke very fluent Polish, in fact my father spoke Polish beautifully, and so did my mother. I suppose my aunts graduated from a Polish elementary school. They read a lot to me, as I was the oldest grandchild, and for a while the only one, so I was given a special kind of attention. I can't remember ever having been refused reading or conversation. I learned how to read with my aunts and my mother: 'What does it say here? What letters are these? Why is it pronounced like that?' Nobody ever sat down to teach me, it just happened, fast and easy. Very early I read Heart by Amicis [Edmondo de Amicis, 1846- 1908, an Italian writer, author of didactic novels and stories]. My parents must have given me that. I remember weeping and I remember what my eyes looked like afterwards. I read Guliver's Travels [a satirical fantasy- adventure novel by an English writer, Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745], Mary and the Dwarfs [a story by Maria Konopnicka, 1842-1920, Polish poet and prose writer for children and adults] and so on.

My parents did want me to learn Yiddish, so a melamed came to our house to teach me. But my resistance must have been strong, because the effort was short-lived and I didn't learn anything. My father could easily read Yiddish, and so could my mother, I think. My father was very well-read. At home, there were books in Yiddish, German and Polish. I'm convinced he read the classics in Yiddish: Sholem Aleichem 5, Peretz 6, but there was also Herzl 7. He read in German: Schiller 8, Goethe [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832, the greatest German poet of the Romantic period], Heine [Heinrich Heine, 1797-1856, a German Romantic poet], not to mention Feuchtwanger 9, Kafka 10, Thomas Mann [1875-1955, German prose-writer and anti-fascist activist, who emigrated in 1933], whom he simply devoured. He loved literature. I can't remember him reading newspapers; I don't know if there were any in Tysmienica.

My father was very demanding in that he took care I don't become a typical 'only child' spoiled by the mother, grandmother and aunts. Most of the time, he called me 'son.' His strictness balanced the women's tendency to see me as 'a poor child, who never sees her father.' Before the war, I remember him as the disappearing man. I remember such scenes as when my mom would wake me up in the middle of the night when I was about 5 or 6. I couldn't understand what she's saying. She woke me to ask me to sit up with her. 'Dad has gone out to a meeting and hasn't come back. I'm so afraid. Don't sleep for a while, keep me company.'

He was a member of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, called KaPUZa, for short. All this information is so shallow... My memories are totally vague. I must have been 4, 5 or 6 when he put some papers under the mattress of the bed in which I slept. That happened at night. Before 1st May, I remember panic, commotion, and then knocking on the door: 'Police! Open up!' Occasionally they invited my father preventively for 24 or 48 hours. I know that he was in hiding for a while. Someone must have warned him that they want to arrest him, so he left home and when he came back it was in the middle of the night, only to leave again before dawn. In the little town everybody knew everything about everybody else. In those times when my father would disappear only to come home at night for a few hours, there was a policeman I can remember as if it was today: Mr. Maciejewski. In terms of appearance he reminded me of Pilsudski 11, for he had a similar walrus moustache. He'd meet me on the street and say, 'Poor child, you haven't seen your father for a long time, have you? Maybe you know when he's coming back? When is daddy going to be home?' Several times my father was in jail in Stanislawow. I visited him there with my mother. We went by train, and then walked or took a carriage to the jail which was certainly not situated in some isolated place.

Well, and I remember when my father was taken to Bereza 12. He was taken in the evening. It was around my birthday, some time in November. Next day my mother woke me up at dawn and we went to the police station. My grandmother was already there. There was a carriage. We stood on the street. They brought out my father and another man - I don't know who that was - both of them in handcuffs. And then, I remember my grandmother, who threw herself at the police like a lioness: how dare they treat my father like that, handcuffed, like a criminal! This is one of the images still very strong in my mind: my grandmother with dark hair and then, cut, and my grandmother gray-haired very soon afterwards. My father spent 11 months in Bereza. My father's imprisonments were very hard for my mother. She was very scared. She had no profession, she was totally dependent. One day I felt like singing and dancing. My mother walked up to me and pinched me very hard: 'Your father is in Bereza and you feel like singing and jumping around?!' For many years later she kept on apologizing for that. In 1937, I sent to President Moscicki my picture attached to my grade report form the 1st grade; I remember it was a very good report [Ignacy Moscicki, 1867- 1946, chemistry professor, politician, Polish President in 1926-39, from 1939 in Switzerland]. I asked if I could please have my daddy back.

Some months later, my father came back home. Polish authorities decided that KPP is not a threat any more, since it ceased to exist [in 1937 Stalin decided to dissolve KPP and it was finally disbanded a year later]. My father came back in the fall of 1937. He showed up early in the morning at my grandmother's house. He didn't come to us, probably not wanting to cause a stir in the house in which there were many other apartments. When my mother found out he is there she ran over to my grandmother's without waking me up or locking the apartment. I woke up to find myself home alone. Where was I to seek help and explanation? I was almost 8. I put something on, though I wasn't completely dressed, and I ran to my grandmother. This is another image I still have in my mind: my father standing at a table in the kitchen. He bent over, but he couldn't quite lift me up. I don't know whether it was because of the emotions or because he was indeed too week and emaciated. He was very thin. The tweed trousers he was wearing were tied with a string; they didn't give him back his belt. And I remember that he couldn't lift me up.

On my grandmother's and mother's food he soon started gaining weight and did push-ups; he said he's learned that in Bereza. He said he has to do that not to get fat. Later, when I was grown up and my father could have serious conversations with me, he told me about doing jumping frogs during assembly and the beds of boards on which they slept and how the newcomers had to first sleep on the concrete floor. He talked about futile work: ditches they had to dig only to fill them in again the next day. There was a song he sometimes sang, but of the words he passed on to me I remember only one stanza: 'Our group walked through the swamps of Polesie, guarded by sharp bayonets. Our hearts beat to this rhythm, the women and mothers cried somewhere afar.' I remember a saying with which they warned each other against snitches; when I chattered to much, he'd say it to me even after the war: 'Don't babble or you'll die from hiccups.' I think the political prisoners were not really separated from others. Sometimes he'd mention a name in those conversations: 'This is a comrade I was with in Bereza.' I can't remember the name.

I remember very well when one evening my father inauspiciously turned on the radio when I was still awake. A Hitler speech was on. I remember, as if it was today, that terrifying shriek and my terrible fear. I have that day, 1st September, right in front of my eyes. Maybe it's a figment of my imagination, but what I see are peasants walking around the town square, many of them holding an ax or a sack on a wooden stick, as if waiting for the moment when they can start looting.

In school, I went up to the 3rd grade in Polish. I remember how suddenly I started studying in Ukrainian, not in Polish 13. The Soviets brought electricity. They quickly put up posts. It all went up in the air, and into the houses, provisionally attached to the walls, and there was light. My father worked in Stanislawow at the time, in the municipal office, called 'gorodskoj soviet' [Russian for city council]. He worked with a man from Dniepropetrovsk, a Russian or a Ukrainian, who came to Stanislawow after 1939 [Dniepropetrovsk: city ca. 700 km east of Stanislawow, in Central Ukraine].

During the War

When the war started in June 1941 [the German-Soviet war], we left with that man's family. My father had the opportunity to send my grandparents with us and begged them to go; places on a train were very hard to get. But they flatly refused. So three of us left: my mom, me and my tiny baby sister, who was born in March 1940. My father stayed behind and then followed and tried to catch up with us. I was placed in charge, that is, my father said, 'Son, remember that until you reach the Polish border, your mother will want to get off every time the train stops. Give her the suitcases but keep the baby. Leave it at that; if she insists, let her get off, but you and the baby must go on.'

Our aim was to get to Dniepropetrovsk, together with the wife and the two children of that man my father worked with. But the Germans were moving so fast, such heavy bombing begun, that even before we got to Dniepropetrovsk, we decided to go further. We caught a train to Kharkov [city in North- Eastern Ukraine, ca. 200 km from Dniepropetrovsk], where we were all kicked off the train. It was probably needed to move the army. So we spent two nights at the train station in Kharkov, then another train came. We were getting on it in a mad crowd. My mother climbed on with my sister and two suitcases; I was still at the platform with the third suitcase, when the train started moving. Somehow people pulled me onto that train, by my hair, my hands. I was also trying to hold on to that suitcase, our only possessions... The wife of this acquaintance of my father's had a family in a village whose name I actually remember: Junakovka. But the train didn'd go there. So we got off in Sumy [Northern Ukraine, around 150 km from Kharkov].

There was an 'evakpunkt' [Russian for evacuation point] there, where everybody found some space and somehow survived on bundles. The woman said she will sent a message to Junakovka, that she's waiting in Sumy and a cart will come for us. And so it happened. My father found us in that village, because at each stage, wherever we could, we left notes where we're going. We spent 2-3 weeks in Junakovka, maybe even less than that. We then returned to Sumy and looked for a train, because the Germans were already breathing down our backs. We got on a train which must have been transporting equipment from the factory in Rostov upon Don [ca. 540 km south-east of Sumy].

We ended up somewhere in Kazakhstan [then a republic of the Soviet Union in central Asia] for about two or three months, in a village where Kazakh was the only language you could communicate in. There were no houses there, only yurts. My father engaged in some superhuman efforts over there; he even left us there for a while and somehow managed to get to Tashkent [the capital of Uzbekistan, then a republic bordering on Kazakhstan from the north, ca. 3400 km from western Ukraine]. He decided that would be a good place to take us. So we ended up in Tashkent, where the population multiplied fast, because everybody was escaping as deep into the Soviet Union as they could, at this point into Asia.

Luckily Tashkent is a warm city and it was still warm then. We spent several days in 'sadik' [Russian for a little garden], that is, a small square in front of the train station. You couldn't sleep in that 'sadik,' not even turn away for a minute, because things were pulled right from under you at a moment of inattention. There were bands of children left without care, and adults too, ruthlessly robbing everyone. Since we had a baby with us who was breastfed - luckily my mother was still breastfeeding - a woman took us into her courtyard. There was a so-called 'tachta' in that courtyard: a type of a wooden elevation where one could sit and drink tea, as was the custom. You could place a quilt or spread on it and sleep there.

And then we were assigned an apartment, not in Tashkent itself, but as if in the suburbs, in 'posiolok' [Russian for village]. It was called Lunaczarsk, most likely in honor of Lunaczarski [Anatolij Lunaczarski, 1875- 1933, Russian philosopher and culture theorist, an activist of the Bolshevik party, the creator of Soviet educational system]. There we came across a White Guardist, honestly. He was told, with his wife and daughter, to free one room for us. It was a connecting room, which basically served them as a kitchen. We slept somewhere under the window, on the floor. I remember my mother stood a table on its side to shield us. And the man was a heavy drinker. When he was quite drunk, he took an ax, shook it, and yelled, 'Etoy nochyu ya uzhe etih Yevreyev ubiyu!' [Russian for 'Tonight I will kill those Jews at last']. A neighbor took pity on us. She was childless, her husband went to the front. She gave us a kitchen and a porch and I slept on a coal stove. Later, in Tashkent, I spent whole summers sleeping outside, on a bed made of wooden planks, out of choice. The courtyard was fenced in so I had no problem sleeping there and no bedbugs.

Tashkent was a city made up of many disparate pieces. There was the old Tashkent, where you walked along the narrow streets with no windows facing you, only solid walls. Those were really like mud-huts, made of clay and straw. And there were tall fences, also made of clay. This old part of the city was inhabited by the Uzbeks, who still believed a woman cannot be seen by a stranger. So there were still many women wearing charshafs: gray cloaks, with a stiff net in front of the face, most likely woven from horse hair. There were a few mosques, run down after the years of Soviet presence. There were many Jews there, both local and newcomers. There is a city over there, a very old city of Buchara [around 500 km south-west of Tashkent] where ages ago Jews must have settled. They were referred to as 'bukhariyskiye Yevrieyi,' Bucharian Jews 14. I couldn't tell them from the Uzbeks. Maybe their facial features were sharper and faces less Asiatic in terms of the high cheekbones and slanted eyes. Their clothing was European, I think. But I can't say whether they observed the tradition, whether they prayed and if so, where: at their homes, separately, or together in one of their houses? I remember a joke: 'Zdrastvuyte, tovarishch Yevrey, byvshaya zhydovskaya morda' [Russian for 'Good morning, comrade Jew, who used to be a Kike snout']. That was supposed to be a joke.

Initially, in Tashkent, my dad was a porter at the railway station. Later, in Lunaczarsk, since he knew how to sharpen a razor on a belt, he got a job as a barber in the military hospital for the soldiers evacuated deep East. There was a psychiatric ward at that hospital I was very afraid of; the war gathers a rich harvest of mental diseases. I don't know whether he got references or took advantage of his acquaintance with the staff of the hospital where he was the barber, but later, when we were back in Tashkent, he got a job in the storage room of a military canteen. His job was to move boxes and take crates, sacks and other heavy things off the trucks. My mother, when she decided it was safe to leave my sister in my care, went to help him.

I learned Russian pretty fast. Maybe because I had the Ukrainian base encoded somewhere from my childhood and the year at school when I studied in Ukrainian. So I didn't have problems adapting to a Russian school. My parents still spoke Yiddish to each other, and so did I, as far as I remember. But my father decided that I have to study Polish. So he found - I have no idea where and how - Arnold Slucki 15, to give me lessons. After a few lessons - for which my father paid him as he had no other means of support - the lessons were stopped. My teacher decided it's a waste of money, as I said point-blank that I'm never going back to Poland, so why should I study Polish. I learned how to talk back by then. I believed the only one who wants to go back to Poland is my mother, and only because she wants to be called 'Misses' again. That was what I said. As to myself, I associated Poland with prisons my father was taken to, my father's absence, house-searches... There were many Poles in Tashkent, but I hardly knew anyone. My father must have made contacts with ZPP, Union of Polish Patriots, already there 16. There may have been a Polish orphanage there. I was told there was a Polish school somewhere at the other side of the city. If there had been, it didn't last long; when the Anders Army 17 was formed, those who joined it left with entire families.

I had one close friend. She was Jewish, her name was Ewa, but I can't remember her last name. She came from central Russia, or maybe from the Ukraine. She was a single child, her mother didn't work and her father was some kind of tradesman. We spent a lot of time together: at school, at the school courtyard, at the courtyard at home. I remember singing, talking. We didn't visit each other at home, because everybody had so little space, we were all squeezed into somebody else's house, the whole family crowded in one room. But because of the climate, social life could go on outside year round.

In Tashkent I was first a pioneer 18 and then I joined the Komsomol 19. Instead of going to summer camps we were sent to pick grapes one year and cotton the next. It was heavy and unpleasant work. It must have been after the 6th grade; I was 13 or 14. We were treated as working women, so we got 60, not 40, decagrams of bread a day 20. And the bread was almost white, not like Tashkent bread which was black and sticky and you couldn't cut it. And once a day we got heavy, thick soup in which, unfortunately, sometimes there were pieces of lamb. Over there, lamb was killed only when it was old and fatty and by that time the meat had a very intense, unpleasant smell. But we ate it anyway. Mostly we ate bread and grapes.

I finished 5 grades in Tashkent; I graduated from the 9th grade in 1946. I was old enough then to get a temporary ID. When my parents wanted to go back to Poland I was required to write that I go with them of my own choice. But I fought the idea with all I had in me. I said I'm not going. Because of my resistance we stayed in Tashkent for quite a long time. We finally came back in the summer, June or July, of 1946. We traveled for several weeks. We took mostly freight trains which stopped no one knew where and for how long. After our return we first lived for a short while in Zary [around 400 km west of Warsaw], then Wroclaw [around 350 km south- west of Warsaw] and then Walbrzych [over 400 km from Warsaw, 60 km from Wroclaw]. 21

Out of our entire family only me, my sister and my parents survived. My parents wouldn't talk to us about this war tragedy. I remember once, in 1946 or 1947, my father wouldn't let me into the room where I heard him crying. I think he got a letter or some news. There were two versions of what happened to my grandparents, their daughters and the more distant family members, some cousins, my mother's sister with children and her husband. I also remember that when my parents were counting how many family members have died, I heard - though they didn't know I'm listening - that they have to add the child Eta [my father's youngest sister] was carrying. I don't know if it was even born... So there were two versions. One was that part of the family was killed, shot right there at the Jewish cemetery and the rest sent to Stanislawow. The other version was that they were all shot at the Tysmienica cemetery. I think my father blamed himself for the rest of his life that he didn't make my grandparents come with us, that he wasn't convincing enough. It was tragic, he couldn't take it. 'Stop it! I can't talk about it,' was all he could say. I made a faux pas once, when talk started about reparations for the people who were deported from eastern Poland which became part of the Soviet Union after the war 22. I said, 'Dad, did you hear...' Good God! I have never heard him scream like that, not even when I was a child and did something bad. 'What are you saying to me! You're talking about home?! Where are the people of that home?! What are you saying?! What reparations? For what?!'

After the war two of his aunts were found. I don't know what their names were, I don't know whether they were grandmother's of grandfather's sisters. They must have emigrated in the early 1920s and lived in New York, in Bronx or Brooklyn. Before the war my father or my grandmother used to send them our pictures. After the war my father began corresponding with them. When they found out that we lost everything, that nothing survived, they sent us back what they had of the pictures: those from my father's youth and later ones from after Bereza; mine as a little girl in Tysmienica. My father sent them our post-war pictures, among them one from Walbrzych where the four of us can be seen posing very properly. Those aunts died in the 1950's or 1960's, one after the other.

After the War

The return to Poland meant I felt a stranger again. When a few days later I went out on the street and heard a group of youngsters speaking Russian I followed them and asked, 'Rebiata [Russian for kids], you're talking about school. Is there a soviet school somewhere here?' They showed me. And I went straight in, without even consulting my parents, and said I'm Polish, recently repatriated, and I would like to finish their school and take my matriculation exams there. No problem, they said. So I took the news home. There were many students, children of officers; I was the only non-Russian student. Two students in my class, a boy and a girl, were much older. I think they were in active service, for they wore uniforms to school. I finished 10th grade and took my matriculation exams in 1947. The exam covered lots of subjects: both written and oral exams in math and Russian. But there were also: geography, history, physics, chemistry, and a foreign language, I can't remember which. The newly repatriated young people didn't have to take exams to college. Anyway, I didn't take one to study medicine in Wroclaw.

In Wroclaw I lived for a year in a Jewish dorm. There were two: one for students, into which I didn't get for some reason, most likely because I was late signing up; and one for working class youth, where I lived. It was in the center of the city, at Olawska street, I think; We walked the paths trodden among the ruins. The dorm building had two floors and an attic. Rooms for boys and girls were separated by floor. People who lived there were very different from each other and of diverse ages. Some of them worked only, others took college preparatory courses. I lived in a room for four, but there were also rooms for six. All four of us were students. One was a dentistry student, two were students of some humanities departments. We got three meals in the dorm. After the wartime diet, I didn't think of those as bad meals, but they probably weren't very high quality, even if supported by Joint 23. I remember every Saturday we had dinner all together with singing and recitations. I'd describe the conditions as rather Spartan. There was central heating, but it was not particularly warm. There was hot water once a week.

My parents remained in Walbrzych. There was a bathroom in their apartment. I remember my mother, by then more than a 40 year old woman, coming out of that bathroom and saying 'A'mekhaye! [Yiddish for happiness, bliss]. That was one clever bourgeois who invented the bathroom!' My mother didn't work, she took care of the house. She never let go of the Jewish ways of cooking. But we ate every kind of meet, also pork. My mother never used recipes. She didn't let me into the kitchen, because you needed to save and there was always the danger I would spoil something, or make a dish not to her liking. So if I did anything in the kitchen it was as a helper, peeling vegetables, mostly. When we were in the kitchen together, I'd ask her: 'How much of that did you use? How much of this does one put in?' To that she'd say: 'As much as it takes, you'll feel it in your fingers.' Not particularly precise, but for her it sufficed. I remember there was matzah at home after the war. But I don't know where it was from. I know that the Jewish Committee 24 in Walbrzych did distribute matzah.

My father was the chair of the local Jewish Committee in Walbrzych [in the years 1946-49]. It was an organization in which Jews gathered to help other Jews 25. At the same time my father made many enemies, because he tried to persuade Jews not to leave Poland. He argued they should stay, because Poland is going to be a different place. After the Kielce pogrom in 1946, however, I'm not sure how many there were whom this argument would stop from leaving 26. Everybody who could, who had some family, who found sponsors, thought about emigrating.

My father constantly preached internationalism to me. I remember in 1952, personal ID's were being issued for the first time. Up until then we had no documents. My birth certificate or its copy arrived with an error, most likely caused by the clerk's haste or a simple mistake. My name on it was Rena Fischbein. 'Dad, I said, we have to correct his, one syllable is missing.' I'm telling this story to show how paranoid my father was after all. He glanced at me and said, 'You know what, let's leave it like that. Maybe Rena sounds better than Regina.' He didn't say out right that Regina Fischbein sounds rather unambiguous [i.e. explicitly Jewish]. So that's how I became Rena. From 1952, all my documents say that. But at the time, that didn't really matter, to a person who was busy studying, falling in love...

At the beginning of 1948, I interrupted my studies after the first semester. I was aware of how poor my Polish is and how little physical, chemical and anatomical vocabulary I had I felt really bad throughout the first semester, because all of the assistants from the Jan Kazimierz University in Lwow were very aware of my russicisms 27. I felt completely disheartened and I decided that I had to master that language if I didn't want to be treated as an alien, an outsider, a second-class citizen. For that's how I felt. Not because of my background, not at all, only because of my pronunciation and my vocabulary. I took a leave from the University and studied, read lots of Polish books, sometimes even copying. I decided to repeat the first semester. I finished my second year in Wroclaw and in the academic year 1950/51 I came to Warsaw, to my parents. They moved to Warsaw at the beginning of 1950. The party had suddenly remembered my father 28.

At first, my father worked for NIK in the Department of Personnel and Training [NIK: Supreme Chamber of Control, which controls the activity of all state institutions]. Then he worked at the headquarters supervising Construction of Housing for Workers. My mom didn't work, she was always mom. My sister, born in 1940, lived with them. We didn't have much time together, because when I turned 23, in 1952, I got married.

We met as students of medicine. My husband is my peer. His father's family was from Warsaw, for generations. His mother found her way to Poland only after the Revolution, in 1920. My husband's grandfather was a landowner in the Kielce region [around 160 km south of Warsaw], but I don't know that side of the family very well. After some conflict with his mother and siblings, he left for Russia. There, he married a girl from a Russian- Courland family. My husband's grandmother had musical education and taught, as she used to say, jokingly, at some 'Uchilishchie Blagorodnych Dyevic' [Russian for 'a school for well-born ladies']. After the Revolution they found their way to Poland. The grandmother worked giving lessons to opera soloists. She even had the honor of playing with Szalapin [Fiodor Szalapin, 1873-1938, a world-famous Russian bass opera singer], during one of his two visits to Poland, in Warsaw. My husband's mother died in the Warsaw uprising 29, when he was 14. My husband followed in her footsteps and became an assistant at pathological anatomy. Then he worked for the Institute of Oncology, doing research in a purely theoretical field of radiobiology.

Initially we lived separately, with our respective families; later we moved in together. In 1953 our daughter, Helena, was born, and in 1955, our son, Piotr. After graduating, I worked as a pediatrician at the local public clinic. I was aware how little I know in practical terms. Until my son was born, I did volunteer work at professor Brokman's Pediatric Clinic at Dzialdowska street. It was all rather hard. Then I had a year and half break in work, I simply couldn't manage the so-called house help any more. Then I begun working as a school doctor.

We had a lousy apartment in an annex: a room with a kitchen. Then, in 1955, we moved to the Old Town [the oldest part of Warsaw completely destroyed during the war, to be successively rebuilt] where we had two good rooms: one was occupied by my father-in-law, the other by the four of us. It was funny how that room consumed more and more furniture: a piano, a wardrobe, a bed, another bed with shelves attached, and a cot we folded out for the second child. My husband came back home from various places of work when he was sure the children were already asleep. He always valued his work and worked a lot. In 1965, we moved to a bigger apartment, in the center of Warsaw. It was a luxury to us: four rooms; together with the kitchen we had 54 square meters.

When I got married to a Pole and my children were born, I started learning the traditional Polish holidays: Christmas, Easter, and the foods which one is supposed to prepare for them so that at school my children could talk about the same things other children do. I remember the holidays when my husband was on a longer stay abroad in 1960, 1961. As it usually happens when times are harder, both of the kids were sick all winter, particularly my son. When I got the Christmas Eve dinner ready, it turned out my daughter has a high fever. My father-in-law looked at me, at the table, at the dressed Christmas tree, and said, 'What are we going to do? Celebrate Christmas just the two of us, with two sick kids? Why don't you call your parents, maybe they'll agree to come?' My parents did agree and my mother even brought her famous, delicious jellied fish. But when she entered the room and saw the set table and what's on it, she stopped in the doorway and said, 'Ok, I did the fish. But who did the rest?' She was always frank and critical of my skills as a housewife. My father-in-law defended me, 'There is only one woman in this house and she did everything.' I learned what to do and how to do it just by watching. My mother did not celebrate Jewish holidays after the war. From time to time she made one of the lavish Jewish baked things, for example the extraordinary strudel, like the one she used to make before the war.

My sister spoke Polish to my parents at home. She has a very lovely name, Uliana. This name exists in Ukrainian, but she got hers from somewhere else, from Ulyanov, of course [the real name of Vladimir Lenin]. My father called her Jula or Julek [male version]. After graduating from the 1st year of Chemistry at the Warsaw Polytechnic, she got a Ford fellowship and she went to college in the US [Ford Foundation, established in 1936, is the largest private foundation financing higher education and research]. Initially, she planned to go for just one year, but then stayed for three. She never had any problems at school because she was very smart and always a good student. After getting her degree, she taught English at the American School, run by the American Embassy in Warsaw. She married a Jew from Lublin [180 km from Warsaw]. His father fought with the underground partizan army during the war, and the husband spent the war in Siberia with his mother. His name is Wlodzimierz, after Lenin [Polish version of Vladimir]. I can only remember the last name he got after the war, Gabara. He worked at the Polytechnic. My sister worked for Forum [a weekly published from 1965 on, with reprints of foreign publications] as an editor of the culture department, particularly English. In 1968, the chief editor said to her that it would be much more convenient for him and more pleasant if she resigned from her job herself instead of him having to fire her 30. And if she wouldn't, he would have to. Her husband got the same offer at the Polytechnic. So they left. First they went to Vienna, for a short time. I think they were helped by one of their acquaintances from the American Embassy. Then they went to the States. At first my sister taught Russian and got a PhD in literature. Her two daughters were born there: Rachel in 1970 and Ester in 1972. My brother-in-law's parents also left Poland. They went to Israel in 1969 or at the beginning of 1970.

My father worked at the Agency for Peace Uses of Atomic Energy. When everything started in 1968, he got retired and removed from the party. I already had children and was very worried, not about what would happen to me, but about the kind of life they were going to have here. I thought about leaving the country. But I have never considered leaving without my parents. First I had a talk with my father. He was the spiritual guardian and the one who could be relied on to solve problems. And he said, 'If you are worried, and your Polish husband is willing to go, then go. But I am not going. Even if I know that you and Jula love me very much and that you will do everything to support me and your mother, I am not ready to depend on anyone's generosity for my living, even yours. Nor the state's. My retirement pension will suffice for me and your mom here; it's modest, but we don't have great needs.' So I stopped thinking about leaving. After he was removed from the party, my father wasn't doing very well emotionally. He worked for the Jewish Institute 31, but I think he worked only as a volunteer. He died in 1975. My mother died earlier, in 1973. They are buried at Okopowa Street, at the Jewish cemetery. I visit their graves whenever I can, but not always on the anniversary of their deaths.

I didn't have problems because of my background. I had an inconspicuous position at work - most of my professional life I worked as a school doctor. When I now think about my work, I'm glad I worked where I did, in Praga [a district of Warsaw on the right bank of Vistula, traditionally perceived as poorer and run down]. I worked there for about 20 years, until I retired. I think I was needed there and useful. Most likely I wouldn't have been needed in the same way, had I worked in the center of Warsaw, among children whose families were well off in comparison. My husband, in addition to his professional work, was interested in Chinese culture; then switched to Japanese. He had some professional friends in Japan, at whose homes he was always welcome. In April 1980 he went to Japan and there he waited for a British visa. In London they were holding a 5-year contract for him, so they vouched for him and he got the visa. He's been living in London since 1980, where he worked until retirement. He's still studying Japanese. I visited him there once or twice. And always came back.

Both of our children graduated from music school, both as violinists. After high school, my daughter applied to the English Department, but didn't get in. She went to a school which taught typing and secretarial skills, and did very well there. She got a job in the headquarters of an office dealing with import and export of agricultural tools. In the meantime, however, she studied, trying to get ready to apply to the Department of Japanese Studies, but kept it a secret from us. She got in very well and studied there for three semesters. Meanwhile she got married and had a child in 1976, Karolina. Then she divorced. She met a Swede in Poland and left with him in 1979. She learned Swedish and got a job as a social worker, taking care of people who are ill and incapacitated. Later she worked for a while as a pedicurist - not esthetic but curative, which is especially important for older people, people with diabetes. She had to give it up because of eczema. For a long time now she hasn't worked. She has three children. My oldest granddaughter, Karolina, went to a two year school for managers of horse stables and then studied for a year to get a teacher's diploma. The boy, Bartek, is 25 today. With some friend, he established a small computer programming firm. The youngest, Weronika, is 20, just graduated from school and I don't know whether she's started anything yet. Karolina understands a lot of Polish, the younger two not at all. But since they teach English very early at school over there, and grandma has learned to speak English in her old age, that's how we communicate. As far as our Jewish background is concerned, my daughter knows. When she was asked, back in Poland, about her background, she'd say she's 'a mutt, and to make it even better, of two breeds.' When she came to Poland on a visit and saw some indecent things written on the walls or heard them said, she got very angry. How much does it matters to her in Sweden, I can't say. 

One of the happiest days of my life was the day when my son gave me his matriculation certificate. He must owe it to his talents and good memory that he somehow got through high school and managed the matriculation exam. He picked medicine and, as it turned out, he treated his studies very seriously. He was a very good student; indeed he worked hard. He specialized in anesthesiology. He got married. His wife studied at the German Department; then she taught German at Warsaw University and did some translations. In 1984, their daughter Agata was born and in 1986, Mina. In 1991, two years after he did his PhD, my son went to the States on a scholarship. His family joined him, but my daughter-in-law didn't like it there and after 10 months she returned to Poland with the children. He started with what they call an internship. Then he got residency, which comes down to picking a specialization and taking an exam to become an independent doctor. He did that in Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, one of the 5 best hospitals in the States. He found a job in Seattle and settled there. He still works there. Now he trains his own residents, he's an Associate Professor. He is glad he doesn't work for a private group, where you work without end and make money without end. He said he is tired of the satisfied American life and now he's joining the Doctors without Borders [Medecins sans Frontieres: an independent humanitarian organization providing help to those who need it irrespective of race, religion and politics] for the third time, giving up his holidays. This time, he is going to Nigeria. He's already gone to Thailand and Liberia. He got married a second time. His wife is American born, a radiologist. His older daughter Agata is in a very good college in Rhode Island School of Art in Providence. She intends to be a graphic artist. And she seems to be doing very well, as she finished her first year in college with straight A's. The younger daughter, Mina, passed the matriculation exam this year and got into the school of Management and Marketing at Warsaw University. They both know what their background is and I doubt they'd have any problem saying to their friends 'my grandmother is Jewish.'

From 1991 or 1992, I have gone to the States every year, spending more time with my son than my sister. My sister lives in Richmond. Her husband works at Du Pont [the world's largest chemical company] as a polymer specialist, very high in the company's hierarchy. Both daughters did Comparative Studies: Rachel French-Russian and Ester Spanish-English, I think. They both teach at universities, the older one started at Yale and now teaches somewhere in Georgia and the younger at Duke in North Carolina. Rachel got married last year, Ester a year before. Rachel's husband is half-Jewish, half-Italian and works as a historian. Ester's husband teaches painting and considers himself Mexican, because he was born in Mexico.

My sister doesn't teach any more. She organizes international student exchange at the university in Richmond; they have students from all over the world. She speaks English as if she was born there, and also knows Russian and Polish. Three years ago she went with a group of students and teachers to Kiev [the capital of the Ukraine] and Lwow. I flew into Lwow to join her and from there we went to Tysmienica. I have only bad memories from that trip. Somehow it proved beyond my emotional capacities. I completely spaced out. And we didn't organize this trip very well. We needn't have been accompanied by the two men, particularly one who was very old and very sick. They were Jews who had lived there all their lives. They survived the war and came back to their old haunts. We spent one day there. Of the places most dear to me none survived. Where my parents' house was, now there's community housing in total disrepair. My grandmother's house is also gone; after the war it housed the police station. I didn't get to the Jewish cemetery, I didn't know whether it exists. A woman whom we talked to, kept repeating, 'Don't go there, don't...' It is probably grown over with weeds or turned into an animal pasture. No trace is left of the synagogue or the Armenian church or the Polish church - there is only one wall left, probably from the bell tower. Only the Orthodox church survived right next to the town square and the school did, but we couldn't go in, because it was closed for the holidays. And it turned out that the town square is tiny, when everything seemed so big before the war. The whole frontage looks terrible. Everything was dirty, run down, stinking in the hot air. A total nightmare. I wouldn't go there again, even if I had more time to prepare myself. I used to plan to go to Tashkent, but then the great earthquake came [in 1966] and I was told that Tashkent is a completely different place now. So there is no point in going there for sentimental reasons, for there is nothing left.

I never went to Israel. My husband did go, on a scholarship, to the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot [around 20 km from Tel Aviv]. Later my sister went to Israel from the States, several times, because my brother-in-law's parents were still there. I never carried banners or wrote on my forehead who I am. Only whenever there was the occasion for it, I openly said who I was, without leaving any ambiguity. And that must have taken away other's courage or gained me some kind of respect. When there was a larger group that would start on Jewish subjects or Jewish jokes which I didn't like, I would say, 'Excuse me, I don't want to spoil the fun or interrupt the conversation. I am Jewish and I will leave not to disturb you. Please continue.' That would cause consternation. It was always amusing to observe how people were backing out. 'Oh, but I am full of admiration for the Jews. What a country have they built for themselves!' To me, Polish anti-Semitism doesn't amount to slogans written of the walls and fences. The Jew has suddenly become the popular subject. But what does the figure of the Jew in the souvenir shop hold in his hand? A coin, or a little sack, or there are coins on a table in front of him and he's counting them. I've never seen a Jew bent over the microscope. This is not done by a punk who goes around writing things on walls, this is done by those who deem themselves artists.

I won't allow two things to be said in front of me. I won't allow the diminutive 'Zydek' [a derogatory term for Jew in Polish] and I won't allow the word 'komuch' [a derogatory term for communist] out of respect for my father, who believed in communism. I remember that, after the war, some of those who spent time with my father in Bereza, wrote memoirs. It was expected of him to write one, too. He said to me then, 'You know, Son, I don't feel like going back to that. Let them only note the name and dates in the index...' In 1964, he went to a meeting at the 30th anniversary of the establishment of that camp. It was organized by the Historical Department of the Party's Central Committee.

My contacts with the Jewish community are very selective. I go to the Singer days and Jewish Book days [cultural events in Warsaw organized by the Jewish community since 1990's]. This year a wonderful panel was organized, called Assimilated Jewish Families. Since 1968 or 1969, when Ida Kaminska 32 left with the core of the theater group, I have not gone to a single performance at the Jewish theater, though I used to go before. I don't like ersatz.

I understand practically everything in Yiddish. But when I want to answer, my English pushes out my Yiddish. I must have put so much intellectual effort into absorbing English, that it has become dominant. I feel very bad for having stopped speaking Yiddish. I think that if I found myself in a community speaking that language, I would get it back without a problem. Now I'm painstakingly making up for those years when I had no time to read fiction, as the day was only 24 hours long. I used to joke that I'm educated on Ekspres Wieczorny [a popular evening daily, published in Warsaw in 1946-1990]; only the titles, for the smaller print puts me to sleep. When I recently read Wogrodzie pamieci [a book by Joanna Olczak-Roniker, 2001, Znak Publishing House, a saga of four generations of a Jewish family], I was somewhat envious. Those better educated families have had some papers left, some documents, something. And with me, what there was is all gone now. I used to come back to all that in my thoughts very often, but I pushed it away from me. When I read My z Jedwabnego [by Anna Bikont, 2004, Proszynski i Spolka Publishing House: the reconstruction of the Jedwabne pogrom from 1941], I thought, 'My God, why does all of that have to disappear? And I didn't even try to commemorate anything, to recollect it...' That's why I wanted to write up these, somewhat hazy, family memories.

Glossary:

Vladimir Rabinovich
Riga
Latvia
Interviewer: Svetlana Kovalchuk
Date of interview: March 2002

In 1976, my father, Isaak Moiseevich Rabinovich, made a sketch of his paternal family tree. His family took root in Kraslava [(265 km from Riga]), in east Latvia. The family settled there at the end of the 18th century or the beginning of the 19th century, when Zalman Rabinovich was invited to become the local rabbi. According to some family legends, he had been living in Odessa [(today in Ukraine)] before that.

By the middle of the 19th century, two sons of Zalman Rabinovich lived in Kraslava - Abram-Tuvia [(Tobias]) and Samuil. That was the time of the progressive Jewish movement known as Haskalah. Both sons were extremely devoted to education, knowledge and the study of secular sciences. They no longer adhered to traditional Jewish religion. However, they observed all community norms and rules to a certain extent. Samuil was the more- educated of the brothers. He vigorously studied the Russian language, civil rules and legal standards, especially property issues. There is no information confirming that he studied in any special educational institutions. He seems to have passed examinations and become a private attorney, and in at the end of the 1870s or the beginning of the 1880s, he became a representative of a private financial establishment in Kraslava called the Russian Insurance Company. He represented that company on all kinds of insurance activityissues. He was extremely proud of his position. And for his honest, zealous service in that company, he was awarded honorary diplomas and service badges. One badge marked his 20th anniversary in service, and another, the 25th. The badges say he began working for the company in 1887.

All these family relics were kept by my father's cousin in Leningrad, who was very devoted to family traditions. In our uneasy century, she managed to keep them, and gave them to me.

Kraslava was Count Plater's family estate. The Platers attracted Jews to the area, both for trade and for crafts. They treated Jews very well and were very liberal. It seems that Zalman Rabinovich received the invitation to come to Kraslava from the Platers. Samuil was on rather good terms with Count Plater in his insurance and legal business and used to carry out various assignments for him. Count Plater gave Samuil a signet ring, which I have now, for his service in the Russian Insurance Company.

Samuil and Tobias were successful, and the local Jewish community wanted large payments from them to help support the community. There were a lot of needy people in Kraslava who wanted their financial support. But the brothers considered it burdensome. With the help of friends, their family left the Kraslava Jewish religious community and formed their own religious community, as was typical and widespread in those times. It was a small community, which entered Kraslava history under this very name. Within the family, they were focused on knowledge, education - all progressive and advanced tendencies in the European and Russian science.

Samuil Rabinovich is my great-grandfather on my mother's side. The marriage of my grandfather and my grandmother was a marriage between family members. Both brothers - Tobias and Samuil - are my great-grandfathers. Tobias's son, my grandfather, Moisei Rabinovich, married his cousin Masha Rabinovich, Samuil's daughter. Tobias, as far as I know, had various trade enterprises in Kraslava. Owing to the family's immersion in Russian culture, Russian was the language of everyday communication, although, of course, Yiddish was known, and was kept up by the wives.

Tobias married Blyuma Berkovich from Shlok [(today Sloka in Jurmala, 35 km west of Riga]). A traditional Jewish community settled in Shlok after all sorts of restrictions had been placed on Jews in Riga 1. Blyuma was famous in the family chronicle as a vigorous and striking woman. Some stories of a comic nature survived to this day. Once, shopping at the Kraslava market place, Blyuma noticed someone selling a high-quality sour cream at a very reasonable price. She didn't have suitable vessels with her. But she wanted to buy that sour cream, and potters were selling some vessels that resembled chamber-pots. She bought some of those pots, rinsed them right there, and bought the sour cream. When she brought the cream home, her family bluntly refused to eat from those pots.

Is this the same as Yurmala or a different place? Just thought I'd rather ask because you brought up the spelling of Latvian places the other day.

Tobias and Blyuma had five children, four sons and a daughter. One son was my grandfather Moisei, who became mayor of Kraslava. Before the tragic events of 1941, his sister Shterna, to whom he was very close, also lived in Kraslava. Solomon, the eldest of the sons, was a dentist and had a successful practice in Riga. In the 1920s, he was elected chairman of Riga's Jewish Dental Surgery Society. I read his obituary. He was rather well known in Riga because of his medical and public activity. One son, Isaak, had died early. In At the beginning of the century, when inflammation was a serious disease and surgical intervention was considered risky, he died of appendicitis in St. Petersburg. I have no information about Tobias's son Meyer.

Samuil also had four daughters and two sons. Samuil was married to a girl from the Grodzensky family named Zelda, from a Lithuanian borough called Kalvaria. She was from a rather intellectual environment. Samuil's daughters were particularly intelligent. All of them married and gave birth to outstanding children. Masha married her cousin, Tobias's son, Moisei. They are my grandparents.

Her sister Shifra, common name Serafima 2, married Moisei Botvinnik, who was not from Kraslava, but from the same region [(Latgale in eastern Latvia]). They had two sons. One of them, Mikhail, became the chess champion of the world. They lived in Petrograd most of the time, and it is there that the chess genius of Michael Botvinnik developed. In the 1920s and 1930s, Grandfather was closest to his relatives who had settled in Petrograd even before the World War I. The correspondence between Grandmother Masha and Serafima was regular. Mikhail Botvinnik was then studying to become an electrical engineer. Among his teachers was a professor of geometry, from a family of Armenian descent, who had a rather attractive daughter, Ganna [(Gayane Davidovna]), a student at the Vaganov ballet school. Mikhail fell in love with her.

The repressions of the 1930s 3 did n'ot touch my Leningrad relatives. The daughter of the great chess player, Olga, lives in Moscow now. She was born in the summer of 1941. They managed to leave Leningrad on what was literally the last train before the blockade 4 started. She graduated from the Moscow Power Institute, specializing in computer science and computer devices. She married a good Russian man named Fioshkin, an engineer, and they have two children, Yura and Lena. And these children also have children. I used to visit them, and they came to Riga several times. Now our contacts are less frequent. I know Olga very well, but I don't have direct contacts with her children any more.

I added the entries for Great Terror and Blockade of Leningrad here.

Another one of Samuil's daughters, Bella, married Solomon Konnikov. Their daughter Ida became the main archivist of our family and, thanks to her, plenty of relics survived: photos, family silver, Samuil's memorabilia. Sofia, another of Samuil's daughters, was the grandmother of one of our prominent public figures - Alexander Bergman, the lawyer. Samuil's son Alexander married a girl from the Adelberg family, which owned a large bookshop in Dvinsk [(today Daugavpils, 230 km south east of Riga]). Their daughter, Lia Alexandrovna, married a man named Gromov and left for the United States. We write to each other constantly. She has two sons - Vladimir and Mikhail. Mikhail Gromov, the son of Lia Alexandrovna, is a mathematician, a member of the French Academy, and lives in Paris.

My grandfather on my father's side was Moisei Rabinovich, Tobias's son. He was born in 1883. He received a double name Moisei-Abram Rabinovich. But he is known as Moisei. Father's parents, Moisei and Masha, got married under a chuppah, I think. They lived in Kraslava. Father, the first son, was born in 1911. He was named in honor of grandfather's brother. In 1923, their second son Samuil-Alexander was born. At that time, educated people didn't want to emphasize their Jewish roots, so he was named Alexander.

Moisei was known for his commitment to education and patriotism and love for his native city. In their house they had a large collection of Russian educational literature, in particular the Pavlenkov Library, all sorts of enlightening editions, which Moisei digested and studied in the most steadfast way. He tried to obtain knowledge in both natural sciences and humanities. Because of his desire to help his compatriots, he chose the pharmaceutical business as his profession. It was a popular field of business for many natives of the Lithuanian and Vitebsk territories, to which Kraslava belonged at the time. The position of pharmacist required a higher education, a diploma of a medical faculty. It was possible to become an assistant pharmacist if you prepared for examinations independently. This is what Moisei Rabinovich did. I suppose he passed the exam in the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg.

Thanks to Count Plater, a power station was built in Kraslava in the 1910s to illuminate the streets. Moisei Rabinovich was one of the managers of that municipal power station. He possessed enough knowledge of natural sciences and sufficient experience to manage it.

During the World War I, when population was evacuated to central Russia, Grandfather Samuil moved to his family, in Petrograd [Leningrad in Ssoviet times, now and earlier St. Petersburg], together with the family relics. In 1917-1918, they again moved to Kraslava. At that time, industrial equipment had been transported deep into Russian territory, lest it be seized by the Germans. Moisei followed the power station to Oryol region of Russia. You see, Kraslava stood on the route of the famous Riga-Oryol railway, which was an important economic line.

In 1990, I started to study the files of the Kraslava city administration in the Latvian historical archive. That is how I learned what happened to Grandfather Moisei, from approximately 1920. My father's family returned from Oryol to Kraslava in May or June 1921. They immediately found that the city was dominated by members of the Polish community, who were partly supported by Count Plater. Although the Plater family acknowledged its Polish origins, the family believed they wereas rather indirect. In 1921, it appeared that Moisei Rabinovich was the most authoritative representative, by any historical standards, of the Jewish community in Kraslava, a powerful and important public figure in the eyes of the numerous national groups. So he was put forward for municipal activity from the moment he returned to Kraslava, when local self-management was being restored. Kraslava didn't have the status of a city, but the uncertain status of a borough.

Moisei was elected a member of municipal administration and started to handle all the complex issues of municipal economy. From the summer of 1921 until the autumn fall of 1932, he was a member of Kraslava's municipal administration. He first was vice-mayor; later, he was the mayor. For eleven years, his life was wholly and completely connected with municipal self-management. The year 1932, if I can say so, was an anticipation of the state coup of 1934 53, which took place in Kraslava. In autumn fall of 1932, the elected city council decided that Moisei did n'ot have the proper influence with the central authorities in Riga, and thus generous financing didn't materialize, and it was necessary to select another head of the city. So he was discharged.

Until the Soviet times 64, Moisei led a private life. He returned to the pharmaceutical business in the Soviet times. He was appointed the manager of a drugstore in thea small town of Ezernieki, near Kraslava, where he met his death. Moisei, Masha and their son Samuil Alexander were killed in 1941 75.

What were the brightest moments in the activity of Moisei Rabinovich in his public post? Immediately after assuming office in 1921, he was designated, as a man known for his honesty and skill in financial affairs, a supervisor of all municipal finance. Moisei put forward the initiative for Kraslava to obtain the status of a city. And he had submitted that initiative to the authorities in the first days of 1922. He wrote a report for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, with his proposal that Kraslava get the status of a city. That hand-written report is in the state archive. His initiative was supported by the then prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, Zigfrid Meyerovits, who gave the green light to the initiative. One of the first decrees of President Janis Chakste [(first President of independent Latvia]) 86 in 1923 was to confirm Kraslava's status as a city. Grandfather is said to have put forward the idea of the creation of the Kraslava city emblem - a boat with five oars, symbolizing the five main ethnic groups of Kraslava: Jews, Poles, Russians, Latvians and Belarusians. Moisei was a proponent of electrification and put his greatest efforts toward two things - the Kraslava power station and the work of public schools under the supervision of municipal government. He entered into discussion of problems of the Jewish school, when Janis Rainis, the famous Latvian poet, became the minister of education of Latvia. The two men had certain differences of opinion, but they also reached agreements.

My grandfather was an educated man; therefore he didn't find it appropriate to go to the synagogue or observe the fast. He had moved rather far from the traditional Jewish religious principles. I have no such information, but, maybe, his wife adhered to some Jewish traditions. They were honest people and therefore lived with difficulties and sometimes even poorly. And that poor life prevented them from strict following of Jewish traditions.

My father, Isaak Moiseevich Rabinovich, finished the Kraslava grammar school in 1927. He was under a very strong psychological influence of his father, but they had certain problems in their relationships. In 1927, Father entered the Mechanics faculty of the Latvian University in Riga. And under the influence of his father, he chose the profession of practical engineering. But he graduated not from the Mechanics one, but from the Physics and Mathematics faculty and as late as 1945!

My father took part in public activities, like Grandfather. From the beginning of the 1930s he worked in the Bund 9 in Riga. He did n'ot join leftist radicals or the underground Komsomol [107] groups, but was oriented toward the social-democratic movement, Bund. He was an active member of the Bund students' social-democratic union 'Zukunft.'. He was an active worker for hospital mutual aid funds, was a bookkeeper and auditor. Father was the coordinator of a successful strike of retail trade workers in 1933, which is known as the 'Yakhnin conflict.'. That strike succeeded because of the workers' solidarity. They forced the shop owners to increase workers' wages. Father was punished for his activity.

I put the entry we have for Bund here.

During the revolution in Latvia in May 1934, he was among the people who were subjected to security arrest. Along with many social-democratic workers, he was jailed in the Central Prison for about three months. He was released on condition that he sign a statement obliging him to quit public activity. My father signed. When his imprisonment ended, he put aside his student's exemption and served his term in the Latvian army. His studies at the university advanced very slowly. AtIn the end of 1937, he left the army and became a private teacher of Mathematics. The demand for private tutors was probably connected to the decisions of the Karlis Ulmanis [118] government, which required that students pass examinations in the Latvian language to obtain a secondary school certificate. Father knew Russian and Latvian. He became a highly demanded teacher of Mathematics. He earned good money from 1937 through 1939 by preparing students for examinations in the Latvian language. Father told me that in that period they met in a narrow circle to study Marxist literature and, in particular, the works of Plekhanov [129].

I changed the two entries that were here originally to the ones from our current list.

When he studied at the Ffaculty of Physics and Mathematics at the university, he made many friends. He became acquainted with Vladimir Feigman, the son of the auditor of the Ministry of Finance. The man was from a Russian-Lithuanian-Latvian family. My mother, Dora [(Dvoira)] Alperovich, and my father met because they were in Feigman's circle. It is a romantic story! Vladimir Feigman took a great interest in photography, and his friends helped him develop snapshots. My mother and father became acquainted in a dark room, printing photos, in the autumn fall of 1939. Mother had been on a short trip to Paris to visit some friends. The trip was suddenly interrupted by the beginning of World War II. It was only with the help of the Latvian Consulate in Paris that she managed to escape from France in the autumn fall of 1939. It was a happy turn of events, good luck for her.

Mother was born in 1912 in a small Belarusian town, Postavy. She studied Economics by herself. When she was older, she used to reproach herself saying that she didn't have the persistence to acquire a diploma. By character, she was more of a family woman, a housewife.

My parents got married rather quickly - on the eve of the New Year of 1940. Their marriage was officially registered by the Latvian state. Mother sometimes recalled that her family, especially my grandfather Ber Alperovich, was quite religious. In his youth, he received an advanced Jewish religious education, and he zealously adhered to traditions. To please her parents, Father agreed to undergo some kind of a procedure that corresponds to the Jewish religious marriage. He was skeptical of any and all religious traditions, including Jewish ones. But after the events of summer 1940 [130], his professional business underwent changes, and Father became more or less tolerant of all that. He was about to graduate, was in his last year in the university, and simultaneously he got a job teaching the preparatory courses at the university.

I know nothing about my grandfather and grandmother on Mother's side. Mother's family language was Yiddish. There were three sisters and three brothers. It was a famous family here in Riga. Ber Alperovich, Mother's father, was known by his Russian name - Boris Alperovich. Grandmother Tsipe Alperovich [nee Tager] was from Jakobstadt [(today called Jekabpils, 143 km east of Riga]). The family legend says that when Grandfather Ber was traveling as a salesman in the region of Kurlandia [( today Kurzeme, western Latvia)], Kovensky province, he once came to Jakobstadt and saw a very healthy, plump girl with bright pink cheeks. He thought, 'This girl is exactly what I want for my wife.' And she became his wife. In the 1920s, and especially in the 1930s, Grandmother suffered from diabetes and was sent once a year for a one-month treatment in Bikur Holim [141] in Riga.

Their family was very large. During World War II Grandmother was evacuated with all her family and died in Uni Kirov (today Vyatka in Russia), Kirov region, where I was born. She died one month after my birth. My grandfather returned from evacuation and is buried at the Jewish cemetery in Smerli, Riga.

I changed this according to the info given in the tree.

The whole Alperovich family had its roots in thea Polish-Belarusian town of Postavy. The older brother, Ovsei Alperovich, settled in Riga atin the beginning of the 20th century. In the early 1920s, during an economic upsurge, three Alperovich brothers had settled in Riga - Ovsei, Ber and Natan. They decided to organize a joint venture - a small wholesale company to supply flour and other necessities to bakeries. Small private bakeries were a rather widespread phenomenon in all of Latvia. And that firm was called Obonat, the abbreviation from the names of the three brothers - Ovsei, Boris, Natan.

Most members of Ovsei and Natan's family became victims of Fascism. Natan's entire family perished. Ovsei's daughter, Tatiana Ovseievna Mikelson, managed to evacuate. Mother was especially close with that family. Tatiana was ten years older thaen Mother. A native of Riga, she guided Mother through Riga's life, Riga's customs.

Mother's name was Dvoira, but under the German-Russian influence, she was registered as Dora in the official documents. Mother was the eldest sister of her family. She received a secondary education in a grammar school in Riga where the language of instruction was Yiddish. The director of that school was Isaak Bers, a rather active figure of the social-democratic movement, loyal to the Latvian republic. Such liberal spirit was characteristic of that grammar school, where the representatives of democratic Jewish circles of Riga studied. The school was in Gertrudes Street. Mother and her sister Lia had numerous acquaintances from that school. Mother finished grammar school in at the beginning of the 1930s. Mother worked in Obonat as a shop assistant and kept business documents. In that practical way, she became a qualified bookkeeper.

Lia graduated from the Latvian conservatory at the time of the first Latvian republic, in the 1930s. Her first husband's family name was Vulfson; her second spouse's name was Churilin. From the first marriage, she had a daughter named Kira; from the second, a daughter daughter named Alla. In the Soviet period, Lia was a very good concertmaster, but she lost her hearing and retired early. She now lives in Israel. The third sister was Reisen [(common name Rose]). She died in Israel. Naum, Mother's older brother, died in the war in 1943.

This sister isn't mentioned in the tree, I added her there.

Her second brother, Vulf Alperovich [(1904-1976]), studied at the Latvian University, then the Faculty of Law, from which he graduated in 1935. Vulf Alperovich got married in 1949 to his close friend from pre-war times, Eida Isaevna [(nee Berkovich]). She has her own story. She was married to Iosif Peretsman, one of our Riga acquaintances, a famous Jewish Komsomol leader, who in at the beginning of the 1930s set off to build the city of Birobidzhan [1512] with a group of Jewish Komsomol members. He was the editor of a Komsomol newspaper there, but in 1937, at the time of the Stalinist persecutions, 13 he was arrested and perished. His wife seized their son and fled from Birobidzhan, through all of Siberia, and reached her brother in Leningrad. In 1945, when her former husband disappeared, she turned up in Riga and met Vulf Borisovich. She was a really beautiful and elegant woman. They got married.

I took out the glossary entry for Great Terror here because I already put it earlier in the story.

Mother's younger brother, Grisha, or Grigory [(Jewish name Girsh]), received an education in textiles industries engineering. He went especially for that purpose to Brno, Slovakia, and with that specialization he got a very good position in Riga. Oriented toward a secular environment, Grisha wanted the family to live in a prestigious apartment. His sisters were grown girls by that time, and he was convinced that a prestigious apartment would attract the young people and facilitate the girls' chances for successful marriages. He filed lots of requests with the manager of one fashionable house at 40 Brivibas Street, convincing him to lease a rather large and convenient apartment to the family. Around 1935, the family moved to that apartment, which had five rooms and a room for maids, near the kitchen. They had a maid the whole time Mother's family lived atin 40 Brivibas Street. Both Vulf and Grigory Borisovich were still single then.

Then the war began. Our family was lucky to evacuate to Russia on 27th June 1941, to the city of Kirov, where a lot of trains with refugees from Latvia were going. Mother was pregnant with me then. We were assigned to the village of Uni, far from the railway line. I was born there in November 1941. Father was given a position of Mathematics teacher in the local school. In August, Latvian military regiments were being formed [164]. All men were sent to those Gorohovetski camps, where Latvian rifle battalions were formed. Father was in artillery, was given thea rank of senior sergeant and assigned the tasks of a military topographer. He participated in all the battles in which the Latvian division took part, including the famous Narofominsk fights. In the spring of 1942 he found himself in Staraya Russa, where conditions were very harsh and the soldiers didn't have enough food.

On one mission, Father was wounded and sent to hospital, in the town of Ostashkovo on Lake Seliger. Once, while he was recovering and reading a book on Physics, Kolbanovsky, a front-line doctor, approached Father and asked if he could maintain X-ray and other equipment. There were very few experts capable of maintaining that sort of equipment. Father immediately agreed. It was not difficult to transfer him from the ranks of the Latvian rifle division to the appropriate military-medical unit, where he quickly became an expert technician. Around the autumn fallof 1942, Father obtained the rank of lieutenant-engineer. His further service was connected with military-medical units. He was dismissed from service in the rank of senior lieutenant.

My father was with the Steppe Front in 1943, and later with the Second Ukrainian Front. When Father was at the Second Ukrainian Front, he was appointed assistant to the chief surgeon of that front, a Soviet medical doctor named Elansky. He went with this unit through Moldova and Hungary. In May 1945, he was somewhere in the Protectorate of Bohemia. During the entire period of his military service, Father did n'ot get a leave. Right after his demobilization in August 1945, Father passed his graduation exams at the Latvian University, which had been interrupted in June 1941.

In the post-war years, my father was completely absorbed in official pedagogical work. He was a professor of Mathematics, worked in the higher education system by correspondence and in evening courses. We had a huge scientific library at home. Father taught Mathematics, but later he became a scientific researcher at the Astrophysics laboratory of the Academy of Sciences. Father was an outstanding popularizer of Mathematics and Astronomy for wide circles of population. He is the author of a great number of publications - 186 written works. Detailed information about his scientific career was published in the book 'From the History of Natural Sciences and Engineering in the Baltic States'.

In Uni, while we were in evacuation, Grandfather worked as a weigher. But the main means by which we subsisted was my father's officer's certificate. The men who served in the acting army got certain allowances for their families.

How happy we were to hear the news of the liberation of Riga on radio when we were in Uni! And after that message, the whole family started to anticipate going back to Riga. Vulf, who was an administrator of industry in the government of the Latvian Soviet republic, was released from the army. He was ordered to return to the liberated Riga along with other industrial managers. He arrived in Riga in October 1944. We returned to Riga in January 1945.

Vulf set off to 40 Brivibas Street, from which the whole family left for evacuation in June 1941. As soon as he stepped in the courtyard, he was met by the caretaker of the house, carrying the keys of the apartment. Everything indicated that an important official of the German administration had been staying in the apartment, probably the chief of the German security service. The apartment was very well equipped, with a lot of beautiful furniture - not the furniture our family left. There were solid stoves and tile furnaces that had n'ot been there before. An ordinary family could have hardly afforded such substantial heating. There were many magnificent, multivolume publications in the apartment: encyclopedias, books on art, atlases. All publications were of a German nationalistic character, but you couldn't say that those books were Nazi propaganda. There also were numerous sets of Fascist newsreels in the apartment. The children who returned to the apartment started to play with those bobbins of films. However, the men realized that these chronicles could be of interest to the Peoples' Commissariat of Internal Affairs. All these films were given to the appropriate authorities without much fuss. Some of that literature was burned in furnaces.

My father had strict Soviet-type views on labor and family life: Everyone in the family should work, and a child should receive a public Soviet education. Right after returning to Riga, Mother mobilized all her knowledge of accounting. With the assistance of Vulf, who was a lawyer with the Ministry of Light Industry, Mother got a job in that ministry. When I was nine, I was ill with a lung disease. To nurse me through that illness, Mother left work, and for a year or a year and a half, she was occupied only with the household. When my health recovered, she was close to pension age and started to work as a bookkeeper. We had no nannies. I used to go to Pioneer camps [175]. We had a summer cottage in the period when I was sick, when I needed to get rid of that lung disease. Now I feel nostalgic each time when I think of those beautiful places in Jurmala, not far from Riga.

See my question regarding spelling before

I was an only child. I had comfortable conditions at home. Father sharply criticized me quite often for my various mistakes and lack of self-control, but Mother was softer. In general, there was a favorable family atmosphere that enhanced my success. I finished a standard Soviet school - a Riga secondary school. I entered the mathematical branch of the faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Latvian University. After graduation, I started to work as a programmer in the computer center of the Latvian University, and I quickly was assigned to this center [186]. I served in the army for one year, in the Leningrad military district. After the army [197], I continued to work in the university's computer center. Then I was transferred to the computer center at the State Committee on Supplies. It coincided with my idea of getting married. I began to get a higher salary and, with that salary, I could present myself in a more favorable light as a groom. But I was not satisfied with my marriage.

I was dismissed from my job in 1980, but not because of my nationality. I didn't feel any open pressure because I was a Jew [2018]. All that was hidden, latent. After I was dismissed, I didn't work. I was n'ot looking for any job. I was a moderate dissident. My non-conformity manifested itself in responding to newspaper publications, writing political articles to some newspapers. I had an especially active correspondence in 1982 with the Moscow newspaper 'The Soviet Culture.'. With my public activity from the beginning of 1980, I was very close to the public opinion that resulted in the so-called perestroika [2119] reforms in the late 1980s.

I am a rank and file member of the Latvian Association of the Jewish Culture [220] and I regularly pay the fees. I was n'ot among the founders of the association. I joined the organization in 1990, and all my work is now connected with this society.

In the Soviet times Mother used to call the office of the Riga religious community and ask when Pesach and Rosh Hashanah would fall, according to the official religious calendar. And we had some traditional Jewish meals on these days. But she didn't go to the synagogue. She died in 1985. Mother and Father are buried at the Jewish cemetery in Riga.

Since I grew up under the strong influence of my Father, I do not go to the synagogue, I am completely secular. I remember my grandfather Ber a little bit. He regularly visited the synagogue together with his friends - the believing Jews. He stayed in the same track all his life and didn't swerve from it. None of his children really inherited his religious zeal. Out of respect for their parents, they observed certain traditions, but no more than that. Mother's brother Grigory, who was inclined to humor and comic behavior, sometimes pretended that he adhered to traditions. In the 1960s and 1970s, he used to go to the synagogue, but his sisters made fun of him.

A funny but not very pleasant political story happened to Vulf Borisovich when de-Stalinization began [231]. In 1940, he joined the Communist Party and, in general, he was a very pro-Soviet man. Mother always remembered his exclamation: 'What a remarkable country we live in!' His pro-Soviet views ripened as early as the 1930s in Riga, with the so-called 'Acadsoyuz' - a Jewish Communist students union. It was founded in 1930-34, and was a more or less underground organization before the Ulmanis revolution on 15th May 1934. In 1957, Vulf and his friends decided that all Stalinist restrictions passed into history. They resolved to invite their pre-war 'Acadsoyuz' friend from the 1930s, who was then living in Paris, to reminisce about their Komsomol youth. But it turned out that the KGB [242] was permanently spying on their friend, who had just arrived. In 1958, the whole company was charged with a severe accusation - failing to inform the appropriate Party bodies of their plan to meet a Western representative. That meeting took place at Vulf's apartment. Mother was at that meeting but, as she was n'ot a member of the Party, she was n'ot accused. Vulf was expelled from the Party and dismissed from the Bar of Lawyers. In the 1960s, he filed petitions with several congresses of the Communist Party, asking them to restore him, but all the petitions were rejected. Otherwise, his reputation was irreproachable. He had good relations with the executives of the ministerial administrations, and he became a lawyer with some industrial enterprise.

This whole story affected his daughter Ira in such a way that she grew up with a completely different orientation - not a dissident, but definitely a bourgeois. In 1979, she left for America. She is an entirely material woman. She decided that, being a good engineer, she would go to America and earn a lot of money. She has a son, Michael. Seeing that Michael could n'ot arrange his personal life, they went to China and found a Chinese girl to be his wife. This is what I call the American way! The meeting of civilizations!

Glossary

Ludmila Rutarova 
Prague 
Czech Republic 
Interviewer: Dagmar Greslova 
Date of interview: February 2007

Ludmila Rutarova is from a secularized Jewish family from Prague. She spent a significant part of her childhood at her aunt's in Nadejkov, near Tabor, where she received a Catholic upbringing. Ludmila's parents owned and operated a general store in Na Morani Street. Ludmila Rutarova attended Sokol 1 from childhood, and likes to recall the spirit and atmosphere of Sokol gatherings; she also exercised as a teenager at the last prewar All- Sokol Slet [Rally] in Prague in 1938. During the time of the Protectorate of Böhmen and Mähren 2 she had to leave Sokol due to being a Jew - she received satisfaction after November 1989, when she was invited into 'The Sokol Vysehrad Old Guard,' in whose activities she likes to participate. During the Protectorate of Böhmen and Mähren she was fired from work, and was forced to perform menial work. She tried to escape from Hitler with her boyfriend to Canada, for which reason she had herself with great complications secretly baptized in 1939; however even despite this, escape to Canada did not succeed in the end. The anti-Jewish laws 3 affected the entire family in a fundamental fashion, when they were first ordered to wear a six-pointed star 4, their property was gradually confiscated, they were denied access to public places, to parks, cinemas and theaters, and the family was forced to liquidate its general store. Deportation of Ludmila's brother to Terezin 5 in November 1941 followed, where and other men from AK1 and AK2 prepared the ghetto for residence. The rest of the Weiner family was transported to Terezin in March 1942. Ludmila worked in the so-called 'Landwirtschaft' [agriculture], and in her spare time participated in cultural life - she played in many operas under the leadership of Rafael Schächter [Schächter, Rafael (1905-1944): conductor, choirmaster]. Ludmila Rutarova's relation of this time is very detailed and alive, enabling the reader to peer closely into everyday life in the Terezin ghetto. From there, Ludmila and her brother followed their parents into Auschwitz-Brezinka in 1944, and were put in the so-called family camp 6. In Auschwitz she worked in the children's block, filling the children's time with playing, singing and drawing. After a two-month stay in Auschwitz, she and her mother were selected in July 1944 to be among a thousand women picked for slave work in Hamburg. Towards the end of the war, these women prisoners were transported from Hamburg to the Bergen- Belsen 7 concentration camp. After the liberation of Bergen-Belsen in April 1945, Ludmila fell ill with a serious typhus infection. In July 1945 she and her mother returned to Prague, where they met up with her brother Josef, who survived the war. Ludmila's father, like the rest of the extended family, was murdered in Auschwitz. After the war Ludmila married Karel Rutar, with whom she had the common experience of wartime events. Karel had been in Terezin and Wulkov. She soon became a widow, and raised two children. Speaking with Ludmila Rutarova was very interesting - even more than sixty years after the events of World War II, she is able to tell her story in a very lifelike and detailed fashion.

Family background

My grandfather on my father's side, Simon Weiner, son of Moses and Ludmila Weiner, died before I was born, so I don't remember him. Grandma Frantiska Weiner, daughter of Simon and Terezie Lederer, died even earlier than Grandpa Simon. After Grandma died, Grandpa married her sister. My grandfather's second wife lived in Prague on Stepanska Street; I remember that when it was her birthday, I used to always go to recite poems to her, and she'd also occasionally give me a five-crown piece. [In 1929, it was decreed by law that the Czechoslovak crown (Kc) was equal in value to 44.58 mg of gold.]

My father [Alfred Weiner] was born from Grandpa's first marriage, from which he had siblings Hedvika, Viktor, Zofie and Marie. Born from Grandpa's second marriage were Ida [had a son, Josef], Erna, Berta [had a son Karel and a daughter Anna], Anna and Emil. Uncle Viktor Weiner lived in Pacov with his wife Marie and his daughters Elsa and Hana. As a child, I liked going to his place during vacation, and used to play with Hanicka [Hana], whom I liked very much. Uncle Viktor had a leather goods factory; they used to make purses and suitcases. The factory burned down, and my uncle had to take out a large mortgage. We later lived with my aunt and cousins in Terezin during the war, where my uncle died. Everyone in the family perished in Auschwitz during the war, as they were included in the first so-called family transport.

I barely remember my grandparents on my mother's side; Grandpa Jachym Winternitz died when I was only a year old. The Winternitz family's ancestors were originally Czech brethren. [The Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren: was created in 1918 by the merger of the Augsburg Evangelical Church and the Helvetia denomination. Its roots, however, lay deep in the Czech Reformation beginning in 1781.] But our ancestor didn't want to emigrate, and if he wanted to stay, he had to change his name to a German one - as his name was Zimanic [a combination of the Czech words winter - zima - and nothing - nic]. This was because as a glazier he had no work in the winter. He changed his name to the German Winternitz, and converted to Judaism.

I faintly remember Grandma Aloisie Winternitzova, née Vocaskova, who was quite ill; she had a bad case of dementia. All I remember is my mother bringing me to Černovice as a little girl to show me to her, but at that time Grandma was already badly off, and was no longer communicating.

My mother, Helena Weinerova, née Winternitzova, was born in 1896 in Cernovice, by Tabor. My mother's siblings were Leopold, Karel, Ema, Ota, Marta, Gustav and Ruzena. In 1912 my mother's sisters Ema and Marta were going to America. They were in England, waiting for a ship, and in order to pass the time they went dancing. They were young, wanted to have fun, the dancing kept going, and so they missed the ship. They had no idea how lucky that was, because their ship was the Titanic. That's fate. When their parents found out that the Titanic had sunk, they were desperate, but Ema and Marta wrote home that they'd missed the ship, and so had taken a different one. In the end they both remained in America.

My father always liked to talk about how my parents met. In Cernovice my mother knew someone named Emil, they'd been going out together for several years, and it was already clear that they'd be getting married. When Emil came to ask Grandpa for my mother's hand, he was interested in what sort of dowry my mother would get. When my grandfather listed everything she would get, Emil asked whether she would also get a cow for her dowry. To this my grandfather answered that she wouldn't get a cow. My mother was listening behind the door, and when she heard this, she said: 'You wanted a cow? So marry a cow!' and left for Prague. In Prague she met my father, and married him out of spite.

Growing up

I was born in 1920 in Prague. I had a brother, Josef, two years younger. I was a very skinny kid, and my parents used to take me to see some Dr. Vit in Smichov. The doctor didn't want to let me go to school, that I was too skinny and weak. But my mother was afraid that if I didn't go to school I'll fall behind, and so my parents decided to send me to Aunt Zofie née Weinerova's and Uncle Josef Weiger's in Nadejkov, near Tabor, to improve my health. Auntie Zofie was an awfully kind woman, and I loved her very much. My childhood in Nadejkov was a very beautiful time, Auntie had a farm, and it was really swell there.

I lived at my aunt's for one year before I went to school, and then I attended elementary school in Nadejkov for another two years. I was the only Jew in the entire school, so when we had Catholic religion class, I could choose whether to go or not. But my aunt didn't know where I could go during that time, so she asked Father Vesely if I could attend Catholic religion class together with the other children. The priest didn't object, so for two years I attended Catholic religion class. I was always a model student, and so thanks to Father Vesely, I know all the prayers perfectly. Our Father, Hail Mary! After three years of life in Nadejkov, I returned to Prague to my parents.

We lived in Prague on Na Morani Street, near Palacky Bridge. We had a servant, Helena, who was a 'schlonzachka,' which means that she was from somewhere by Ostrava, and spoke in their dialect - a little Czech, a little Polish. I remember that when there were elections, I asked Hela whom she'd voted for. She told me that she's a 'schlonzachka,' and so of course has to vote for the Communists!

My parents had a general store where they sold various goods: fruit, vegetables, baked goods, butter, eggs, milk, coffee, tea, sugar, sometimes even chickens and geese. I didn't like being in the store too much, because I had to help! My parents rose early in the morning and would go to the market close to Narodni Trida [National Avenue] for vegetables, fruit, eggs and other goods. At the market, when they'd see our mother approaching, they'd say: 'The countess is coming,' because she used to root around in the goods. [The Czech word for countess is "hrabenka," while the expression for rooting or digging around is "hrabat."] The market was this big lot, and my parents used to run into various storekeepers there. The Novaks, greengrocers, were from Květuš, close to Nadejkov, where I'd lived for three years, so I would occasionally go with them during the holidays.

During the time of the protectorate we had to close the store and move in to one room. Before that we we'd been living in the building where our store was, and we had a small apartment - one room, a kitchen, and a larger front hall. My father didn't want to live anywhere else other than the house where we had our store, so he'd be close to work.

We were basically a secularized family; we didn't live in any especially religious fashion. We observed Christian Christmas, and also used to have a tree. We didn't cook kosher 8, and as far as I know from what I was told, even my grandparents' families didn't cook kosher. We observed Passover at home about once or twice, because my brother and I liked matzot, and so because of us my mother made seder. My father would only go to the Jerusalem Synagogue for the Long Day [Yom Kippur] or New Year [Rosh Hashanah], I don't even know exactly which of these holidays. Once, when my brother and I were small, we also went to the synagogue together with our father. I remember that when the rabbi was singing, we found it funny and were killing ourselves laughing, so they threw us out of there.

I attended Sokol from childhood; I was a frenetic Sokol girl! I belonged to the Sokol in Prague, Scheiner's Zupa [Župa - a group or unit]. As a teenager, I exercised at the last prewar All-Sokol Slet [Rally] at Strahov Stadium in 1938. I liked Sokol a lot; I'd meet my girlfriends there, the atmosphere was friendly and pleasant, and we also used to perform so-called Maypoles and Beseda [ceilidh] gymnastics. During the war, as a Jew, I had to leave Sokol. After 1989 9 I was invited to join the Sokol Vysehrad Old Guard.

In Prague, starting in Grade 3, I attended the Na Hradek girls' public school on Vysehradska Street. There we were taught religion by Rabbi Schrecker, but in any case what I liked best was when he sent me for the class index - I'd always secretly peek into it, found out what marks we'd get on our report cards, and could then tell my girlfriends. Then I attended business school, and absolved my last year in a reformed school on Legerova Street.

After school I was employed as a clerk at Tauber & Fisl in Praha-Vysocany. Because my father was their cellar-master, and the salesmen that used to come to the store to offer goods recommended the position to me. The first pay packet I got was 120 crowns. I had to leave because the political situation was starting to become unpleasant - as a Jew I wasn't allowed to be employed as an office worker.

My brother Pepik [Josef] wanted to attend a business academy on Resslova Street, but the situation was already bad, so he didn't get in. My father was afraid that he might have to join the army, so they sent my brother to Ringhoffer, to Tatra, to apprentice as an auto mechanic. After the war he became the youngest master [mechanic] there. We had a cousin, Josef Weiger, who was the same age as my brother. My cousin also couldn't attend school, so was apprenticing as a tailor, once he boasted to us that he already knew seven [different types of] stitches. From that time on my brother and I called him 'Seven-stitch Pepik.' He used to often come visit us, but was terribly timid and shy; he wouldn't come in on his own, he wouldn't sit down on his own, and we constantly had to prod him along into something. So my brother composed a poem about him:

When you ring at our door, why does your hand shake, and when finally in the kitchen, why do you quake. Why don't you know what to do with your coat and hat, why are you such a chicken, if I may please ask that. Because you're an idiot, my boy, and a huge one, but that's known not just by me, but by everyone. How many times against your mug my hand rose in malice, just to fall again, I suffer on, the tortures of Tantalus. Just chess, that you know, one could say almost with class, but even during this game, I'd love to kick you in the ass. Come over again, darling, it'll do our hearts good, my boy, 'cause with your departure again, you'll cause them great joy.

During the war

During the war, my knowledge of Catholicism that I had gained in school in Nadejkov came in very handy. This is because I was going out with a young man who wasn't a Jew, but we did want to escape Hitler together, to Canada. We absolved all sorts of medical checks so that we could leave the country, but another condition for leaving the country was for me to be baptized. At that time my mother made the rounds of all the churches in the neighborhood, everywhere they were very kind, but told us that they alas couldn't baptize me because that was prohibited. Because it was already 1939, right before the occupation, and priests had already been forbidden to baptize Jews. In the end we managed to find some highly revered priest at the diocese in Hradcany, who said he'd be able to arrange a baptism for me.

I remember setting out for Hradcany, I was not quite nineteen at the time, I don't remember all the titles by which I had to address the man, but he was actually a very nice person. He told me he knew a priest in Nížebohy who'd be willing to baptize me. But that prior to that I'd have to learn various prayers and recitations, so he brought me a book which I was supposed to read, and said he'd test me on it before I was to undergo the baptism. I opened the book, and told him that I didn't need it, that I knew it all. He was very surprised, and asked how it was possible. I told him that I'd attended Catholic religion classes for two years. He asked me if it wouldn't upset me if he tested me anyway. It was no problem for me of course; on the spot I recited all the prayers for him, Our Father, Hail Mary, and Lord, I Believe one after another. He was completely flabbergasted, and said I knew it so well that I didn't need any book of his, and that he'd go ahead and arrange my baptism.

I was baptized by Father Culik in Nížebohy, who even arranged a banquet for me to go with it, and was very kind to me. However, in the end I didn't leave for Canada anyway, because my young man and I had broken up!

During the war, when things were unpleasant, my parents told me to not go to work anywhere, and to instead help out at home with the housework and cooking, because, of course, at that time we no longer had a servant. I couldn't work in an office, because no one would take me on anywhere. Finally some Mr. Valasek gave my cousin Inka [Frantiska] and me jobs in a cartonnage workshop, where we were gluing cardboard boxes together. At first our boss was quite happy with us, telling us how handy we were, how good we were at it. We got to know the young girls that worked there. Together we'd make the boxes, sing songs, and go to a tavern for soup.

Once during lunch, my cousin Inka asked one girl whether our boss was making health insurance payments for us. The girl told her that she didn't know. On payday that girl asked the boss about the insurance. He became enraged and asked her how that had occurred to her, and who'd told her that he was supposed to pay something like that. And so it happened that Boss Valasek summoned Inka, although up to that point he'd always been formal and polite to her, and started yelling at her: 'I'll catch you by your ass and throw you out the door!' So we both left, the job wasn't all that great anyway, our pay was about 100 crowns.

Inka and I found another job, at the Hunka bookbindery on Podskalska Street. Mr. Hunka was a Czech, and was an excellent and fair person! The entire Hunka family worked in the bookbindery - his wife and daughter, as well as his sister-in-law. There I learned to stitch and bind books, to gild the headings with real gold; it was very nice work. I worked there as a bookbinder up until I went into the transport.

Gradually various edicts were issued ordering Jews to hand in various things - my brother had to hand in his Jawa Robot motorcycle, so he gave it to some friends, who hid it in their cellar under some coal. I was supposed to hand in my skis and ski boots, so I hid them with a girlfriend, and our neighbor hid my typewriter for me. We also had to hand in all gold and jewels.

Basically we weren't allowed anything back then - we weren't allowed in the theaters, we weren't allowed in the cinema, we weren't allowed to go to the park, we could only ride in the rear car of the streetcar, and we of course had to wear a star. Later came [another] prohibition and I was no longer even allowed to attend Sokol.

Once a friend and I went to accompany my cousin from Na Morani up towards Charles Square, I was walking between them, and a newsboy carrying papers was walking towards us, pointed at me and yelled: 'Whoever associates with Jews is a traitor!' Once my cousin Inka and I went dancing, even though it was already forbidden. Suddenly some Germans appeared there, so we quietly ran away. But I have to say that otherwise I didn't run into anti-Semitism, as everyone in our neighborhood quite liked our family, plus we weren't conspicuous in any way so as to stick out, so there was no reason for any sort of grudges or envy.

My brother Josef left in November 1941 on the second transport to Terezin, AK2, or 'Aufbaukommando' [German for 'Construction Commando']. From that time on we didn't have any news of him, because the men from AK1 and AK2 weren't allowed to write home. When someone wrote home, they were shot. I, along with my parents, went on the transport in April 1942. The assembly point in Holesovice, by the Veletrzni Palace, where we waited for about three days for the train to Terezin, was horrible.

We were all gathered in this huge hall, which is no longer there today, where there was absolutely nothing, just columns along the sides. Everyone got a mattress to lie on. As far as toilets and washing facilities go, they were catastrophic. After about three days, a train took us to Bohusovice, where the tracks ended, because the spur line to Terezin hadn't been built yet. So we walked from Bohusovice to Terezin, and dragged our luggage along.

I remember that as soon as we arrived, some guys I didn't know were calling out my name, 'Liduska,' and immediately started helping me with my suitcase. They were guys who worked for the 'Transportleitung' [German for 'transport management'] helping the arrivals with their luggage. They recognized me right away, even though they'd never seen me before, as I supposedly looked a lot like my brother, who was already in Terezin. My brother Pepik was living with them in the Sudeten barracks.

At first my brother Pepik worked in the 'Hundertschaft,' which was 100 guys that helped people with their luggage upon arrival. Then he went to work in the barracks, where they were sorting things from stolen suitcases. His boss was SS-Scharführer [squad leader] Rudolf Haindl. The work consisted of sorting luggage contents - food was put in one place, clothing in another, and so on. Pepik was clever, and so a couple of times it happened that during the sorting he'd for example come across a shaving brush that he'd screw apart and find money hidden inside. However that was handed in, because what good would money have done us in Terezin?

At first they put us up in the basement of the Kavalir barracks, just on some straw. We were there until they placed us somewhere. You just picked a spot, and that's where you slept. My father then stayed there, and my mother and I went to the Hamburg barracks. Initially we were living on the ground floor, where I got sick, I had some sort of flu, and spent most of my time in bed. They then moved us to the first floor to room No. 165, where about fifty of us women lived together.

I remember that when I arrived in Terezin, on Thursday we had dumplings with this brown gravy, I don't even know anymore what it was made from, probably from melted Sana [margarine]. When I got it, I said that I wouldn't eat this, and so gave it to my cousin Karel. My cousin told me that this was the best food you could get in Terezin. Otherwise, we got only bread and soup.

In Terezin my mother worked as a 'Zimmerälteste' [senior room warden], so she was in charge of the entire room, she'd always be issued food and then would distribute it. She also did 'Stromkontrolle' [i.e. she was in charge of electricity], so she had to walk around the rooms and check whether, despite it being prohibited, anyone wasn't cooking or otherwise wasting electricity. People, of course, brought hotplates with them, but only those who had special permission were allowed to use them.

Terezin had a special currency, so-called 'Ghettogeld' - I think they were ten, twenty, fifty and hundred-crown bills - which we'd get for doing work. There were a couple of shops in the ghetto where you could get things that had been stolen from people that had arrived in Terezin. We could buy these goods - for example bed sheets, towels, and dishcloths - with 'Ghettogeld.' There were grocery stores, but all you could get in them was vinegar and mustard, basically nothing. I bought myself a pair of beautiful high leather 'Cossack' boots there, I loved wearing them, and finally took them with me on the trip to Auschwitz - but we went there in May, and my feet were terribly hot in them, so I cut the tops off.

The entire time in Terezin, I worked in agriculture, in the so-called 'Landwirtschaft.' We'd always assemble, and initially we used to go to Crete [an area beyond the ghetto's borders] to hoe carrots, thin out beets, cultivate tomatoes, shuck beans and all sorts of other things. In the winter we made straw mats for greenhouses. Once in Crete I was hoeing carrots, and found a buried bundle of money! And it was a lot of money, in Reichsmarks! I told my friend Hanka, with whom I worked, and we split the money in half.

The next day Hanka came and told me that she couldn't keep the money, that her family was afraid. You see, her brother-in-law worked for the Terezin staff, and she was afraid that if it was discovered that we'd found money and kept it, her brother-in-law could have problems. I then came home and told my mother that Hanka had returned the money to me. My mother told me: 'If Hanka won't keep it, neither will you!' The next day Hanka and I went to hand in the money to the 'Landwirtschaft,' where two brothers, Tonda and Vilda Bisic were in charge. They must have thought we were crazy for not keeping it, but what could they do. Vilda wrote up a protocol, that we'd handed it in.

In Terezin I got to know Regina, a girl I worked with in the staff garden, where we cultivated cucumbers and other things. We used to steal the cucumbers, but I didn't know how to steal much, I was bad at it. Regina on the other hand was clever, she'd always pluck one for me and tell me: 'Just stick it in your bra!' So I'd stick it in my bra, and could smuggle something into the ghetto for my parents.

One day some Weinstein came by, people called him 'Major,' I don't even know why, and was looking for some handy girls. My friend Hanka and I put up our hands, were issued baskets and a ladder, and from that time onwards picked fruit. All told, there were only four of us girls from the ghetto picking fruit; it was good work, because while working I could eat as much fruit as I could. We picked pears, apples and other fruit in the ghetto in gardens where there were fruit trees that had belonged to people that had lived there. We had to put the fruit in crates and it was then shipped to an army hospital, to Crete, for sick German soldiers.

Our boss, Mr. Stern, and his daughter used to accompany us while we worked, then one older German who didn't know even a whit of Czech, and one young guy. Then there were three Germans that took turns, Haam, Altmann and Ulrich, who lived in Crete. Everyone was afraid of Haam; he had these bulging eyes, but was quite kind to us. He treated us well; every other day he'd bring us lunches. Other times he'd for instance warn us to not steal anything, that there were nasty guards at the gate, such as Sykora or Ullmann, for example.

When it was cherry season, we used to go up on the ramparts to chase away starlings. My brother Pepik once brought me a nice watch, the kind that people used to wear way back when, on a clasp. He'd found it while sorting confiscated luggage. Haam really took a liking to this watch, and was always saying: 'Lida, that's a beautiful watch!' But it didn't mean anything to me, just that I knew what time it was. Once I lost it while picking fruit. Haam made a great fuss, he was so unhappy over that! He walked from tree to tree and looked for my watch in the tall grass, and, of course, he didn't find it.

Another time Haam heaved this sigh, and said that his daughter's name day was coming up, and that she'd really like a purse. He didn't say it because he wanted me to give him one of mine; he just sort of heaved this sigh. I asked my brother if he couldn't find a purse for me. The next day Pepik even brought two - a black one and a white one, so that there'd be something to choose from.

When I gave them to Haam, he couldn't believe it, and kept asking how he could repay me. He asked me what I liked best. I said to myself, if he wants to know what I like best, I'll just go ahead and tell him, he wouldn't be able to arrange it anyway. I told him that what I liked most of all was fish. He didn't say anything to that. The next day he actually brought me a fish! And he told me: 'But do you know where you have to stick it?' Boy, did I stink, a fish in my bra! But the fish was good; my mother prepared it in a very tasty fashion.

In the fall we used to go to the river, the place was named Erholung, and there was an alley of nut trees there. Men would beat the trees, and we'd gather them from the ground into baskets. I like nuts a lot, but there I ate so many of them that I got terribly sick. Hanka and I had this idea that it would be pleasant to take a dip in the Ohra; we were sweaty, it was September, and we wanted to go swimming. Hanka and I went to see Haam, and said to him: 'Mr. Haam, it's such a shame, do you know how many nuts fall into the water while the trees are being beaten, and float away? Couldn't we catch them in the river with a basket?' Haam praised us for having such a good idea.

So the next day we took our bathing suits and went swimming. But the water was already cold, and what's more, because we were wearing bathing suits, we couldn't smuggle nuts into the ghetto. So we got dressed again and went gathering. Haam was quite kind to us, but otherwise everyone was afraid of him, and it was said that he was nasty.

Once we were picking pears in the garden behind the school in L 417, there's a wall there that the pears were falling behind. Lots of people gathered behind the wall, to take some pears for themselves. When Haam saw that, he ordered me to go behind the wall, gather the pears there, and if someone came and wanted to take the pears for himself, to call him over.

I was gathering them for a while, when this young guy came over to me and wanted me to give him some pears. I told him that if it was up to me, I'd give them all to him, but I warned him that there was a nasty German behind the wall, and that he'd catch him. I dropped one pear and he wanted to take it, I told him not to do it, that Haam would catch him. He took it anyway.

Haam saw him, grabbed him and took him to Headquarters. I felt awfully sorry for him, but there was nothing I could do. Other times I managed to smuggle in fruit, but it had to be arranged ahead of time - two girls, Lilka and Rita Popper slept beside me in the block, so I arranged it with them that when I went picking, I'd come back to the block to go to the toilet, leave them some pears on the toilet lid, and they'd then pick them up. That's how we pulled it off.

In Terezin I sang for Rafael Schächter in 'The Bartered Bride' [opera by Czech composer Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884)], in 'The Kiss,' in 'The Czech Song,' and in the 'Requiem' by Giuseppe Verdi. Initially we practiced in a cellar, where the piano was. We were organized by voice, and got parts that someone was rewriting. The National Artist Karel Berman [Berman, Karel (1919 -1995): Czech opera singer and director of Jewish origin] would come to sing the solo bass parts, later he picked fifteen girls, among them also me, and with him we prepared the opera 'Lumpacivagabundus' [humorous satire by Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy (1801-1862)] and the 'Moravian Duets' [by Czech composer Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)]. We sang in attics and in our spare time, as well as in the gymnasium of the former Sokol Hall. I also saw Hans Krasa's 'Brundibar,' the kid that played the role of Pepicek, used to come over and helped Schächter turn the pages of the notes. [Editor's note: The children's opera Brundibar was created in 1938 for a contest announced by the then Czechoslovak Ministry of Schools and National Education. It was composed by Hans Krasa based on a libretto by Adolf Hoffmeister. The first performance of Brundibar - by residents of the Jewish orphanage in Prague - wasn't seen by the composer. He had been deported to Terezin. Not long after him, Rudolf Freudenfeld, the son of the orphanage's director, who had rehearsed the opera with the children, was also transported. This opera had more than 50 official performances in Terezin. The idea of solidarity, collective battle against the enemy and the victory of good over evil today speaks to people the whole world over. Today the opera is performed on hundreds of stages in various corners of the world.]

Before I left Terezin, there was a Red Cross visit being planned, and we had to do so-called 'Verschönerung,' or beautification. Terezin was to be decorated, for the sake of appearances, to fool the Red Cross delegation. However, I wasn't there to see the Red Cross visit. I was in Terezin from April 1942 until May 1944, when I left with my brother for Auschwitz. My mother and father left on the first May transport for the so-called family camp, and my brother and I left on the third one in May 1944. When my brother and I were boarding the train, Haindl came walking along, and when he saw Pepik and me, he was surprised that we were leaving, and asked why we hadn't come to tell him we'd been included in a transport, that he could have gotten us off it. To that Pepik told him that our parents were already in Auschwitz, and that we had to leave to go join them.

When the train stopped in Auschwitz it was already dark, and we could hear them bellowing 'Raus, raus.' We got out and were ordered to leave all our bags there; they told us that we'd get them later. Of course, we never saw our bags again. They only thing we were left with was what we were wearing and in our hands. I had some sardines, a flashlight and about a hundred marks on me. My cousin Inka, who was already in Auschwitz, worked as a housekeeper for some German who worked in the 'Kleiderkammer' [the place where clothing that had been confiscated from incoming transports was sorted, searched for hidden valuables, and then shipped to Germany for distribution]. Although at the time we arrived at the camp there was a 'Lagersperre' [camp closure] on and no one was allowed out, some could, Inka being one of them. She noticed me and called out to me: 'Throw me everything you've got!' So I threw my things to her, and thanks to this they were saved.

The Poles were very cruel, and beat us with sticks. We lined up five abreast, walked along and saw the sign 'Arbeit macht frei' [German for 'work shall set you free'] above our heads. Some Pole walked along with us, who told us that if any of us knew how to write well, we'd have it good in Auschwitz. Several girls worked as so-called 'Schreiber,' as office assistants, and each block had one 'Schreiber.'

In Auschwitz they tattooed us, and I got No. A 4603 [Editor's note: In order to avoid the assignment of excessively high numbers from the general series to the large number of Hungarian Jews arriving in 1944, the SS authorities introduced new sequences of numbers in mid-May 1944. This series, prefaced by the letter A, began with "1" and ended at "20,000." Once the number 20,000 was reached, a new series beginning with "B" series was introduced.] I'd counted the line as it walked in front of me, and positioned myself so that the sum of my number was 13. I'm superstitious, and I said to myself that if the sum of my number's digits would be unlucky 13, I'd survive the war.

Then they assigned us to blocks. Then the block leader yelled at us that we were all to go outside and leave everything inside. I'd noticed that the block leader had been talking to a friend of mine with whom I'd worked in the 'Landwirtschaft' in Terezin, Dina Gottliebova, who'd arrived on the first September transport. I had absolutely no idea of Dina's status in the camp. I went over to Dina and told her that the block leader had ordered us to leave all our things inside - Dina told me to go back and take everything with me. The block leader noticed it, but didn't object, because she knew that Dina had privileged status.

Dina was the lover of 'Lagerältester' [camp elder] Willy, thanks to which she saved herself and her mother from the gas. Dina was a swell girl; before the war she'd attended art school in Brno, and could draw beautifully. Mengele hired her to draw Roma in the 'Gypsy camp' for his 'research.' Dina also drew for the children in the children's block. It was from Dina Gottliebova that I found out that the Nazis were murdering people in gas chambers in Auschwitz. She told me that she was sure of it, because she'd gotten to see the gas chambers, which she'd also drawn. When I found out about the gas, I cried for three days. I saw huge flames flaring, two meters high.

I lived in a different block than my mother, as she'd already been in Auschwitz for some time. But we were able to see each other, as well as with my brother, father, Auntie Zofie, and my cousin Inka. I tried to go for visits to see Auntie Zofie, she was in a bad way, as she was over sixty and she had a bunk that she had a hard time getting to. I tried to occasionally bring her some food.

I was working in a block with the smallest children, about three or four years old. I played with them, told them poems and sang with them. When the weather was nice, I'd also go play with them outside in front of the block. Across from us were wire fences, the inner ones not electrified and the outer ones electrified. I gave the children lunches and in the evening I'd bring them rations to their block, where they were living with their mothers. Children got somewhat better food than the others, somewhat thicker milky soup and milk.

Packages would arrive in Auschwitz, intended for prisoners, many of which were already dead when the packages arrived. We were given what remained of the packages, and picked out things for the children - for example remnants of cookies that had broken along the way, and other things.

None of these small children, of whom I was responsible for about twenty, survived. Only several older ones survived, boys of about fifteen who walked around Auschwitz during the day and called out various information - they for example called out in German 'bread' or 'soup' when food was being distributed. These boys passed the selection prior to the destruction of the family camp, and were transported from Auschwitz to other concentration camps, thanks to which they lived to see freedom.

Pepik worked in the 'Rollwagenkommando' - men were harnessed instead of animals, and dragged heavy loads behind themselves. They had a wagon on which they transported corpses out of the camp, and would bring bread or other things back on the wagon. In the 'Rollwagenkommando,' Pepik also got to the ramp where the trains arrived. Occasionally there were things lying on the ramp left by people arriving in Auschwitz, so from time to time Pepik managed to pick something up. Once he, for example, found a small canister with warm goose fat, and he poured a bit into each of our cups.

In Auschwitz I also met Fischer the executioner, whose original occupation had been a butcher, who'd worked as the executioner in Terezin. In Auschwitz he worked as a capo [concentration camp inmate appointed by the SS to be in charge of a work gang]. Through Haindl, Fischer knew my brother Pepik. Once when I was returning from roll call I met him, right away he greeted me and asked how I was, and where in the camp I was working, and whether I didn't need anything. He promised that if I needed anything, I should come see him, and he'd arrange it. But I never went to see him.

For six months prisoners in the family camp had so-called 'Sonderbehandlung,' or 'special treatment' - families weren't split up, they for example didn't shave our hair off, and they isolated us in camp BIIb. However, 'Sonderbehandlung' was planned for only six months, followed by death in the gas chambers. The first transport was gassed without prior selection in the night from 8th to 9th of March 1944, on President Masaryk's birthday 10. Prisoners from the second transport were afraid that once six months after their arrival passed, they'd also be murdered. My cousin Inka had arrived on the second transport, she was afraid, and said that now it was their turn. However, the Nazis decided to not murder all of them, organized a selection, and picked some for the prisoners from the second and third transport for slave labor outside the camp.

I was in the FKL - 'Frauen-Konzentrationslager' [women's concentration camp] where they shaved our entire bodies, but left me my hair. We also went through several selections there. The conditions in the 'Frauen- Konzentrationslager' were horrible, tons of bedbugs. We'd for example go to the latrines, and as soon as we sat down, we'd be showered with cold water, being sprayed at us by Polish women, who were horrible. When we arrived in the FKL, my cousin Inka said that their transport would go to the gas for sure. But the Germans changed their minds, and decided that they'd rather use us for work. First the men left for work in Schwarzheide.

We went for a selection - the barracks had so-called chimneys in the middle, along which we had to walk and Mengele would be sitting there, and pointing, left, right. Mengele needed to pick out a thousand women. Older women and mothers with children remained in the camp, and the younger ones he picked. He'd picked out some women, but he was still missing a certain number of the thousand. My mother wasn't in the selection, because she was already 48, and seemed to be too old for them. However, when they still didn't have the required number of women, they ordered all women up to 48 to present themselves. Finally, Mengele also picked my mother for work.

We had to undergo a gynecological examination - though I was so skinny that there was no way anyone could've thought I was pregnant, so I avoided the exam. They sent us to go bathe, we were, of course, afraid that instead of water gas would come out of the showers, but in the end it really was water. When we went to go bathe, I was wearing an Omega wristwatch, and thought it would be a shame to damage it, so I said to myself that I'd hide it somewhere. A pile of coal caught my eye, so I hid it in there, intending to retrieve it after washing. But then we all exited out the other side, so I never saw the watch again.

We had to take everything off, and they told us that we'd pick our things up after washing. I had a silver ring with garnets, so I tied it to a shoelace and hid it in my shoes. But I never saw those shoes again, because they took everything from us. Instead of our own things, we were issued horrible rags, and high-heel shoes! So I then left for work in Hamburg in high-heel shoes! We also got a piece of bread and a piece of salami, so that we'd have something for the trip. I ate my ration right away, and my mother saved hers for me, in case I got hungry.

My brother left Auschwitz to go work in Schwarzheide. We ran to the end of the camp to watch them leave on the train. Because my dad was already 65, they didn't take him for work in Schwarzheide. When my mom and I left for Hamburg in July 1944, my dad stayed in Auschwitz. Saying goodbye to dad and Auntie Zofie from Nadejkov was awful, because I already suspected how it would end. Dad was calming me down, and said: 'I've got my life behind me, you've got yours ahead of you, I'm glad that you're going with Mom.' My father didn't survive; he went into the gas that same year, 1944. The worst thing is that my dad never believed in the gas. He said that it after all isn't possible for them to send young, healthy people into the gas. When they told me that they were burning people there, I cried terribly, and my dad kept telling me to not believe it, that it's not possible. I guess the poor man had to find out the hard way...

There were about fifty of us women in the wagon to Hamburg. It was July, sweltering, and we had one pail for a toilet and one pail with water. There were so many of us that I remember that in the evening it wasn't possible for all the women to lie down. Half of them always had to sit, and the other half could lie down. My mom ate a piece of salami and got horribly sick. She lay down, had a fever, and was lying all day. I remember that the women began complaining that my mom was lying down for too long. I told them that I was sitting that whole time, so that my mother was simply lying down instead of me.

My mom had a fever, and then sometime towards morning she got up, saying that she needed to use the toilet. I wanted to help her, that I'd support her, but she refused. The poor woman was so weak that she tipped the pail over. I was miserable; I didn't know how I was going to clean up that mess, the pail had spilled out into the entire wagon! The pails contents were all over the whole wagon, it was hot, and it stank.

At that moment we stopped. I went to see the SS post, we called them 'postmen,' and described to him what had happened and asked him if he wouldn't please lend me some sort of broom, so I could clean out the wagon. He told me to wait, returned in a bit, and gave me handfuls of tall grass he'd picked, with which I could scrub it clean. He was nice and helped me, and he was bringing me pails of clean water with which I always flushed it and cleaned it, scoured it with grass, and again and again until the wagon was clean. I asked my cousin Inka to help me. She refused. The only girl in the wagon that helped me was my friend Vera Liskova, who'd worked with me in the 'Landwirtschaft.' What with the sun blazing down and the heat, the floor was soon dry and was snow-white!

We arrived in Hamburg, at a place named Freihafen. It was an old granary, a ramp and train tracks. We didn't know what was to become of us, where they'd take us, nothing. I was afraid for my mother, that if she was ill they'd shoot her. I pleaded with Inka to help me with my mom, but she refused, that she wanted to go stay with some other girls. But then she probably thought about it some more, remembered that our parents had always helped her when her father had thrown her out of the house, and so stayed with us. We led my mom to the first floor, laid her down on a bunk, she got some sleep and the next day she was already feeling better. There were an awful lot of us living in one room, and the conditions were terrible.

The next day we didn't go to work yet. We got some sardines in tomato sauce that I ate with relish, they were excellent. In the morning we'd get black coffee and a little piece of bread. There were these troughs there where we would go wash up. From there we'd be transported to various plants like Eurotank and RTL, and for cleanup work, basically wherever we were needed. We cleared away bombed-out buildings, chipped the old mortar off of bricks and put them at the side of the road, because bricks cleaned up in this manner were then taken away for use in the construction of new buildings. One time some German came walking by, and told us that once we clear it away there and get to his cellar, where he's got potatoes, we should dig them up and that he'd give us some of them. We thanked him, and thought to ourselves that the poor guy has no idea that we'd already found and eaten them long ago.

We cleared the rubble of bombed out buildings, where for example only one wall had remained standing, and with it the remnants of toilets or larders. In the larders you could occasionally find food. We for example found pickled eggs in a jar, which on top of that had been cooked in the fire. The girls ate them, but I was afraid to.

I remember that we used to go wash in these troughs. Once my mother told me that she had the feeling that my friend Lotka was pregnant. I told her that I didn't think so, that Lotka hadn't mentioned anything like that, just that she occasionally complained that her stomach was growling, but she blamed it on the bad food in Hamburg. But my mother said that Lotka's stomach was beginning to show. I asked Lotka whether she wasn't pregnant. She didn't want to accept anything like that, but to be on the safe side went to see the doctor. She told her that she was in her fifth month of pregnancy. She'd gotten pregnant while still in Terezin, and had had absolutely no idea. After that she didn't go with us to do hard work, and helped peel potatoes in the kitchen.

However, after some time they sent her back to Auschwitz along with two other pregnant girls. Before she left, she told me that if they take her back to Auschwitz, she'd rather escape along the way than to return to Auschwitz to go into the gas. We never found out what happened to Lotka. No one managed to find out how and where she'd perished, all I know is that from Lotka's entire family, only her mother survived.

I remember that once we were carrying terribly heavy metal rods several meters long, which had to always be carried by three women - one in the front, another in the middle, and a third at the end. While we were doing it I started feeling terribly ill. I went to see the post and asked him if I could go sit down for a while, that I didn't feel well. He allowed it, so I sat down there.

In a while the main doctor came walking by, who we called 'senilak,' because he was an obnoxious old geezer, and was quite nasty. As soon as he noticed me, he bellowed that how did I dare just sit there like that. I told him that I'd asked the post if I could sit down, because I was feeling terribly ill, that I had a fever and sore throat. So he called me over, and ordered me to open my mouth and stick out my tongue. He asked me why I hadn't reported that I was sick first thing in the morning, so I told him that in the morning I'd felt fine. He told me to come with him. I was afraid of where he'd take me.

There was some sort of villa nearby, and he led me into the villa, into the cellar. The cellar was full of bottles; he took one bottle, poured out some of the contents and asked me whether I knew how to gargle. Maybe he thought that we were Neanderthals, that we didn't know what gargling was! He ordered me to gargle every so often, and upon arrival to report to the doctor in that ward.

We rode dump trucks to and from work, the most able always jumped on first, to grab places to sit around the walls. That day I felt terribly sick, and just stood there like a statue. By chance 'senilak' came walking by, and when he saw me standing there, he ordered the others to let me sit down.

When we returned, I reported to Dr. Goldova, who was an awfully swell lady, a Jewess, who was responsible for us. The doctor gave us a thermometer, with the words that whoever has the highest temperature would go first. I won, as I had over 40. Dr. Goldova looked inside my throat, and was appalled. She told me that I had diphtheria. She sent one SS soldier for serum, because they were afraid of the diphtheria spreading. Luckily he found some serum and I could get an injection. I lay on a bunk, lying beside me was a girl with scarlet fever, and across from me another one that was giving birth. She gave birth to a boy, who died after a week. Luckily, I've got to say, because if he wouldn't have died, they would have both perished.

So I lay there with diphtheria, I felt terrible, and couldn't eat. We were issued bread, so I hid it under my pillow, to eat once I felt better. But a rat ate the bread. Boy, were there a lot of rats there! This is because we lived in an old granary, where there were steel cables and wooden seals between the floors, and that's how the rats got in. I was always waving my arms and saying 'shoo, shoo.' Dr. Goldova asked me what I was always chasing away, whether it wasn't flies. I told her that it was rats, and she thought that I was hallucinating from the fever, she couldn't believe that there were rats there. I lay there for five days with diphtheria, and then I had to go work again.

Some people in Hamburg were very kind; I remember that once some German woman called out to me from some building, for me to come over to her. At first I was afraid to go into the building, but she handed me a loaf of bread and told me to split it with the girls. Another time a person came along and when he saw what kind of shoes we were working in, he brought over a wheelbarrow of shoes, for us to pick some more suitable ones from. Because in Auschwitz I'd been issued high-heel shoes, which really weren't suitable for work!

After one air raid that destroyed the buildings in which we'd been living, they transported us by train to another camp. During the train trip I got my first slap from an SS woman. Some of the girls that were there with us wanted to get on her good side, and so would do anything she wished. Because the SS woman wanted very much to learn to sing the song 'Prague Is Beautiful' in Czech, which for some reason she liked and was constantly wanting to sing it. It annoyed me the way she was constantly singing, and so I cracked something like 'stupid cow,' and right away got a good slap.

They took us to some train station. We had no idea where we were, and it was already twilight. Both my mother and I needed to use the toilet. We watched to see where the other girls were going, went after them, and as it was getting dark and you couldn't see properly, I suddenly fell from the ramp into this gully. I got some scrapes and bruises, but nothing serious happened to me. Then they led us on foot in the darkness, some girls could no longer go on, and stayed at the side of the road; I don't know what happened to them.

At dawn we arrived at the camp. It was still half-light; suddenly I glimpsed a huge dark mountain beside me. I looked more carefully, and realized that they were shoes. A huge mountain of shoes... We'd arrived in Bergen-Belsen.

The conditions in Bergen-Belsen were catastrophic. They put us up in some building, where we met up with the girls that had arrived from Christianstadt a little earlier. I don't remember anymore if there were mattresses there, but I think that there was only straw, we laid on the floor like sardines next to each other. The conditions were terrible, truly horrible. There was almost no food, getting even a little bit to eat was terribly difficult, the accommodations were atrocious. There was no water, we couldn't wash, the toilets were atrocious. Because there weren't enough toilets for so many people, the men dug out these deep ditches where people used to go, there you saw men's, women's bottoms, and you didn't give a damn.

Post-war

We were still in Bergen-Belsen when we were liberated on 15th April 1945. The English were driving by and blaring in all languages that we'd been liberated, but that we have to wait for quarantine and for orders. When it was already clear that the Allied army was approaching, a lot of the SS ran away. But some of them stayed, and those were ordered by the English to run around in circles, like they used to order us to do earlier.

After liberation the English distributed canned pork. My mother confiscated it from me, told me that we won't eat that, and allowed me to eat only crackers and powdered milk. Many girls ate from the cans and got dysentery. After the liberation we went to go have a look around the camp, we for example discovered a building full of prosthetic limbs, there were artificial arms and legs lying around everywhere, elsewhere there were buildings full of glasses, or of clothes. There were bundles of skirts, dresses and shirts lying around. In another place I found an office full of money from all sorts of countries, but it didn't even occur to me to take some of it, because I didn't know what I'd do with it in Bergen-Belsen. For me, clothing and a bite of food were of more value than money.

In Bergen-Belsen, I saw so many horrors, piles of corpses, skin-covered skeletons... After liberation the Germans were forced to load the prisoners' corpses onto a flatbed truck with their bare hands and haul them away. A girlfriend of mine didn't have shoes, so she approached one English soldier and asked him if he couldn't find some for her - he ordered one SS woman to take her shoes off and give them to her. As my friend was completely barefoot, he ordered the SS woman to give her socks to her as well.

Imagine that there were loads of blueberries in Bergen-Belsen. I loved picking blueberries, so after we were liberated I kept going to pick berries. I exchanged them with the girls for cigarettes that we used to get in Red Cross packages. I didn't smoke, but was hiding them for my brother, from whom I'd gotten a letter that he'd survived. I got three cigarettes for a liter of blueberries - and in the end I managed to bring my brother 1500 of them! Boy, that was a lot of blueberries, my brother's eyes bugged out when I brought him 1500 cigarettes. Because after the war, American cigarettes were worth a fortune.

I looked for my friend Regina, who'd come to Bergen-Belsen from Christianstadt; we knew each other from Terezin, where we'd worked together in the staff garden. I found her, too, she was ill and had terribly swollen legs. She asked me if I couldn't please pick the lice from her hair, the poor thing's head was full of them. At that time I didn't suspect that she also had body lice, which I, of course, caught from her. My mother didn't catch anything, as all day she sat there, turning clothes all 'round and inside out, looking for lice, so that she wouldn't get infected.

In the infirmary, some girls told me that they were terribly thirsty, whether I wouldn't bring them a bit of water. I went to have a look around, and found this bathing pool from which I wanted to scoop up some water, so that the girls could also wash themselves. But suddenly I noticed that there were bloated corpses swimming in the pool...

In Bergen-Belsen I had a friend, Lucka Brilova, the two of us walked all around the surrounding area, looked at abandoned houses and thought about what they might contain. Once we found a house in which there was this large workbench, it had apparently once belonged to some watchmaker or jeweler, because there were tools lying all over the place. We were walking through the garden where there was a well, we stopped there, and I found a wristwatch. I took it and we were returning in the direction of the camp. On the way we met my mother, who had gone out to meet me. My mother was collecting cigarette butts which were lying around everywhere from the soldiers; she was emptying the tobacco out of them and collecting it in a box.

We met a Russian carrying a slaughtered hen. My mother asked him if he wouldn't sell us the hen. He wanted to know what we could offer him for it. So we showed him the watch and tobacco. He wasn't too interested in the tobacco, saying that it wasn't good, but we talked him into taking the tobacco and 'the time,' and got a good hen. My mother made soup, and she even scrounged up something for dumplings and made some sauce. But I was already beginning to feel ill and wasn't able to eat anything, so my mother pleaded with me to at least eat a couple of spoonfuls of soup. As it turned out, I'd caught typhus from Regina.

I was lying there, and a German doctor came to see me, who was originally from somewhere by Karlovy Vary 11. The problem was that there wasn't any medicine. So naked, just wrapped in a blanket, they loaded me onto some plank and carried me to a hospital, where I laid on the ground, just in that blanket. I don't remember much of it, I was terribly ill, with fevers in the forties, and was completely apathetic; all I know is that German women were washing us. We had to be weighed, I weighed about 42 kilos, but that was at a time when I was already downright 'fat;' before that I'd weighed quite a bit less.

Gradually I got better, and my fever declined. So they sent me across the way to some building, that there they'd issue me a shirt. I arrived there wrapped in just a blanket, I could barely walk, and had to walk hunched over, otherwise I wouldn't have managed to remain standing. I got a piece of cloth, which someone sewed together as I held it, so I was wearing a sack with two holes, this being my nightshirt. Some woman in a uniform was giving me the cloth, and I was saying to myself that this woman seemed terribly familiar to me, but I couldn't remember where I knew her from. I kept having to think about where I could know her from, as she seemed terribly familiar to me! It wasn't until after the war that I read that Marlene Dietrich had been accompanying that army, so I think that it was she. [Dietrich, Marlene (1901 - 1992): German-born American actress and singer]

When I got better, I looked for Regina, who was still ill. When my mother and I found her, Regina had only one wish - she wanted sauerkraut. We managed to find it for her in some kitchen. She was so happy! After her serious illness, Regina got an offer to go to Sweden to recuperate, and was told she could take family members as well. She was an orphan, so she wrote that I was her sister, and that Mom was her mother, so that we'd go with her.

The trip to Sweden didn't take place, however, because in the meantime we'd received a letter from my brother, that he'd survived and was already in Prague. So Regina left on her own; later she wrote me that a distant aunt was inviting her to America, and she didn't know whether or not she should go. Regina was originally from an orphanage in Prague, so I wrote her to go and see her aunt in America, that she could come back to Prague whenever she wanted if she didn't like it in America. In the end she settled in America, I've already been there twice to see her.

My mother and I left Bergen-Belsen for home in July 1945. We traveled several days by train, roundabout through Sumava and Pilsen to Prague. Traveling in the compartment with us was my friend Lucka Brilova, who was originally from Teplice, which before the war had been a region where Germans lived. Lucka spoke Czech very poorly, because she'd attended German schools. I remember that Lucka telling me in the train to quickly teach her 'Kde domov muj?' [Where is My Home?] This was because we had decided that we were going to sing the Czechoslovak national anthem when we reached the border.

My mother and I arrived at the Smichov train station. We had a couple of bags, a large bag of crackers and some things we'd received in packages from the Red Cross. So from the train station we called our neighbor from Moran, Liska the confectioner, with whom we'd hidden the cart that my parents had used to transport goods to the general store before the war. Mr. Liska came to Smichov to get us. I remember that I was wearing some drop-front sailor pants and wooden shoes, nothing else - there wasn't any clothing.

When we were arriving in Moran, people were staring at us, and everyone was shouting something at us. Mrs. Schneiderova called out 'Liduska, your typewriter is at our place!' Everyone in Moran was terribly kind to us. Our neighbor on the first floor offered that Mom, Pepik and I could live with her. This was because we had no place to live, as the two rooms that we used to have before the war behind the store were occupied. She owed us a lot, so she subtracted it from the debt. Then the brother of my former school principal rented us a room with a kitchen, because he was in the hospital.

Pepik was already in Prague; he'd returned from Schwarzheide on a death march 12. He was telling us about how they'd been walking through a field, and because he was hungry he'd bent down for a potato he'd seen on the ground. An SS soldier leading them along saw that, and came and stepped on his hand. Because he'd already had a hangnail on that hand, it became infected. When they arrived in Terezin, Pepik already had fevers and was in general in a bad way. They put him in the infirmary and told him that they'd have to amputate the hand, as he had gangrene. But Pepik objected, that without his hand he wouldn't be able to live and work, because he was an auto mechanic. He threatened them that if they were going to want to cut off his hand, he'd jump out the window. Finally some medic helped him, they managed to localize the gangrene to only the tip of his finger, and so in the end they only cut it off at the last joint.

After the war, after liberation, our friend Vlasta from Moran, where we lived, set out with her cousin Jirina for Terezin to look for us, they didn't have any news of us, and were hoping to find us there. They described to me how they arrived at the infirmary and all the guys were staring at them, as they were very pretty girls. Pepik recognized them, but apparently they walked right by him and didn't notice him at all. So Pepik called out: 'Vlasta!' Vlasta turned around, went over to him and said, 'What would you like?' Pepik said to her: 'Hey, it's me, Pepik!' They didn't recognize him at all; he was in a terribly pitiful state. Vlasta told me that he looked like his own grandfather.

Of our entire family, only I, my mother, brother, my cousin Inka and one distant cousin from Jindrichuv Hradec survived. After the war, when I returned from the camps, I had no documents. Back then I wrote the Community, for them to send me a copy of my birth certificate. From the Community they wrote me back that no Ludmila Weinerova had ever been born in Prague. You see, after I'd had myself baptized in 1939, they deleted me from the Community. So I wrote Father Culik in Nizebohy, who'd baptized me before the war. He sent me all my records right away, and sent me a very beautiful, nice letter, how happy he was that I survived the war.

After the war I lived for a couple of months in Kytlice, near Ceska Lipa, where my friend Hanka was in charge of a factory that made moldings and frames. We lived in a gamekeeper's lodge; we had a kitchen and two rooms there. The gamekeeper and his wife and son were Germans who were waiting to be deported 13. They were very kind people; Hanka and I used to go visit the gamekeeper's wife for lunch, and would give her our food vouchers. So in Kytlice we ran a molding and frame factory, Hanka would visit glaziers, painters and grinders, and design various products, for example decorated trays, or napkin holders or moldings that we then offered to various companies. I took care of the administration and paid the workers their wages.

There were only 16 of us Czechs in Kytlice, and when political parties had to be founded, we divided ourselves into four groups - four of us were Communists, four social democrats, for national socialists and four in the People's Party [Christian Democrats]. Hanka and I had no idea who we should join, until we finally decided to join the social democrats. But I was never very interested in politics. But after about a half year, the company was wound down and all the machines that were there were being sent to Slovakia. At that time I told Hanka that it seemed that she'd no longer be needing me, and that I was going to return to Prague, where my mother was already looking forward to seeing me. In Prague I found work right away, at Autogen O. Mares, on Petrske namesti [Peter Square].

In Prague I met my future husband, Karel Rutar. Life is full of coincidences; Karel was actually almost the first man that I saw in Terezin! But I barely knew him; I'd seen him only in passing and didn't pay any attention to him at all. You see, in the beginning in Terezin we were staying with some family named Polak. Once Mrs. Polak said that their niece Hana and her husband Karel were coming to visit them. When I saw them, I remember being taken aback that they were married, because they were awfully young. The way it went back then was that people tried to get married before the transport, so that they could live together. I didn't pay any particular heed to Karel in Terezin, all I knew was that he'd then gone to work in Wulkov - he was quite handy, and had worked as a carpenter in Terezin.

After the war I found out that he'd been the head carpenter, and that some problem had happened there that he didn't cause, but they punished him for being the boss and letting it happen. The SS soldier punished him by making him go outside at night, in the winter, naked, and pouring cold water on him. He then gave him such a slap that it punctured his eardrum, and for the rest of his life Karel was hard of hearing in one ear. From Wulkov he returned to Terezin, where after the war he recuperated, and then brought with him to Prague many materials - correspondence cards, on which you could send a maximum of thirty words to Terezin, maps, and a picture painted for him by the caricaturist Haas, brother of the actor Hugo Haas. [Haas, Hugo (1901 - 1968): Czech actor of Jewish origin, belonging to among the most significant personalities of modern Czech theater and film.] His wife Hanka and I had worked in the 'Landwirtschaft' together, although she then got typhus, so then no longer came to work. Karel's sister Ela and his mother were murdered in Auschwitz.

As I say, they're all big coincidences - after the war, Karel's aunt, Mrs. Helena Schwarzova, got remarried, to some Mr. Schütz from Pardubice who made matzot, she was a very good friend of my mother's and absolved Terezin, Auschwitz, Hamburg and Bergen-Belsen with us. Mr. Schwarzova had two sons, Zdenek and Viktor, and tried to put me together with Zdenek; poor Zdenek never returned from the concentration camps.

So one time, after the war, in 1946, Mrs. Schwarzova came over to see my mother and was telling her that her nephew Karel would like to get his motorcycle license, and whether Pepik couldn't help him with it. So Karel came over for a visit, we talked a bit, and in return he invited us to his apartment in Vrsovice, where [Karel's] Aunt Schwarzova baked a cake and made coffee. When I was there, I saw a photo of Hanka in a frame. I told him that I knew that girl, that we'd worked together in Terezin. And he said that it was his ex-wife. You see, Hanka had gotten together in Terezin with this one Dane. Karel gave her a dowry and arranged everything for her; he outfitted her to be a bride.

Karel and I were married in 1946, and I moved in with him, to his place in Vrsovice, where I live to this day. In 1947 we had a daughter, Iva, and at first I was at home with her. Then my mother babysat her for some time, when I went to do office work for the Teply Company. After the war we weren't well off, so my husband and I both worked. I had an excellent salary; I worked as a payroll accountant and head cashier, and at the same time also hired laborers and clerks. In 1949 our son Josef was born. Then I found a job at Sazka, where I worked three days a week, so my salary would at least cover the rent. Karel worked for the Milk and Fats Association, then transferred to the Ministry of Food Industries, and then went to work as a clerk for Orionka [The Orion Chocolate Co.].

My mother died in 1964; in her old age she suffered from advanced Alzheimer's disease. My husband died in 1966 at the age of 49, of leukemia. I was left alone with two children. In 1968 my brother Pepik immigrated with his family to America, where he died in 2005.

My brother's emigration caused me problems at work - up until then I had been working for Cedok and I used to go to Romania on business. [Cedok: a travel agency, founded in 1920, with headquarters in Prague. Its name is an acronym taken from the name "Ceskoslovenska dopravni kancelar" - Czechoslovak Transport Agency.] After Pepik emigrated, I was no longer allowed to travel outside of the country on business. They confiscated my work passport. I was allowed to visit the countries of the socialist bloc as a tourist on my personal passport. I didn't make it over to visit him until I was retired, in 1976 and then again in 1987. As a retiree I was allowed to go to America, because the Communists would have liked to get rid of retirees. I remember that I was amazed at how many goods were available in America; back then in Czechoslovakia there was almost nothing, so for me it was a tremendous contrast. But I have to say that I never considered emigrating.

When the children were small, I decided to have the number tattooed on my forearm removed. Circumstances forced me into it. I used to often take the train to our cottage with my children. In the summer, when I'd be wearing a short-sleeved dress, I'd often notice people looking at my forearm, and then whisper amongst each other. It used to happen that they'd turn to me and begin to feel terribly sorry for me, and keep repeating what a poor thing I was, how I must have suffered during the war. I don't want anyone's pity. And it definitely wasn't at all pleasant for someone to tell me what a poor wretch I must be.

So I decided that I'd go to the doctor and have the number removed. I arrived at the dermatology ward, and the lady doctor asked me what was ailing me. I told her that I'd like to have a tattoo removed. She looked at me with an annoyed expression and began berating me: 'And why did you get a tattoo in the first place? You could have realized that one day you'll change your mind, and now all you're doing is making more work for me!' So I told her that I hadn't exactly been overly enthused about getting this tattoo, and if I'd have had a choice, I would definitely have not let them give me a tattoo. Then I rolled up my sleeve. The doctor immediately did an about-turn and began to apologize profusely; the poor thing had had no idea of what sort of tattoo it was.

After the war I was in Auschwitz with my son to have a look; there are only chimneys left behind. I wanted to show my son camp BIIb (Auschwitz II-Birkenau), where I'd lived. I showed him the latrines, and told him that I had to throw away a diamond broach into them. My father had given it to me back then, so that I'd have something with me for the trip to Hamburg to work as a keepsake. I'd have had to give it away to the Germans, which I definitely didn't want to do, so I preferred to throw it away into the latrine, rather than have the Nazis end up with it! Since the war I've been in Auschwitz only once. Occasionally I participated in Holocaust remembrances, and to this day I attend events put on by the Terezin Initiative 14.

Glossary

Dimitri Kamyshan
Lvov
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Orlikova
Date of Interview: July 2002

Dimitri Kamyshan is a nice and cheerful man. He lives in a clean two- bedroom apartment in Lvov. His wife died, but his children and grandchildren take care of him. His daughter-in-law cooks for him, and his grandson discusses all kinds of issues with his grandfather.

Family background
Growing up
During the War
After the War
Glossary

Family background

My father, Anatoliy Zilberberg, was born in 1902 in Kharkov. His grandfather, Mosey Zilberberg, owned a printing house in Rybnaya Street in Kharkov. Later he got some loans and built a huge printing house in Donets-Zakharzhevskaya Street. It's still located there today. During the Soviet period the printing house was named after Frunze 1. It's a big six-storied building, and the company publishes the majority of all Ukrainian literature.

The Zilberbergs were one of those Jewish families that took an active part in the economic development of Russia in the middle of the 19th century. They were assimilated families. They considered themselves the elite of society and people of the world free from any prejudices related to their nationality or religion. There were no christened Jews among them but quite a few Jews of their status converted to Christianity to demonstrate their loyalty and belonging to these circles. There were many such families in England, Germany and France. They were wealthy merchants and financial barons that had a solid standing in life. My great-grandfather traveled abroad and knew foreign languages. Kharkov was located outside the Jewish Pale of Settlement 2 and Jews weren't allowed to live there, but this didn't apply to our family. My great-grandfather and my grandfather, Albert Zilberberg, were merchants of Guild I 3. They had expensive mansions in the center of the city, they were invited to all parties in the governor's house and attended all meetings of the merchants' assembly.

My grandfather was born in Kharkov in 1860. He went to grammar school and had a special technical education, but I don't know where he studied. There were no signs of religiosity in the interior of the house - it was the standard home of a rich European man not a Jew. What I mean by that is that they didn't have special dishes for Pesach, silver chanukkiyah, religious literature, mezuzah on the door or any other general accessories of the Jewish way of life. I remember my grandfather well: he was a tall, stately, bold-headed man. When he lay down to rest I used to sneak from behind pulling him by the down on his head. He liked to play with me, probably because my father was his favorite son. He used to walk with a carved stick. There was a long stiletto fastened inside. I found it after his death. After he died it also turned out that he had had several lovers. He was a handsome man and my grandmother was a beautiful woman, but he probably needed some variety in his love life.

My grandfather was a professional and his printing house was very profitable. In 1918 it was nationalized by the Soviet power. My grandmother told me that its employees went on strike when the printing house was expropriated by the Soviet authorities. They wanted their master back. And so the authorities appointed my grandfather director and then executive manager of the factory. My grandfather died in a road accident - he was hit by a bus - in 1933 when I was 7 years old. He didn't have a religious funeral. He was carried to the cemetery in a coffin on a black horse-driven cart. The horses had black horsecloths on their backs.

People still remember my grandfather. When I went to Kharkov twelve years ago tenants from one of my grandfather's mansions in the city center saw me and exclaimed, 'Look! This is the owner of the house'.

My grandmother, Raissa Zilberberg [nee Umanskaya], was born in Nikolaev, a regional town, in 1865. She came from a rich assimilated family. Their family also had the right to live in Nikolaev [outside the Pale of Settlement]. Her father must have been a merchant of Guild I or a doctor. Many talented people that contributed to the Russian Empire - and later to the Soviet Union - came from such families. Her nephews Konstantin and Dimitri, the sons of her brother Alexandr Umanskiy, had higher education and knew several foreign languages. Dimitri worked at the Sovinformbureau. Konstantin wrote a book on artists called 'New Russian Art' in 1920. It was issued by a big publishing house in Germany. During the Great Patriotic War 4 he was Soviet Ambassador to the US and made an important contribution to the development of Soviet-American relationships - he made great efforts to arrange for US military assistance in the struggle against the Germans during World War II. The US assisted the Soviet Union with tanks and planes, clothing and food. In January 1945 Konstantin was killed in a plane explosion in Mexico. It may have been arranged by Stalin, because as ambassador he had much authority. The book 'History of Diplomacy' contained quite a few pages about him. Erenburg 5 and Mikhoels 6 were his friends. He was also a member of the Jewish anti-fascist committee.

The Umanskiys and the Zilberbergs identified themselves as Jews and were proud of it. I believe my grandmother and grandfather had a Jewish wedding - otherwise their marriage wouldn't have become valid - but later didn't observe any traditions. They were in those circles of society where nationality didn't matter. They named their children to their liking and didn't care about naming them in honor of their deceased relatives or giving them traditional Jewish names.

My grandparents had six children. All my grandmother's children lived with her, and she was the mistress of the house. Their oldest daughter, Lilia, was born in Kharkov in 1892. She finished Russian grammar school in Kharkov and she worked as a planning manager at a plant. The second child, Victor, born in 1894, also finished grammar school in Kharkov. He was an actor. He was a very handsome man and always dressed very neatly. He lived alone - his wife left him when he fell ill with asthma. He loved cats and dogs, and many of them came to his house, and he gave them food. He was called 'cat man'. Boys often teased him about his love for cats, but he didn't get angry - he just smiled at them. He was a very kind man.

The third child, Ida, born in 1898, also finished grammar school and worked as deputy chief accountant at a plant. She was single and had no children. Then there were twins: Ludmila and Valentina, born in 1900. Valentina died of measles when she was 2 years old. Ludmila was my father's only sister that got married. Her husband, Arkadiy Zbar, was a Jew from Western Ukraine. They were engineers at a plant and had a daughter called Valentina, who was born in 1937.

My father, Anatoliy Zilberberg, the fifth child in the family, was born in 1902. The youngest girl, Tamara, followed in 1910. She was an accountant at a plant in Kharkov. All Zilberbergs died at the same time, but I will talk about that later.

My father was my grandparents' favorite son. He studied at the classical grammar school for boys in Kharkov. He was supposed to get a higher education later. They had classes in religion where they were divided into three groups, according to their religion. The classes were conducted by an Orthodox priest, a Catholic priest and a rabbi. Being a Jew, my father studied religion in the Judaism group, but his family paid little attention to religion, and he was growing up an atheist. My father studied well. He was easy-going, cheerful and popular. Nationality didn't matter to them at all. My father was fond of Russian literature and was very good at mathematics. He finished grammar school during the Civil War 7, so he couldn't enter a higher educational institution, according to new Soviet laws. He came from a bourgeois family and their children had no right to get a higher education. My father finished a course in accounting and became an accountant.

My father met my mother, Olga Kamyshan, in 1923 when he was 21 and working as an accountant. My mother was 18 years old at the time. She was Russian and born in 1905. Her father, Peter Kamyshan, staff-captain in the tsarist army, was commander of a battalion. He was a brave Russian officer. He perished in August 1914 during World War I. He ordered his battalion to attack, stood up as he did so and was shot. He was buried in Kharkov with all military honors. My mother kept his photograph and always had sweet memories of him. That's all I know about my grandfather.

My grandmother, Lidia Kamyshan [nee Zhelezko], born in 1878, came from a Russian aristocratic family. After her husband perished she remarried in 1918. My mother used to say that her stepfather, a Russian, was of lower class. He came from a peasant family. My mother didn't get along with her mother and was telling her off, 'How could you forget my father, an officer and a noble man. Who did you marry?'

When my mother met my father in 1923 her family told her to leave, because they weren't going to accept a Jew as a member of their family. My father's family gave her shelter. The Zilberberg family had no national prejudices and they accepted their Russian daughter-in-law. My mother was a very pretty and nice girl, and my father's parents liked her a lot.

Growing up

I was born in 1927. I was the only nephew of my aunts, and they doted on me. My mother didn't communicate with her mother. When I turned 4 or 5 years old my mother got a message from her mother saying that she wished to meet me. My mother said that she would take me to the meeting place and wait outside. We came to the building where I was expected. An old woman took me by my hand and we went into a room where a big old woman sat in an arm-chair. She looked at me and said, 'Take this zhydyonok away'. [Zhydyonok is rude for 'little Jew'.] This was the only time in my life that I saw my grandmother Lidia. In 1940 my mother was notified that her mother had died. We went to the funeral. My mother used to say that if her father had been alive he wouldn't have chased her away from home regardless of her marrying a Jew, a Greek or a Tartar.

I remember the two-storied mansion in the center of Kharkov, where we lived, and our cozy shady yard. Each member of the family had a room of his own. Later the house was turned into a shared apartment block 8. The family of the chief of the town police lived on the first floor, and my grandmother and her daughters occupied the second floor, an area of about 100 square meters. Their apartment was richly furnished, and there were very expensive dishes and table sets in the cupboards. My grandmother cooked a dinner of three or four courses every day. At weekends we had little pies stuffed with rice. They were supposed to be cut in order to be able to put a slice of sturgeon inside before eating them. She also cooked meat with white sauce at weekends - this was traditional Jewish food. She didn't share her recipes with anybody. The whole family sat at the table together. Everybody had a silver ring with the initials of the owner on it and a snow-white starched napkin pulled through it. There was always a clean tablecloth on the table, and soup was served in a soup bowl. My grandmother was trying to keep the pre-revolutionary traditions of the family intact.

So, she was a housewife at home. But when she heard about a first night at the theater, or a theater group on tour in town, she ordered tickets to be brought home. A cab driver came to the house; she left the house with a lorgnette, in a heel-long gown, and waved at us. Grandmother often went to the theater. And I always saw her with a book. She was complaining that she had read all books in the house. She didn't like the latest publications [from 1920], in which some old letters of the Russian alphabet were replaced with new ones. They were creating a new life and a new society and found it necessary to introduce new things. It was a distorted language to her. She didn't acknowledge the Soviet power. She said it was illegal power of usurpers. She was sarcastic about Lenin. She once said, 'Did it ever occur to him where his ideas would lead?'

There was a big collection of books at home. There were books in Russian and French. Most of them had been published before the Revolution of 1917. We didn't starve in the post-revolutionary years. My grandfather or, maybe my grandmother, managed to buy jewelry for the money they had. I was everyone's darling, and if I asked for something delicious my grandmother took out a ring and went to the Torgsin 9 to sell it and get me what I wanted. We often went there. It was the only shop where it was possible to buy food and clothes. Many people used to buy things there in exchange for their golden valuables.

My father's sisters were spinsters, and they all loved me. I called them by their first names: Ida, Lilia and Tamara, and I was allowed to do anything I wished. My aunts spoke fluent French. They taught me French and raised me. On certain days I was only allowed to talk French with them. They had rather attractive appearances, by the way, and why they were single - I don't know. They were all different. Only now, after so many years have passed, do I realize how much I loved them. Tamara, the youngest one, finished music school and was forcing me to learn to play the piano, although I had no ear for music. I learned to read notes a little. She used to hit me on my fingers when I made mistakes. She was very unbalanced. I guess she wanted a man next to her. In 1941 she was 31. She kept the house and everything in it very clean. Ida was very sickly. We had to take her to Sevastopol to get treatment for a very severe form of radiculitis. I remember that she was taken there on a stretcher and came back even without crutches.

My parents and I lived in a separate apartment in the same building, but I stayed with my grandmother most of the time. My parents went to work and didn't have time to look after me. I spent a lot of time walking and playing in the yard. There were German, Jewish, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian families in the surrounding buildings. All neighbors got along well and spoke Russian. Nationality was of no significance at that time. My friends were Ira Chapanskaya and Bronia Chapanskaya, Valei Ledler, a German girl called Bella Bart and her brother Boris, among the Jews, the Yakshlis, who were Lithuanians, the Askovskis, a Polish family, and Vera and Lyonchik Kirilenko, Ukrainians. We played hide-and-seek, football, and so on.

I wasn't affected by the famine of 1933 [famine in Ukraine] 10. My family fed me well, but I remember starved and begging people in the streets. They often knocked on the door of our apartment begging for a piece of bread. My grandmother always gave them something. A farmer, whom we called 'You-are-welcome', delivered food to our house. He knocked on the door and when asked, 'Who's there?' he replied, 'You-are- welcome'. He brought us products in 1933, too. I was only 6 years old and have no other memories of this horrible time.

I began to study at a Russian secondary school when I was 7. My aunts dressed me up and took me to school on the first day. There were children of different nationalities at school. When I was asked about my nationality I said, 'I'm a Ukrainian Jew' or 'I'm a Jewish Ukrainian'. My class tutor used to laugh at this and said, 'Your name is Zilberberg, and this means you are a Jew'. 'But my mother is Ukrainian', I said. 'Yes, but you have your father's last name. This means you are a Jew, and that's the nationality I'll put down in my register', he replied. I said, 'I don't care what nationality you put down in your register'. My classmates were: Benia Goldwasser and Izia Belenkiy, who were Jews, Gleb Kashyrin, a Russian, Lena Sidorenko and Galia Shkolnik, Ukrainians, and many more. Almost all of our teachers were Jews. Noah, our history teacher, Rebecca, our biology teacher, Esther, our geography teacher, Abram, the director of the school, and so on. We had Ukrainian teachers in mathematics and Ukrainian language. There was a Jewish Technical College near our school, and its name was written in Yiddish. Nobody in our family spoke, wrote or read in Yiddish.

We became a Young Octobrists 11 in the 1st grade. In 1937, when I was in the 3rd grade, we became pioneers. I was very proud of it and had my coat unbuttoned on my way home for people to see my red necktie. The six best pupils in the class were admitted to the Pioneer League first, the rest of the class was to join it later. We were very happy and sang on our way home, 'We are pioneers, the children of working people; the happy future is on its way, and the motto of pioneers is to be ready'. My grandmother made delicacies for me and laid my small table saying, 'It's your holiday today!', although she herself felt rather skeptical about the pioneer thing.

I remember 1937, because quite a few of our acquaintances were arrested. [The interviewee is referring to the so-called Great Terror.] 12 I remember an overwhelming fear in the air. We came to school in the morning and heard that somebody's father had been arrested for being an 'enemy of the people'. Such children were expelled from the Pioneer League. There were many such cases.

We believed that everything we were told about 'enemies of the people' was true. We believed that our country was the best. Our favorite book was Gaidar's 13 Timur and his Team. Like the main character of this book we went to help older people about the house and were very proud of it.

My parents took me on vacation to the Crimea every year. Now I understand that my father and mother didn't earn enough to afford such trips, and that they were probably using my grandmother's savings. [Editor's note: Salaries and wages were very low at the time, and even state officials couldn't afford much for the payment they received.]

During the War

In 1941 I was to go to a pioneer camp for the first time. I was to depart on 23rd June, and on 22nd June my friends and I were planning to go into the wood. I was a little bit afraid of the camp, because my friends told me about the strict discipline there etc. At about 12 o'clock in the afternoon there was an announcement on the radio. 'Listen to an important governmental announcement,' it began. And then we heard the speech of Molotov 14. My father was in a bar at the time - he was very fond of beer.

I heard about the war and was very glad that we would be soldiers and defeat the enemy. After two or three days we began to patrol the yards and streets. We, younger boys and girls, wanted to be on duty during night hours. There was a power plant about 500-600 meters from where we lived, and the Germans were trying to hit it with bombs. We noticed once that somebody was signaling with a flashlight. I called our defense headquarters and they caught a man signaling to the enemy. The first real bombing was on 3rd September 1941. The bombings continued from then on, and we were hiding in all kinds of basements. My aunt Lilia perished at the beginning of September during the first air raid in Kharkov. Evacuation began in the town. People were arguing about evacuation. My grandmother was convinced that the Germans would not hurt people, that they were cultured and educated people. My grandmother was very authoritative in the family and so it was decided that we would stay. Our friends advised my parents to change my last name to my mother's if we were going to stay. On 1st October 1941, two weeks before the Germans reached Kharkov, my mother had my last name changed to Kamyshan in a local registry office.

I remember the Soviet troops retreating. Exhausted soldiers in shabby clothes, carts and horses, women asking, 'Who are you leaving us with?', and soldiers replying, 'Why are you staying?'. Then there was nobody around for some time, and then the Germans came. We stayed at home for two days. Then our neighbor Marfusha told us that the Germans had issued their first orders for Jews and children from mixed families to move to a village with a tractor factory. It was forbidden to go out after 4pm, and those that violated this rule were to be shot immediately.

Victor was the next one in our family who perished. He had asthma, had an attack one day and was gasping for air. He went out to get some medication. At that time Soviet forces blasted the Kossior 15 mansion, which was housing the German Headquarters, with a radio- controlled mine. It killed three German generals as we found out later. The Germans issued an order to arrest 1,500 hostages, all men. Victor was among these hostages. One day he and a few others were hung. The Germans hanged these men from a balcony. They tied their hands and feet, put on a loop and threw them from the balcony. If somebody from the crowd cried out, policemen killed them immediately. The policemen were from Western Ukraine and spoke their own dialect that we didn't understand. They were wearing yellow and blue bands, the (symbol of the Ukrainian liberation army, which cooperated with the Germans.

We were very scared. The ghetto was established at the end of November 1941, and when we were on the way there we didn't know what our point of destination was. We were to move to the ghetto, but my grandmother was hoping that we would be able to ransom ourselves, so she took all her gold with her. All Jews of Kharkov were walking along the main street of the town. People were joining the march on the way. My mother was seeing us off walking on the pavement. She couldn't get me out of the crowd, because nobody dared to violate the order for all Jews and half-Jews to get on the way. She was Russian and was not supposed to be with us. Arkadiy, Ludmila's husband, was carrying little Valentina, and my mother begged him to leave the little girl with her. But he refused saying, 'She was born a Jew and she will die a Jew'. Valentina was crying. She was freezing.

We walked and walked leaving the houses behind and entering the industrial zone in Kharkov. We were escorted by policemen and German soldiers, and they shot everyone who tried to escape. We came to some barracks with no heating or any other comforts. The Germans were just beginning to work on the fencing and took no notice of our discomforts. My father and other younger men were taken away. We came inside a barrack with broken windows and doors, no stove, nothing. Ludmila, Arkadiy and Valentina went to the corner and Ida and Mara burst into tears. I said, 'Don't cry, it'll be fine'. After about an hour and a half a German soldier was passing by, and my grandmother said to him, 'These are people, you know, and it's impossible to live here'. Without saying a word he took out his gun and shot my grandmother. My family buried her near the barracks. Ida said to me, 'Dimitri, this is death here. You need to escape from here in the dark'. My father came to see us later, and I told him that Ida had told me to escape. He said he agreed. I asked him about himself, and he said he would try to find me later. I went to the fence and crawled underneath it.

I headed home to my mother. My mother loved her mother-in-law dearly and we mourned my grandmother's death. In the morning our neighbor Marfusha came to tell us that our neighbors wrote a report on us saying that my real name was Zilberberg and that my mother was a communist. She said we had to leave. We didn't take any luggage and left for Zhuravlyovka in the suburbs of Kharkov, where Marfusha's relatives lived. Marfusha was a housemaid and worked for our neighbor one floor below. She was a very decent and honest woman. She didn't only save my life - she also saved all our family valuables and photographs and documents and returned them to my mother.

A few days later Marfusha brought a note from Ida. Ida wrote, 'Olga, save Dimitri. We are dead. Valentina was shot'. Marfusha helped us to get in touch with my father when he escaped from the ghetto two or three days before the mass shootings began. My mother obtained a new passport for my father, and he had to leave us. He couldn't stay, because it was too risky for the old woman that kept us in her house. My father said he was going in the direction of Poltava. Later people, who went to the villages around to exchange clothes for bread and pork fat, said that he was shot in the village of Reshetilovka [12 km from Poltava], but I don't know if that was true. I know for sure though that my father didn't survive.

The front-line was about 25-30 kilometers from Kharkov, and the Germans didn't allow people to leave the city. They didn't have enough food in the stores, and in December 1941 a famine broke out. Over 100,000 people died in Kharkov in the first three months of the occupation. It was impossible to get any food in January, February and March and we ate potato peels that my mother picked from the garbage pan, washed and fried.

Our old landlady didn't want to keep us in her house any more. She told my mother that she was afraid that the Germans would kill her for keeping a 'zhydyonok' as she called me. She believed that my mother was a Jew as well. My mother told her that she came from a noble Russian family and showed her a picture of her father from an all-Russian magazine called Ogonyok. My mother and I were hiding in a small room from January till March. When policemen came I was hiding in the attic, and sometimes my mother had to bribe them with gold to stop their search.

My mother wasn't very enthusiastic about the Soviet power before the war, but the war turned her into a patriot. Once we got a copy of the Pravda newspaper. Before the war its slogan was 'Proletariat all over the world, unite!' but that time it said, 'Death to the German occupants!' and further, 'Read this and give the newspaper to your friend'. We read this newspaper from beginning to end.

One has to live through occupation to know what it's really like. On the third day of occupation my mother and I were walking across a bridge in Kharkov. My mother had put on some lipstick. There was an old man walking in our direction and a German walking on the pavement. The old man was supposed to give way to the German. But the German shot him before he even managed to step aside. My mother and I froze. He cursed and smeared my mother's lipstick all over her face. He slapped my mother on her cheek with the back of his palm. We knew then that we were not human beings to them. The Germans sealed our apartment because there were many valuables in it. But when I visited Kharkov twelve years ago I saw some unique floor vases that had belonged to my grandmother in one of the companies. This means that the Germans had probably not taken all our belongings to Germany, but I can't prove that the vases belonged to our family.

My mother got to know that her stepfather was chief of the address agency. She went to him asking him to save my life. He said, 'The life of this zhydyonok?'. My mother said, 'Yes, that's what my mother called him, but in the memory of her, who you loved, please help me to save her grandson'. He removed a card with my name and the names of my parents from his desk and destroyed it. We moved into an abandoned apartment. Kharkov was liberated in February 1942. A colonel from a rifle division stayed in our apartment, and I was very happy about it. He gave me his rifle and I began to shoot at German planes flying in the sky. I went to the district Komsomol committee to become a Komsomol member 16.

In March 1942 the Germans began a counterattack. The regional Komsomol committee formed a Komsomol team for the defense of the city. We were ordered to come to the regional Komsomol committee with a plate, mug and spoon on 9th March. There were 300 to 400 of us. My mother couldn't convince me to stay at home. She gave me a hug and I left. We stayed at the regional committee overnight. In the morning several German tanks came to town. We had to leave, and we actually had to cross the front line. We didn't have any food, but we ate the meat of a wounded horse that we came across on the way. It took us two weeks to get there. My mother didn't know where I was and she walked around town looking for me among the dead.

About 15 of us came to the Komsomol committee in Kupiansk at the end of March 1942. Nobody waited for us there. They sent us to Grecheno village [30 km from Kupiansk]. We all stayed in one room, but at least we were given a bowl of pea soup once a day. I became a shoemaker's apprentice. I went to the military registration office asking them to send me to the army. But I was under 16 years old and the chief refused me every time. Once I went there in June 1942 and the chief I knew wasn't there any longer. His replacement was a Jewish man, one of my father's acquaintances, from Kharkov. He asked me how I was, and I burst into tears telling him that my whole family had perished. He told me to come back the following day, and on that day I joined a reserve tank regiment in the village of Grecheno.

I had no idea what discipline in the army was like. I was ordered to do something, but in response I asked, 'Why?'. For this I was punished with another task to do. I asked, 'Why?' again, and again was given an additional task as punishment for my undisciplined conduct. Well, I do admit, I've always had a problem with discipline.

I also faced anti-Semitism in the army. I looked like a typical Jew. On my 16th birthday on 23rd September a soldier said to me, 'You zhyd [kike] with payes!'. He was referring to the the first traces of a beard on my face. I jumped onto him hitting him with my fists. We were both punished for fighting. We had to dig a pit and were both put into it and stayed there for four hours. Then our commanding officer asked us whether we would continue fighting. That soldier replied that he wasn't going to stop calling me names. That was the first time I faced such anti-Semitism, and I found it ugly and couldn't understand where it came from.

It was a very hard year during which we lost almost all our tanks. I was in the gunmen unit. We were losing large numbers of people. I remember an incendiary shell hitting our artillery storage facility starting a fire. The three of us were pulling boxes with shells from the facility that was on fire. I was awarded a medal for 'Service in the Battle'. I took part in the liberation of the towns of Artyomovsk and Krasnoarmeysk in Donbass. People in those towns, that were almost completely destroyed, rejoiced seeing us. We saw heaps of dead children's bodies. The Germans and the policemen had grabbed them by their legs and swung them against the edge of a well. We were told to follow the murderers and kill them. We shot their truck and drove over the ones that jumped off the truck in an effort to run away.

The most memorable and unforgettable event was the liberation of Zaporozhiye in October 1943, because it was the first time in the history of the Great Patriotic War when tanks were involved in a night attack. The tanks had floodlights on them, and the attack started at 11 pm. The Germans were so lost that they began to climb out of their trenches. Later they pulled themselves together and began to shoot at the tanks. We were sitting on the tanks and many soldiers were falling under the tracks of the tanks they were sitting on. There were ten to twelve soldiers on each tank. There was a handrail around the tank tower on some tanks. We were holding onto the rail with our left hand while holding a gun in our right hand. There were some tanks without such handrails and there was nothing soldiers on top of them could hold on to. Only three of 86 gunmen in the unit survived the battle of Zaporozhiye. Twenty years later I was awarded a medal 'For Bravery" in this battle.

On 23rd August 1943 Kharkov was liberated, and I wrote to my mother. My mother responded to all my letters and even sent me a picture of herself that I always kept with me in my chest pocket. I was wounded during a battle near the village of Poltavka, Nikolaev region. I was wounded on my left hand first, and then something hit me on my chest. I didn't understand at first what it was, but in the hospital the doctors found out that it was a bullet that hit my mother's photograph leaving a bruise on my chest. It would have killed me if it hadn't been for my mother's picture. I stayed in hospital in Dnepropetrovsk and then in Kharkov. I had a contraction of my left hand and had to return home.

After the War

The Zilberberg's apartment was occupied by some people, and my mother and I were afraid of going back there. We still remembered so clearly the tragedy of our family. We got a small room in a shared apartment. My mother went to work at the same book agency where she had worked before the war. She was an accountant.

I had finished 6 years at a secondary school before the war and needed to complete my studies. There was a technical college not far from our house. It used to be a Jewish technical college before the war, but later it was converted into a machine building college. I went to see the director of this college and explained my family situation to him. I told him that I was probably too old for the 7th grade, and he agreed to take me on at the college for a probation period. I studied very well and was even appointed Komsomol unit leader. We celebrated Victory Day in the college on 9th May 1945. We had a dancing party. Our Komsomol unit was responsible for order at the party. A group of drunk people came to the party. They started a fight and killed one of the students. There was a trial, and I pointed on the one that had stabbed that student. He hissed at me, 'I'll be out soon, and you'll be a dead man'. He was released within a year's time. Nothing happened because I had decided to move to another place before then.

It was dangerous to stay in Kharkov. It was full of sad memories about my family; and besides, we didn't have a decent place to live. My mother went to Lvov - she had pleasant memories about visiting Lvov on business trips before the war. I quit college and finished an evening secondary school in Kharkov to obtain a certificate saying that I had completed secondary education. I went to Moscow to enter the Institute of Oriental Studies. The competition was high - 14 applicants per admission unit - but I was successful and stayed in Moscow. But this Institute didn't have a hostel for students and my Uncle Dimitri, who I was staying with, had problems at work during the campaign against cosmopolitans 17. My uncle, who was deputy director of the Sovinformbureau before the war, was about to lose his job, and I couldn't stay with him much longer. I had to move to Lvov.

I entered the Pedagogical Institute there without exams, but I was very upset believing that my life was lost, as my dream was the career of a diplomat, and I was to become a teacher instead. I thought so until I had practice in my 3rd year of studies. I conducted my first lesson and earned applause for it, and I liked it. I never regretted becoming a teacher. I like children and teaching.

My mother lived in a dark and dull room on the first floor of an old building in Lvov. There were some other tenants in this same apartment, but I don't remember any of them. There was anti-Semitism in Lvov after the war, but nobody asked me questions about my nationality, and I didn't tell anybody about my father. Sometimes fellow students that came to visit us said, 'Hey, you look so very much like your mother, and your mother looks like a typical Jew'. 'Yes, she does', I said, 'only she's not a Jew'.

There were quite a few Jewish students at the Russian Philology Faculty of Lvov Pedagogical Institute. I studied at the Faculty of History and there were only two Jews in my group: Fania Idnevskaya and Gregory Ivoyev. My co-students called Fania 'zhydovka' [kike]. I was deputy chief of the Komsomol unit of the Pedagogical Institute and said to such students that calling someone names like this was a violation of the law. Then I heard someone say, 'Look, the boy protects his own people'. I studied well and received the highest grades, but when there was the issue of a Lenin scholarship - it was awarded to the best students - it was decided to give it to a local guy that had lower grades than I did. But he came from Western Ukraine and 'student Kamyshan' came from Eastern Ukraine, so the latter could do very well without a Lenin scholarship. Western Ukrainians were awful anti- Semites. They hated Jews, but they also hated Russians and everything Russian.

I graduated from the Pedagogical Institute in 1951 and was supposed to receive a job assignment in the girl's school in the center of Lvov, where all best students were sent to work. But this vacancy was given to the daughter of the first secretary of the town party committee. I got an assignment as inspector of the district education committee in a town in Lvov region instead. I worked there for a month and a half until I was appointed deputy director in the village of Dobrotvor. It was a big lower secondary school with some 430 pupils. It was housed in a long barrack. This barrack was a shabby facility. I was young and full of energy and kept writing letters to the district management saying that it was necessary to build a new school in Dobrotvor.

The director of the school didn't like it. He called me once and said, 'Kamyshan, you'll pay for writing these letters. If the Germans didn't do with you, we shall'. I replied that I wasn't going to stop writing letters until the children got a new school. The situation in the villages caused much concern. There were quite a few armed Ukrainian national patriots in the woods. They often came to villages threatening people that cooperated with the Soviet authorities. There was an 80- year-old priest in our village. He said, 'Every power comes from God. You may not like the Soviet power, but as it comes from God you have to obey'. The bandits hung him in 1952 with a sign on his chest reading, 'He spoke for the Soviet power'.

Children at our school were afraid to wear their pioneer's red neckties. The local citizens didn't hide their joy on the day of Stalin's death on 5th March 1953. I thought his death was a loss for the country. I thought things were not going to be right afterwards. His role in the war was great. It was only due to his cruelty that we won, due to his orders of 'Not a step backwards', and to shoot anybody retreating without a commander's order.

Well, the next event in my life was that I was put into prison. Here is what happened. The local children weren't willing to become pioneers. They were against the Soviet power. Many families were arriving from Eastern Ukraine. Their children came to school and they were pioneers. Once a local boy hit a boy from Eastern Ukraine demanding that he took off his pioneer's necktie. That pupil was a big boy and he began to smother that boy with his red necktie. I came to his rescue and hit that boy on his face several times. The other children were watching the scene. An investigation officer came and opened a case against me. The trial was scheduled for 17th June 1953 during final exams. My pupils came to school early in the morning to take their exams in history, and later we all went to the court sitting in the district town.

I was sentenced to three years imprisonment for exceeding my office commission and was deprived of the right to be a teacher in the future. I was put into jail in Lvov. What saved me was my good memory and the possibility to read. There was a thief in this jail that held a higher hierarchal position among inmates. He liked to listen to stories I told him. I told him a lot from the historical novels and other books that I had read. He took me under his guardianship: The others didn't touch me, nobody opened the parcels that my mother brought me, and I had the best spot in the cell.

There were usually several inmates in one prison cell. The attitude towards newcomers was cruel. They were beaten and punished for everything they did and weren't allowed any freedom. They got a place to sleep near the toilet. Once the thief asked me why I was sentenced and advised me to submit a request to transfer me to a camp. I submitted quite a few such requests. There was no anti-Semitism in jail. I stayed in this prison in Lvov for over a year. My mother brought me parcels and supported me in every possible way. Later I was sent to a camp to cut wood in the Belyie Sady, near Moscow. I worked in the library and club of the camp.

In 1955, at the solicitation of Ukraine's Minister of Education, I was released from prison and cleared of all the accusations, and the judge that had heard my case was fired. But it was impossible to find a job in Lvov. I got a job assignment to work as a teacher in a village. I met my future wife there. Her name was Lubov Goroshko. She was Ukrainian. She came from Galychyna, a district in Western Ukraine. She was born in the town of Gorodok, Lvov region, in 1932.

I can illustrate the attitude of Western Ukrainians towards Eastern Ukrainians with the following episode: When I entered the Ukrainian school in this village with all my awards on my jacket I heard someone say, 'Oh, another moscal [nickname for a Russian] has come'. I pretended that I hadn't heard it. After two months I asked that boy, 'Why did you say that?'. 'Well, because I am a Westerner,' he replied. 'Are people from Eastern Ukraine not human?' I wanted to know. 'People from Galychyna are still the best people', he said. I replied, 'Who told you that?' His answer was: 'MyY mother.'

My wife's relatives thought about those that came from Eastern Ukraine in the same way. When we got married her parents said to her, 'Get out of here and go to the moscals, both of you'. If they had known that I was half Jewish they would have probably killed us both. I told Lubov about my history, and we decided to keep silent about my father. She promised to speak only Russian in the family, not a word in Ukrainian, because Russian was my mother tongue, and my Ukrainian was very poor. Although she was a teacher of Ukrainian she followed our agreement. We had a civil wedding ceremony in the local registry office and rented a room in the village where I worked. We seldom met her relatives.

In 1957 we moved to Lvov. I worked at the Russian school and my wife at the Ukrainian one. We lived with my mother although it was a very small room with no comforts whatsoever, but there was no alternative. My mother was a proud woman and didn't want to ask her management for living improvements. Later she had to quit her job due to her hypertension disease. My mother died of a stroke in 1984.

Our daughter, Larissa, was born in this small room in 1957. Later my wife and I received a small two-bedroom apartment, and in 1962 our son, Pavel, was born. I kept my word, and my children didn't know who their grandfather was or what kind of family I came from. My wife and I were very fond of our work. We used to take our pupils on trips to various towns. The Jewish topic was gradually vanishing from my life. I worked in various schools, both Russian and Ukrainian. There was no anti- Semitism in the Ukrainian schools in Lvov, because Ukrainians were the only nationality there. Western Ukrainians did not acknowledge any other nationalities. In Russian schools there were teachers and children of various nationalities, and there were different relationships. There were no abusive demonstrations of anti-Semitism. Jews didn't feel much different from other nationalities. It was an environment in which the world consisted of Ukrainians and everybody else.

Neither my wife nor I were members of the Communist Party. I was not interested, and my wife's relatives had struggled for the independence of Ukraine. She would have betrayed their ideals if she had become a party member.

Larissa finished a Russian school and graduated from the Pedagogical Institute, but she didn't want to become a teacher. She said that she saw us working so hard, and until late at night, and wanted a different life. She became an interpreter. She has worked with companies and tour agencies ever since. Every now and then she can earn good money, but sometimes she can hasve no work at all. Her daughter Polina was born in 1980. She finished Medical School and works as a masseuse. She is single.

Pavel had encephalitis in his infancy, and his left hand and leg were partially paralyzed. Doctors recommended to send him in for sports, and he began to attend a self-defense club. He was a success and took part in contests. He became so fond of sports that he entered the Institute of Physical Culture and became a trainer in self- defense. Pavel is married and has two children: Anton, born in 1984 and Anna, born in 1988.

My wife and I spoke Russian in the family and our children knew nothing about their Jewish origin. In 1990 I fell ill. I had several hypertension strokes. I thought that if I died there would be no memories left about my close ones, my family. I wrote a letter to Yad Vashem 18. They sent me questionnaires and I filled them out. When my wife saw them she said, 'You do whatever you want to do, but our agreement is still valid'. In 1995 Lubov died of cancer.

In 1996 my son Pavel went to work in Israel. He had friends there. They invited him to come to the country as a tourist, and later they arranged for him to get a job as a masseur. He liked it in Israel. He worked there over three years until he came back here speaking about this state with great enthusiasm. It was only after my son returned from Israel, that I told him and my grandchildren the story of my family. They cried with me and showed much understanding.

My grandchildren, Anton and Anna, showed much interest in Israel and the history and traditions of the Jewish people. Anton, a student at a Computer College, has enrolled in the Jewish organization of Hillel. He attends their workshops and has become an expert on Judaism. Anna goes to school. She is very good at drawing. She made illustrations on subjects in the Old Testament, which were exhibited by the Sholem Aleichem 19 Jewish Cultural Society1.

My son decided to take his grandfather's last name and is now called Pavel Zilberberg. As for me, I still feel that the last name Kamyshan saved my life, and the name Zilberberg has too many fearful associations to me.

I have two dreams: I would like to go to Kharkov, to this dreadful death site, and I want to visit Israel - just visit and come back, because old trees cannot be replanted.

Jewish life in Ukraine has revived within the last ten years. I don't observe any Jewish traditions - simply because I don't know them. But I am interested in the history and traditions of my people. Sometimes I go to celebrate holidays at Hesed. Hesed assists people and helps them to communicate. We have many new friends. They are all very nice people. We feel very well in Hesed. It's very important for older people to feel support and communicate with one another.

Glossary

Magdalena Berger Belgrade Serbia Interviewer: Rachel Chanin

Family background Growing up During the war Post-war

Family background

My father, David Grossberger, was born in Bonyhad (Hungary) in 1891 to Leopold Grossberger and Roza Grossberger (nee Veseli). Leopold and Roza Grossberger moved to Subotica with their 8 children to pursue a better financial and Jewish life. At the time, Yugoslavia offered a more tolerant and receptive atmosphere for religious Jews as well as more economic opportunities. Once in Yugoslavia, Leopold worked as a peddler in local markets. While he was not as poor as many of the other people in the community, he never achieved great financial success. Leopold and Roza were both very observant and raised their family that way. In their later years they were supported by their children, and Leopold devoted himself to Torah study.

My father loved and respected his parents but he was not able to remain as steadfast in his observance and worldview as they. As a young adult he moved to the less religious city of Sombor. It is not known why he left but I believe that part of the motivation was to allow himself space for his more relaxed religious observance. In Sombor, he opened a textile factory and a wholesale textile shop. The factory was named something like Prva Jugoslovenska Fabrika za Tapaciranje, and is still located near the bus station in Sombor. The factory was functioning up to a few years ago. The shop was on the ground floor of the building where we lived.

Because he tried so hard, my father achieved a level of success his father never had. He was a successful businessman, which allowed his family to live a comfortable but by no means extravagant life. I remember that my father never gave us pocket money and he urged us to play with his workers' children. My father kept a diary on his business activities so that we, his children, would know that he was an honest businessman. Despite his success he always maintained a sense of modesty and made sure we all did as well.

Growing up

My father married my mother, Klara Guszman of Sombor, and they had two children together: my brother Andrija-Tzvi Grossberger, who was born in 1924, and me. I was born in 1926. My mother was born in 1903. She came from an entirely non-religious Jewish family from Sombor. She died when I was eight years old but I remember her as a sensitive and artistic woman. When she was not in the sanatorium, she enjoyed playing the piano and painting, but she was sick most of the time until she died in 1934. My father, my brother and I were on our family farm on T'isha B'av of that year when my father, my brother and a cousin left the farm in the family car for the city. They were headed to town for her funeral. I only learned later about her death. I have no recollection of whether shiva was observed for her or anything about that time.

My father remarried in 1936. His sister was living in Romania. She introduced him to a woman named Joli Kohn and they married sometime thereafter. I don't remember the specifics of their courtship or where and when they married. However, I recall that it was a very natural transition when my stepmother came to live with us. Joli was religious. She did not wear a wig but I think she did go to the mikvah (ritual bath). In the few years that my stepmother lived in Sombor before the war, she did not make many friends and did not socialize much. Her mother and the rest of her family would come to visit her in Sombor but she did not travel back to Romania. My stepmother was a very strict and conventional woman and kept me under close observation even when I was in my late teens.

We had an apartment on the first floor of an apartment building on Laze Kostic and Bojevica Venac in Sombor, and also a farm outside the city. One female servant and a cook lived and worked in our house. These women were foreigners and non-Jews. The servants were a normal practice at the time and not a sign of luxury. In our family's case they were especially necessary because my mother, Klara, was often sick and my stepmother did not know how to cook.

My parents, and then my father and stepmother, socialized almost exclusively with Jews. I cannot recall them having any non-Jewish friends. But none of them socialized much. It was not the custom for Jews to go to bars. Those who did were put on an informal community blacklist. When they went out, many went to one particular pastry shop in Sombor. My parents usually celebrated the secular New Year at home with us children. Only one year, 1940-41, was I allowed to celebrate the New Year at a friend's house.

Sombor was not a large Jewish community. Most of the 1,000 Jews that lived in the town belonged to the Neolog (Conservative) community. There were some Orthodox Jews but they were a minority and were in general much poorer than the other Jews. They did not have a big synagogue, only a few shtiebls.

There was a large Neolog synagogue in the center of Sombor, close to our house, where we were members. I would go to the synagogue with my aunt and grandmother, and we sat in our permanent seats, on the left side near the ark. From there I could see my father sitting in the men's section. The service was traditional and all in Hebrew and the congregation could follow and participate. During the Torah reading the cantor would call out in German (or maybe it was Yiddish, I'm not sure): "Who has a contribution for the chevra kadishah?"

There was no hall in the synagogue so there was no socializing after the service. When my brother had his bar mitzvah, the family's guests and relatives came back to the house after the service for kiddush. In this community of modest means, it was not customary to provide lunch for the guests. I remember that my brother received some gifts, including 10 of the same pen sets.

Our family was less religious than Father's parents but we were certainly not a typical Neolog Jewish family in Sombor: we were considerably more observant than most of the other non-Orthodox Jews in Sombor at the time. We kept kosher and bought all of the meat from the kosher butcher. I believe that my father maintained these traditions more out of respect for his parents than out of ideology.

My family observed the Shabbat. Father's store was closed on Saturday and although my brother and I went to school on Saturdays, we were not allowed to write or do other things that violated the Sabbath. On Friday, Mother lit candles and we had a Shabbat dinner. Dinner usually consisted of a goose, goose liver, charvas, kiska, fried eggs and onions. For the second Shabbat meal we ate cholent and cold zucchini. The Shabbat leftovers were then eaten the rest of the week. We rarely had beef, mostly only poultry, and we made challah at home. I recall my father saying havdalah at the end of each Sabbath, using a flat, braided, brightly colored candle.

All Jewish holidays were observed in our house. Before Rosh Hashanah we would buy a chicken and perform kaporot at home and then take the dead chicken to the butcher. On Succoth my family had a small succah on our terrace. Not many other people had one but each year my father put one up and decorated it. He would cut up strips of colored paper and hang paper chains around the succah. We would eat in the succah during this week. We had the family Seder at our house, which my father led. The Haggadah was read in Hebrew and I believe that we had copies with a translation in Hungarian. As the youngest child, I was always responsible for reading the Ma Nishtana (the four questions about the meaning of Pesach). We celebrated Purim but I cannot remember where the Purim Ball was held or exactly what the service in the synagogue was like. On Hanukah we lit a menorah (candlabra) and the children played dreidel (spinning top), gambling for walnuts. I don't remember getting presents but I know that it was common for most Jewish families to light Hanukah candles.

Even though my family was more religious than the other Jews in our community, I had no problem socializing with the other children. My family's religious practices were never an issue for me as a young girl. In all other respects my childhood was similar to that experienced by the other Jewish children in Sombor at the time.

There was no Jewish school in Sombor, the closest was in Novi Sad, so I attended the local schools. There were 3 or 4 other Jewish kids in my class at school, but no Jewish teachers. The Jewish children were always among the best students. In my grade, boys and girls were in the same class. Once a week all the children in the school had religion lessons. Each minority group had a teacher sent in to teach that group. All of the Jewish kids in the school were together in one class for this lesson. We mainly studied Bible stories and Hebrew. The law allowed us Jewish children to stay at home on Jewish holidays. The Jewish children in my school went to school on Saturdays but none of the Jewish kids went to school on the holidays.

I recall that young people did not socialize or travel in those days as they do now; people spent more time closer to home. As a child I went to school and came home. During the free time I rode bicycle or played by the canal near our house. My friends did not come to our house very often and almost never slept over. Most of my friends were Jewish but I had a few non- Jewish friends. Once the war started the non-Jewish children in the school would no longer socialize with the Jewish ones. I would pass other kids from my class on the street and they would not say hello. However, even during the war I maintained friendships with two Serbian students from school.

Like most of the teenagers in Sombor at the time, I took both dance lessons and music lessons. I took a dance course for several months and although I did not enjoy it, I finished the course. I took private piano lessons at a Jewish woman's house, but was not very good, and quit after a while. I also had private French lessons after school. All of these things were normal practices for young adults at the time.

I was a member of the local Hashomer Hazair youth group. We used to meet in the yard of the synagogue and sing songs but I cannot remember what else we did. I was not particularly Zionist but the youth group was something to do. We did not go on trips because the parents would not let youth go away overnight. Occasionally, the Hashomer Hazair youth from Subotica would come to Sombor. My brother was not in Hashomer Hazair but he was a scout for a while. My family did not travel much but Father would take us to the Croatian seaside or to Bled for summer vacations and we spent time on our family farm.

During the war

We remained in Sombor through spring 1944 when the Hungarian fascists took control of the region. When the Jews from Sombor were captured and held hostage, my father put up one million of the required two million Hungarian pengo ransom to have the Jews released. My stepmother and I were deported to Austria, were we were held in a labor camp. In 1944, while in the camp, my stepmother gave birth to a baby girl. I was given the honor of naming the baby and I called her Mira Ruth Grossberger. As an infant she was quite ill and my stepmother wanted her to have two names to protect her from death.

Post-war

We were liberated on the 8 May 1945 and immediately left Austria. We returned to Sombor, where we learned that my father had been killed in Auschwitz. I finished the last year of high school in Sombor and then moved to Belgrade. In Belgrade, I lived in the Jewish dormitory and studied at the Faculty of Technology. In the meantime, my stepmother and half-sister went to Israel. Mira still lives in Israel and my stepmother died in Israel in 1989.

I met my husband after the war, in the Jewish student dormitory in the Belgrade synagogue. He came from a rural Jewish family that was not at all religious. He had a drastically different upbringing than I did. For example, his father was inclined to drink a lot, and socialized with the local gypsies, things that my father never did. We married in Belgrade on the same day as another Jewish couple from the dormitory. The two of us, the other couple and all the witnesses lived in the Jewish dormitory, which confused the judge officiating at the weddings. We married on a Friday because on Friday afternoons the Jewish cafeteria served the best lunch, beans and apple pie, which served as our wedding feast.

Ivan and I had one son, Ivar, who was born in 1957 in Zemun. Ivan, while aware of his Jewish background, was never active in the Jewish community. We lived in Zemun and worked a lot and there was not much time left to go to the community. My son is 43 and not married and says that he is waiting to find a nice educated Ashkenazi woman to marry. Personally, I am inclined to think that this is just an excuse.

Lea Beraha
Sofia
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Maiya Nikolova
Date of interview: August 2002

Mrs. Lea Beraha lives in an apartment of an apartment block situated in a nice quarter of Sofia. Her home is very well kept, clean and tidy. Mrs. Beraha is an extremely energetic person and very active both physically and mentally. She shows  natural inclination for dominating the conversation, as well as for a concrete statement of her ideas. In spite of her age, she continues to keep her body and mind fit. She is full of life, well informed and interested in everything happening around her.

Family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

Family background

My ancestors, both on my mother's and my father's side, are Sephardi Jews. After the persecutions of the Jews in Spain, they spread all over Europe [see Expulsion of the Jews from Spain] 1. I didn't know my grandparents as they died early. I only have vague memories of my paternal grandfather, Betzalel Delareya, and of my maternal one, Benjamin Mamon. I don't remember anything specific about their looks or their surroundings.

My father, Yako Delareya, born in 1885, was orphaned very young. My grandfather's second wife, Rashel Delareya, chased away all his children from his first marriage. She gave birth to three kids. My father told us that he used to clean the ships in Ruse for which he got a salary. One of his brothers was a peddler and the other one was a cutter-tailor in an underwear studio. One of his sisters was a worker and the other one a seller. I don't remember anything particular about them. They all left for Israel. We had hardly any contact with them. Now they are all gone. My father's kin is from Lom and Vidin, whereas my mother's is from Sofia.

I don't remember anything about my maternal grandparents. My mother, Rebecca Delareya, nee Mamon, was born in 1904. She had four sisters and four brothers. They all took care of each other. One of my mother's brothers owned a café and the other one was a clothes' seller. I only remember that one of them was called Solomon, but I don't know which one. Her sisters were housewives. They spoke mostly Ladino and Bulgarian. My mother's kin had a house on Slivnitsa Blvd. My mother's eldest brother inherited the property from his father and compensated his siblings financially.

Unfortunately I don't know how my father and my mother actually met. After the events of 1923 2, in which my father took part, he returned to Lom - I don't know where from - with my mother, whom he was already married to. They settled in the village of Vodniantsi. With his little savings my father bought a small shop - a grocery-haberdashery. My mother told me that they were quite well off at that time. Because of his active participation in the events of 1923, my father was arrested. Then some villagers robbed both the household and the grocery. All that my mother could save was an apron, which I inherited after she and my sister, Eliza Eshkenazi, nee Delareya, moved to Israel. This apron became a real treasure for our family.

When my father was arrested, my mother was eight months pregnant and my brother, Betzalel Delareya, born in 1921, was two years old. My father was sent from Vodniantsi to Lom, Belogradchik and Mihailovgrad. There the prisoners were forced to dig their own graves. The witnesses said that after the execution the grave 'boiled' like a dunghill piled up with half- dead bodies. Luckily my father was late for the execution. Some of the Vodniantsi villagers helped my mother with some food and alcohol. My mother took my brother and accompanied her husband, shackled in chains, and the two horsemen convoying him. They stopped quite often on the road using my mother's pregnancy as an excuse, though, actually, while having a rest, the two guards ate the food and drank the alcohol. Thus my mother helped them to be delayed and instead of arriving in Mihailovgrad in the evening - the grave was dug the whole night and the prisoners were shot and buried in the morning - they only arrived around 11am the next morning.

The policemen swore at my father and sent him to Vidin to put him on trial there. I have no idea how many years he was given but because of different amnesties he was released after two years from Baba Vida Fortress 3. When my mother went to visit him there, she passed my brother over the fence. The other prisoners held him and took from his clothes letters especially hidden there for them. At that time, while my father was in prison, my mother had a stillborn child. Then she began working as a servant cleaning other people's houses. She survived thanks to food charity and the little money she was given for the housework. Thus she was able to provide for my brother and bring food to my father in prison.

When my father was freed, the family first tried to stay at my grandfather's, as he had some kind of property and could shelter them, but my father's stepmother chased them away. Then they came to Sofia and settled on the grounds of the Arat tobacco factory. My father started working there as a courier, while my mother worked as a cleaner. By destiny's whim I later worked as a doctor in the very same tobacco factory for 14-15 years. While my mother was pregnant with me, she once fell down when carrying buckets full of coals. Therefore I was born with a trauma, moreover we both had a scar on the hip.

Growing up

Before the internment we used to live in Odrin Street where we had two rooms with a small kitchen. The conditions were still extremely miserable. Because of the constant arrests my father's status got worse and worse, and therefore every house we used to rent was poorer than the previous one. I have lived in places full of sweat and mould. We never had our own property. My father's income was very insufficient and every time we had to change our lodging to a poorer one at a lower rent. All these living estates were in the third region - the Jewish quarter in Slivnitsa Blvd., Odrin Street, Tri ushi Street, Morava Street. [What is called the third region today was the poorest quarter in Sofia when Lea was a child.]

My mother's family was more bound up with Jewish traditions than my father's. My mother and her elder brother valued the traditions very much. They were religious. My mother wasn't a fanatic, yet we observed Rosh Hashanah, Pesach and other holidays and traditions. When we had to keep the fast [on Yom Kippur], my mother did it for real, while my father only pretended to. We accompanied my mother to the synagogue and then my father brought us back telling us, 'Let's eat cakes now before your mother returns.' At that time we used to sell ice cream, which was prepared with egg-whites. My mother used to make the cakes from the yolks.

It was a tradition for the Mamons, my mother's family, to gather every Saturday evening at their eldest brother's place. There were only two rooms. Every Saturday evening they used to take the beds out, arranged the tables next to each other and gathered the whole kin. My uncle, as far as I remember that was Solomon, was the wealthiest of them. He was good-hearted and generous, though his wife controlled and restricted him. Once on Fruitas 4 he lied to his wife saying that he had had a dream in which God told him to give everyone 20 leva. So he lined us, the children, up in a queue. Each family had two to three children, so we were around 25 kids. We opened our bags and he gave each of us fruits and a 20 leva silver coin. It was such great joy for us, as we were very poor. I still have that coin, while my sister spent hers immediately. I was very angry with her for doing so.

The children of our family were on friendly terms with each other. We never quarreled. It's a pity that these traditions are gradually falling into oblivion in the Jewish community nowadays. Every Friday came Topuz Bozadjiata, the quarter's boza carrier, who was Armenian, and poured boza 5 into large vessels. He used to give the adults shots of mastika 6 as a bonus.

After the internment, when we came back impoverished and hungry, my mother's brother Solomon sheltered us in a building, next to the house he had inherited from our grandfather. A Bulgarian woman, a prostitute, lived next-door at that time. Only a small corridor separated us from the room where she used to accept men. We were just kids and that was my mother's worst nightmare.

There were five of us inhabiting one room. We slept in a plank-bed. There was a soldier's stretcher, in which my father was bedridden, lying sick after the labor camp, and where he actually died. The rest of us slept on the plank-bed. The toilet and the running water were in the yard. Our room was two meters long and three meters wide. We had a case, which served both as a kitchen cupboard and a wardrobe. I found a small table in the yard, left by some other family, and I fixed it so that I could study there.

I have a very embarrassing memory of that house. I attended evening classes at the time and my parents' work was extremely exhausting. Once I was studying mathematics by the light of a bedside lamp as I was going to have my term exams. My father warned me several times that no one could go asleep because of me. Finally he got so angry that he broke the lamp. I sheltered myself in the corridor, continuing my work by candlelight. Anyway, I managed. I was very ambitious.

My brother was six years older than me, whereas my sister Eliza was four years younger. They were both very clever, good-hearted and intelligent, yet they didn't show any particular desire to continue their education. My father practically beat my brother to make him study. My sister wasn't very inspired with the idea of a further education either. After our father's death in 1947 I begged her to stay in Bulgaria and take a degree. I was already working and I could provide for her. She didn't want to. She got married and went to Israel.

I was a lousy student till the 4th grade of elementary school. I almost failed. It was thanks to the birth of Simeon II [see Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Simeon] 7 that I was able to pass from the 3rd to the 4th grade. [Editor's note: On the occasion of the birth of Simeon II, son of the tsar, heir to the crown, all students in Bulgaria got excellent marks at the end of the school year.] I studied in the Jewish junior high school till the 3rd grade. We studied the usual subjects plus Jewish history. We studied everything in Bulgarian. Only the Torah did we read and write in Hebrew, and we also had Hebrew as a separate school subject.

All teachers loved us very much. There was only one teacher, who hated the poor children. She used to call us 'lousy kids'. Her daughter was in our class. That teacher used to tell us, 'My daughter will become somebody, whereas you will always be nothing but servants.' Years passed, I had already become a doctor, when I met her daughter in Israel and she complained that she was very badly off.

The education in this school was excellent; I took a turn for the better and became an advanced student very quickly. I didn't have any special talents, yet I achieved everything through enormous efforts, constant visits to the library and sleepless nights. I don't remember anything special about my classmates. I was quite ambitious and the informal leader of the class, so to speak.

When I finished the 3rd grade, I cried a lot that I couldn't go any further. In order to calm me, my brother, who was already working as an apprentice in a shoe shop, bought me a watch on the occasion of my successful graduation. I still remember the trademark - 'Novolis'. I held it in my hand and stared at it all night long. On the third day of my vacation my mother took me to the atelier of the tailor Zvancharova. She and Pelagia Vidinska were popular tailors in Sofia with big private studios. Zvancharova hired me as an apprentice at a very low wage. I was begging to be allowed to deliver clothes to houses because of the tips. I decided that I would be able to provide for myself and enrolled in the Maria Louisa secondary school for tailors. It was right opposite the Law Courts. I was expelled already in the second week, as I couldn't pay my tuition. I remained a simple tailor.

In the 1st grade of the Jewish junior high school I became a member of Hashomer Hatzair 8. Hashomer Hatzair aimed at the establishment of socialism in Israel. It was a 'progressive' organization with a strong national aspect. I organized a very big company there. We often visited the Aura community center on Opalchenska and Klementina Streets, which was regularly attended by Jews and 'progressive' Bulgarians. [Lea tends to call people with left-wing political convictions progressive. This expression was quite common in socialist times.] Mois Autiel noticed us there. We didn't know then that he was the UYW 9 responsible for our sector. Mois was making propaganda for this organization, which was different from Hashomer Hatzair but which had the same goal, the establishment of the socialist order. Our class was divided into two groups, 15 people each, both supporters of the UYW. Anyway, only two or three people - including me - were selected to become UYW members. Mois was the person in charge of our group. I became a member of the UYW on 5th May 1942, right after I finished the 3rd grade of the Jewish junior high school.

During the war

My future husband, Leon Beraha, was redirected to our group as a more experienced UYW member. At the age of 15 I carried out my first action with him, and at 16 we decided to be a couple. For three or four years we were only holding hands. In Iuchbunar 10 there was a conspiracy, a traitor within our organization and a lot of members were imprisoned. My future husband was also arrested. He simulated that he was an imbecile, he was released as an underdeveloped person and was acquitted for lack of evidence.

His second arrest was a more serious one. In fascist times [in the late 1930s - early 1940s] he worked as an electrician. At that time the newspapers wrote about the Totleben conspiracy. The gang of Totleben bandits was raging, etc. My husband and his brother electrified a hospital. In an outhouse behind that hospital they hid two outlaws. Actually the conspiracy was called this way because the hospital was on Totleben Street in Sofia. During a police action a shooting started. Anyway, the authorities never proved that it was my husband who had shot. Yet, all this resulted in his internment to the forced labor camp 11 in Dupnitsa. They dug trenches there. By a 'happy' coincidence my family was also interned to Dupnitsa.

I took part in the protest on 24th May 1943 12 against the internment of Jews. Now they don't admit that the protest was under the leadership of the Communist Party, but we took part in it and we did and do know who led us. Heading the group were the communist leaders of Hashomer Hatzair - Vulka Goranova, Beti Danon - and our rabbi who wasn't a communist but he was a 'progressive' and conscientious man. The smallest children were also walking in front. We, the older ones, were carrying posters and chanting slogans. We had almost reached the Geshev pharmacy between Strandja and Father Paissiy Streets, where horsemen and legionaries [see Bulgarian Legions] 13 were waiting for us, when a big fight started.

They beat us up badly. We hid in the yards like ants. I lost my father and my little sister. I hid in the yard of an aunt of mine, though I held my peace because I didn't want her to be harmed in case of an eventual arrest. My father and my sister went home. When my father saw that I hadn't come home, he went out to search for me. I was two crossings away from home and I saw how they arrested him. I didn't dare to shout out because if they had arrested me too, there wouldn't have been anyone left to take care of my mother and the family. From the police station they took him straight to Somovit labor camp. They interned him without clothes, without food...

When he came back, he told us horrible things. Their daily food ration was 50 grams of bread only. A compatriot of ours, a Zionist and very hostile to 'progressive' people, slandered my father on being a communist. As a result the portions of my father and some other people were shortened to the minimum. My father used to dig in the garbage for scraps of food. He ate potato peels. He was set free at the time of the Bagrianov government. [This government was in office between 1 June - 2 September 1944.] He looked like death warmed up. He didn't even have enough energy to climb the stairs and was shouting from below. My mother and I carried him to the first floor. That was already in Sofia, after the internment.

When I was interned to Dupnitsa with my mother and sister, my brother was already in a labor camp. We had no contact with him whatsoever. We only knew that he was somewhere around Simitli. We didn't receive any letters. We were worried because he had a duodenal ulcer. He told us later that trains carrying Jews from Aegean Thrace and Macedonia to the concentration camps passed by them. Once they heard from a horse wagon people begging for water. My brother and some others jumped up with their cups, but the warders beat them up badly. Finally they poured cold water on him, in order to bring him back to consciousness. Nevertheless, they made him work after that. He was set free on 9th September 1944 14, like all the others.

Although the state policy was pro-fascist, generally there wasn't an anti- Semitic mood among the Bulgarian people. On the contrary, I have a very positive memory. When the internment announcement came, we immediately took out everything for sale because we didn't have any money. My father was in Somovit, my brother was in a labor camp. I was alone, only with my mother and my sister. At that time I had already started working. With my first salary I had bought a wallet as a present for my brother and a beautiful water pitcher for the whole family. We sold those as well. People gathered. A man liked the pitcher and bought it. When I handed it to him, I began to cry. When he realized that it had been bought with my first salary, he told me to keep both the money and the pitcher. Naturally I gave it to him, as we couldn't take it with us during the internment. Yet his gesture moved me deeply. The money we succeeded to collect only lasted us a very short time.

In Dupnitsa they took us in a convoy from the railway station to the school gym. We were more than a hundred people, and they separated us in families. I found a job in the candy factory. I stole sweets for my friends in the labor camps. Then we moved to some rich Jews, who accepted us under the condition that I worked as a maid for them. They had three boys aged one to two, three to four, and five to six years. I used to work there so much that my child-like hands became completely rough. My mother was already advanced in years, she was constantly ill and wasn't able to work. I was the breadwinner.

My sister was crying for food all the time. The landlords were well-to-do traders in Dupnitsa. They imported curds, butter, etc. as black marketers. My sister cried because she also wanted such things. My mother and I used to 'gag' her and hid her in the little square behind the door, which the rich Jewess had given to us. In this one square meter space we put the sack, the blankets and the clothes that we had brought from Sofia. We used to lie down crosswise like in a sty. The mattress was too short and our bare feet touched the floor.

Post-war

We returned from Dupnitsa to Sofia after the fall of fascism [after the communist takeover on 9th September 1944]. From 9th September 1944 till 1945-46 we lived in the house my mother's brother had on Slivnitsa Blvd.

After 9th September 1944 everything changed. First, there was a great tragedy - my father was ill. The misery was beyond description. Yet, the Jewish community established a tailor's cooperative named Liberation. I began to work there. I attached sleeves using a sewing machine. I also attended high school evening classes. I studied from 6 to 10 in the evening. From 10pm to 7am I worked - I only took night shifts. The cooperative was in the bazaar opposite the Law Courts and I used to walk to Odrin and Positano Streets, where we lived. We often changed our address and everywhere we lived under terrible conditions; the whole family in one room.

By 1947 I was alone. My future husband was a student in the USSR. My father died in my arms. My sister Eliza got married and left for Israel. In the beginning their family was quite badly off. Her husband used to work in a garage. Later the owner, who was childless, adopted him. Now my nephew, their son, owns the garage. My sister was a housewife all her life. My brother Betzalel and his family followed my sister at my mother's request. She wanted him to go there and help my sister. He was a stevedore in Jaffa. His work was physically very hard - he pulled boats to the riverside. As a result of this he fell seriously ill and died in 1966.

In 1949 my mother also left for Israel. It was very hard for me. In order to escape from loneliness, I took part in two consecutive brigades 15. There I fell and broke my hand. I was falsely diagnosed with bone tuberculosis. Later it turned out that I had simple sciatica. From one sanatorium to another I finally reached the Workers' Academy 16 in Varna, where I finished my high school education. There I was put into a plaster cast and during the whole year they took me to exams on a stretcher. I gained a lot of weight and weighed some 90 kilos as a result of total immobilization. I was lucky that my husband visited me. I told him that I didn't intend to marry him because of my illness. Upon his return to Moscow my husband took my tests to the Institute for Bone and Joint Tuberculosis. The professor there concluded that I have no tuberculosis whatsoever. According to him it was more likely to be rheumatism or something of that kind. And above all he recommended that I should start moving. I stood up and fell immediately.

My wonderful, loving mother-in-law realized that I was suffering and came to see me. I lived with her for two years, before marring my husband. We lived in one room - my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, my husband's brother and his wife. We lived very well. My mother-in-law was an extraordinary woman. She still wouldn't believe that I had tuberculosis. She used to hide good food from the others. She took me out into the yard behind the house and made a huge effort to persuade me that I had to eat for the sake of my husband, who was so good-hearted and whom I loved. I loved her very much and later took care of her. She also died in my arms.

I graduated in medicine and worked for five years in the hospital in Pernik. I became a chief of the professional diseases' sector. I traveled around the mines. In 1964 I came to Sofia with my husband. First I worked in the hospital at the Ministry of the Interior. Then I applied for a job in the 4th city hospital. Out of 35 requests, only mine was accepted. I worked under the hardest system. I was in charge of seven beds in the hospital till 11am, then I was in the polyclinics until 1pm, in the tobacco factory until 2pm and finally I had house-calls. In addition I was working on my specialty degree and meanwhile I had already given birth to a child, my daughter Irina [Santurdjiyan, nee Beraha, born in 1966]. In Pernik and in Sofia we lived in lodgings. In Sofia we first lived in a small room in Lozenets quarter. Later we moved to our current apartment.

My husband came back from the USSR in 1952, after graduating in mine engineering. We married on a Sunday. On Monday he 'disappeared' - he was appointed at the mine in Pernik and got very busy. My husband was extremely modest, industrious and honest. He climbed the career ladder all by himself, without any intercessions. The newspapers wrote about him. I have a large file of press clippings. First he worked as a mining engineer in Pernik, then he was advanced to the post of mine director. Then he was in charge of the industry in Pernik - the Crystal Plant, the mines, the Lenin State Metallurgy Plant, the Cement Plant, etc. As a next step, he was promoted to a job at the Council of Ministers because they needed someone who was simultaneously a mining engineer and an economist.

In 1966 Stanko Todorov 17 decided to send him to Italy because meanwhile my husband had graduated from the diplomats' school in the USSR. He also worked for the Council for Mutual Economical Support [the economic organization of the former socialist countries] as well as for UNESCO. He was regularly sent to its head office in Geneva. My husband was the ideal example that in communist times there wasn't any anti-Semitism in Bulgaria. As he was a diplomat for 28 years and traveled a lot, I used to accompany him. In Italy he was the Bulgarian embassy's first secretary. In Angola he was a minister plenipotentiary, and in Cambodia ambassador. Finally, when he got very ill, he was sent to Geneva to defend Bulgaria with regard to the Revival Process 18.

At that time Bulgaria still wasn't a UNO member. It was only a candidate. In Geneva there were moods for excluding the country from the group of the UNO candidates for membership because of the forced name change of the Bulgarian Turks, which was carried out at that time. My husband gave a speech on this topic that was loudly applauded and Bulgaria wasn't excluded from the group. When my husband came home, he told me that he had held a very strong trump in his hands - his passport, where it was written that he was a Jew. He was ready to take it out of his pocket at any moment and ask them how could the non-Bulgarians possibly be oppressed, if there was written proof in the official documents of a Bulgarian diplomat that his nationality was Jewish. Principally my husband didn't approve with the name change of the Bulgarian Turks, but in that case he had to defend Bulgaria before the whole world. The nation wasn't supposed to suffer because of the mistakes of a few people. My husband died of cancer shortly after the Geneva conference.

I have visited my relatives in Israel more than ten times. It was only difficult in the first years because then even letters weren't allowed. [Editor's note: Visiting Israel was not a problem for Lea's family, as they were quite high-standing in the hierarchy of the Bulgarian society of the time.] I was among the first people who visited Israel. I wasn't able to 'warn' my relatives about my arrival. They were at the cinema when it was announced that Jews from Bulgaria had arrived at the airport. They heard my name and immediately rushed to meet me. My mother hadn't seen me for seven years and she fainted at the airport.

Regarding the Israeli wars, I am definitely on Israel's side. At first I was more inclined to understand the Arabs, but it is no longer like that. I think they are intolerant in terms of politics and reaching of agreements. Maybe it's simply that a new leader should come and replace Arafat. It's a pity that young people from both sides die or become disabled for life.

My daughter Lora graduated from the College for Dental Mechanics. She is married to an Armenian and has a little daughter, Lora Edmond. She doesn't identify herself as a Jew and doesn't observe the traditions. She isn't affiliated with the Jewish community. I myself am a complete atheist, yet I buy matzah for Pesach and prepare burlikus 19. I visit the synagogue on Yom Kippur, but just to join our community. I don't pray there, I'm just very sensitive when it comes to the Jewish community.

I was the person in charge of the Health club at the Jewish community in the 1990s. I receive a monthly financial support of 20 leva. In winter they also give us some money for heating. If it wasn't for Joint 20, I would have become a beggar-doctor.

Glossary

Gabor Paneth
Budapest
Hungary
Interviewer: Eszter Andor and Dora Sardi

The history of my family is like a fairy tale. Once upon a time, at the beginning of the 19th century, there were two brothers. Their father sent them away from home to try their luck. One went East and settled in Transylvania, and the other went West and settled in Austria. The Eastern branch of the family became extremely religious, Hassidic in fact, and none of them who hadn't converted by the 1930s survived the Holocaust, whereas the Austrian branch assimilated and survived intact. I, of course, am a descendant of the Eastern branch, but let me tell you a little story about the other branch of the family. Joseph Paneth, who was born in the 1870s in Austria, was one of the closest friends of Sigmund Freud, and also corresponded with Friedrich Nietzsche. I never knew Joseph personally, but I'm very proud of him.

So, let's return to my family. My father's great-great grandfather was Ezekiel Paneth. His grandson, Jozsef Paneth, was my father's grandfather. Jozsef Paneth left Transylvania and lived in Tarcal. He had a lot of siblings. He also had many children, among them my grandfather Adolf (1859- 1928), and some others who left for America to serve as soldiers. He moved to a town called Papa because he got a job as a shochet (ritual slauthterer/kosher butcher) and melamed (teacher of Jewish primary school). He married a local girl, who was considered the most beautiful girl of the town, and had four children. He was a very religious man.

One of their daughters married a Hasid and moved to Beregszasz. They had four children, of whom one married a gentile. The family disowned her, sat shiva (went through the traditional rites for mourning a death) and never knew her again. She was the only one to survive the Holocaust.

My grandfather Adolf's wife Regina, my grandmother, had serious financial problems after her husband died in 1928, but she was helped by her late husband's uncles who had emigrated to America in the 1870s. They regularly sent her money, for which she was especially thankful since the Jewish community of Papa was in such a bad shape that often it couldn't pay her the widow's allowance on time.

My father's youngest brother Jeno was the closest to my father. He maintained his Orthodox life style but moved to Budapest. He lived in the Jewish quarter of the town and worked as a melamed. His wife Margit wore a shaytl (wig). They had two daughters. Marta was a Zionist and she made aliya (emigrated to Israel) at the age of 16 in 1941. Her sister Edit married an architect who, as I remember my father saying, was somewhat of a caricature of the Orthodox Jew. He was loudly religious but didn't really seem to know that much. However, when they made aliya with their five children in 1957, they settled in one of the most Orthodox areas in Israel, in Bnei Brak. Jeno and Margit also left for Israel in 1951 and settled on a kibbutz.

My father Lajos was born in 1887 in Papa. He grew up in a very religious environment. He went to the local Jewish elementary school and also spent a year in yeshiva. He then graduated from the Teacher Training College in Papa and became an elementary school teacher. He first taught in the Jewish elementary school in Nagymarton (one of the so-called sheva kehilot, the "seven communities" of Jews in the present-day province of Burgenland, Austria), but was soon transferred to Liptoszentmiklos, in what is now Slovakia. He met his first wife Margit Erdos here. She was a beautiful woman, the daughter of an atheist social democrat. They married in 1910 and moved to Budapest. My father started to become more and more secular because of the bad experiences he had had with the Jewish community when still in Liptoszentmiklos.

During World War One, he served on the Russian front, and he reached the position of lieutenant. During the Counterrevolution, the 1918 civil revolution, he was put on the redundancy list for political reasons. In 1925 he got a job again as an elementary school teacher in a state school. He worked there until World War Two, and then continued teaching after the end of that war as well. His first wife, who had chronic heart disease, died in 1924, and Lajos married again a year later.

My mother came from an assimilated, Neolog (Conservative) family of Budapest. Her father, Adolf Bergsmann, was a traveling salesman of textiles. They lived in an elegant bourgeois neighborhood. My mother graduated from the Academy of Music and became a piano teacher. Grandmother Cecilia died young. My grandfather Adolf was the only one of my grandparents that I knew. He had eight siblings. For me, the most important of his brothers was Uncle Ignac, who was a doctor. His sons emigrated to England. They established several Jewish old age homes in London and, in the 1990s, set up the Balint Jewish Community Center in Budapest. My mother had only one sister-Sari-and they were very close to each other their whole lives. Sari never had a family of her own. She graduated from a commercial high school and worked as an arts administrator in OMIKE, the Hungarian Israelite Cultural Association.

I was born in 1926. We had a big three-room flat in an elegant neighborhood of Budapest, which we shared with my maternal grandfather until his death in 1939. We had a day servant until the Great Depression when we had to give such things up. My mother didn't work, so we lived on one salary, the salary of an elementary teacher in a state school. Before the Great Depression we had gone on holiday to Austria every summer. We used to spend six weeks at various holiday resorts in Upper Austria. Then, starting in the mid-1930s, when we could no longer afford holidays abroad, we rented a little house in a village near Budapest.

In the first two years of elementary school, I attended the school of a Jewish orphanage. Now, my father regarded Judaism as a personal matter. He was a Jew inside, but he lived in a Christian environment. He wanted me to get used to that environment, and he decided enroll me in a state school. This is how I entered a state gymnasium in 1936 when it was getting increasingly hard to get into a non-Jewish gymnasium.

The following story could have only happened in such a state school in 1938: we were looking at some slides of the Holy Land and when the slide showed a Jewish holy place, my non-Jewish classmates laughed loudly. When we got to a Christian shrine, I turned to the boy sitting next to me, a Jewish boy, and told him, "Now they aren't laughing." Somebody heard me and accused me of having said "Rotten Christians!" The board of the school exaggerated the case and found me guilty of this offence. Thanks to my father's being a teacher, I wasn't kicked out of school. The matter was slowly forgotten. I ran into my headmaster 17 years later on the tram. He greeted me saying, "So you survived, Paneth?" I asked him, "Do you remember my story from the second year of school?" He said nothing, and, avoiding my eyes, he got off the tram without saying goodbye.

It was on the day of the oral part of my graduation exam in April 1944 that I had to wear a yellow star for the first time.

I was drafted several times into different forced labor battalions. First I was sent to Felsohangoly, where I spent three months between July and October 1944. At the time I felt that I, and many others, were saved from deportation by being sent to forced labor there. We weren't too badly off there. Of course, there wasn't enough to eat, but sometimes after working at digging ditches, we had nothing to do, so we just hung around. In September I was taken to Kecskemet and soon after to Szolnok. On October 12, I went home to my parents but two days later I was drafted again and taken to Szekesfehervar, 60 kilometers from Budapest. On October 15, the news came that Hungary had broken away from the German alliance. Everybody was sent home from the camp. By the time I got to Budapest, I heard the newsboys shout that the Arrow Cross (Hungarian Fascists) had taken power. I crept home and found my mother and aunt there. My father had already been taken to a collection center in Budapest. I went to the Swiss embassy where I found a huge line. I was standing around looking at this queue when suddenly the door opened and an acquaintance of mine came out. When he saw me, he shoved me in through the door. I found myself inside at the head of the queue. The embassy gave me four false Schutzpasses, protection letters, and those enabled us to survive. I went and got my father out of the collection center with one pass, and we all moved from our house, which was then a yellow-star house, into a protected house. Later, in January, we had to move into the ghetto. We were there until the liberation.

I started medical university in the autumn of 1945. I studied in the summer and caught up with those who had already done the first semester of the first year in the autumn and winter of 1944. I became a psychiatrist in the biggest mental hospital in Hungary. In 1991 I started working as juridical mental specialist.

I married a Gentile girl. We never had any children. So I could never teach anybody the Judaism I learnt from my father. Every Friday my father went to the synagogue to daven (pray). He sang beautifully, he had such a beautiful voice that it is a pity that he didn't become a chazan (cantor). Inside, he was always Orthodox, but in practice, he behaved as a Neolog. He was the kind of Jew who had a constant personal relationship with the Creator, although in 1944 he had a serious quarrel with Him. Later, as he was getting old, he came to terms with Him again and their earlier close relationship was restored....

Until 1944 I lived as a full Jew. Since then, however, I never go to synagogue and I don't maintain the traditions, but I think about them. On Succoth, for example, I recall how my father, my uncle Jeno and I sat on the balcony in the succah (ritual tent built on the holiday of Sukkot) and prayed, and how my father kept shaking the lulav (palm frond).

In my father lived a kind of "Jacobean" self-identification: like Jacob, he faced many trials, through which he passed with the help of God. Once, for example, my father fell into an elevator lift shaft and the lift started descending. He started praying loudly and a girl nearby heard him and opened the grate and the lift stopped.... I'm more like Joseph in that I have diverged a little from faith, I'm critical of it and I am a bit of a swindler in this respect. But maybe I'm mixing myself up with the Joseph of Thomas Mann.