Travel

Frieda Rudometova
Kherson
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: September 2003

Frieda Rudometova lives in a two-bedroom apartment in a standard 5-storied khrushchovka [1] built in the1960s Kherson. Frieda is a nice looking dark-haired lady with a short haircut. She is wearing a fancy blouse and a skirt. Her apartment is clean. There are flowers on the table and embroideries and copies of pictures on the walls. Frieda invites me for a cup of tea in the kitchen. The kitchen is also shiny clean. During our conversation the hostess gets often distracted: her neighbors or the girls who rent a bigger room from her come by. Frieda explains that she needs some additional earnings to her pension that is too small for her to make ends meet. However, she talks about her problems with a smile and she does not complain.

My farthest ancestor whom I knew was my paternal great grandmother Etl Berliand. I didn’t know her maiden name, though. Since the early 1920s our family has lived in Kiev. I often visited my great granny. Basically, the families of my parents came from Murafa, a small Jewish town in Vinnitsa region, about 300 km from Kiev. I visited Murafa in the middle 1930s and I liked the town. The nearest town to Murafa was Zhmerynka and there are other towns like Murafa in the nearest vicinity. Murafa is on the bank of the river with the same name, very picturesque, with green banks and reeds. Before the revolution of 1917 [2] 70% of the population consisted of poor uneducated Jews. They were craftsmen and had big families. Jews lived in the central part of the town. There was a market in the center where they had their shops and stores. There were tailors, shoemakers, carpenters and glass cutters. My grandmother told me there was a synagogue and cheder in the town, but this was before I went there. The soviet power destroyed [3] all religious buildings in the 1920s. After the Pale of Settlement [4] was canceled the family of my great granny Etl moved to Kiev escaping from never ending pogroms [5]. I don’t know where my great grandmother studied, but now I understand that she was a very educated woman – she read the Torah, Talmud and other books in Hebrew and Russia classics. Only few Jewish women knew Hebrew and could write in Russian. My great grandmother told me about Jewish traditions and religion and explained about the tallit and tefillin. She was too old to go to the synagogue, when I knew her. She was a housewife her whole life. When I remember her, she was about 100 years old, but she kept the apartment ideally clean and always cooked something delicious, when I came to see her: cookies or strudel. She stayed in bed most of the time in the last years of her life, but she had sound mind. My great grandmother died in the late 1920s at the age of 102. She was buried in the Lukianovskoye Jewish cemetery in Kiev according to the Jewish tradition.

My great grandmother had many children – eight, I guess, but I didn’t know them: after getting married they moved to other towns with their spouses. My great grandmother moved to Kiev with her younger daughter, my grandmother Pesia Ladinzon (nee Berliand) and her family. Grandmother Pesia and my great grandmother Etl lived in a small one-bedroom apartment in Krasnoarmeyskaya Street in the very center of Kiev.

My grandfather Yefim Ladinzon, born in Murafa in the 1860s, belonged to the Jewish intelligentsia: he was a pharmacist like his father. He owned a pharmaceutical storage facility supplying medications to the pharmacies of Murafa and other towns. He also owned a pharmacy. I don’t know whether my grandfather had special education or learned the pharmaceutical business from his father, but I know for sure that he was a well-educated Jew. He knew Hebrew and read the ancient religious books: the Torah and Talmud that he always kept with him. My grandmother Pesia, born in the early 1870s, was a housewife and took care of the children. Staying at home was customary with Jewish families before the revolution and some time after. There was one daughter and four sons in the family. The boys got a traditional Jewish education: they studied in cheder and a Jewish elementary school. Later they gave up observing Jewish traditions, but they all had Jewish spouses.

The oldest of the children was Malka, or, Manyusia, as she was affectionately called in the family. She was born around 1890. Malka helped her father in the pharmacy and married her second uncle Pinhus Schneider, who also worked in grandfather Yefim’s pharmacy. After the revolution of 1917 and the Civil War [6] they moved to Sevastopol and worked in a state owned pharmacy. Malka and Pinhus had the only son. His name was Yakov. He was born in Murafa in 1913. There is a common prejudice that children from related spouses are born with physical or mental defects, but Yakov had none. He studied successfully at school, finished the Faculty of Economics of a higher educational institution and worked many years as chief of the department of labor and salary of the Black Sea Fleet. Aunt Malka died in the middle 1960s. She had blood poisoning that resulted in psoriasis. Yakov died in Sevastopol recently at the age of a little under 90.

The next after Malka my father Samuel was born, and his brothers Abram, Grigoriy and Naum followed him 1-2 years one after another. Abram, Jewish Avraam, born in 1896, married the daughter of a rich merchant in Kiev Fane and lived in Kiev where he owned a restaurant before the revolution in 1917. After the revolution and NEP [7] Abram got adjusted to the new regime and gave his property away to the people’s power that appointed him director of the restaurant. Abram had a wife and two children: Lev and Lisa. They were very wealthy. In 1932 there was an audit at his work. This audit discovered some violations, and Abram’s family left Kiev in a rush without telling anybody. Only a year later they wrote us from Leningrad. During the Great Patriotic War [8] Abram, his wife and Lisa evacuated to Samarkand. Continuous dust storms aggravated his chronic lung disease. Abram died in 1943. Lev was recruited to the front in the first days of the war and perished. I had no information about Lisa for many years. Only a year ago I heard that she lives in the USA. I wrote her, but there is no reply.

The next after Abram was Gershl (in the Soviet time he was called Grigoriy), born in 1898, took part in the Civil War and joined the communist party. After the war uncle Grigoriy also moved to Kiev. He was director of a restaurant at one time, then the party organs appointed him director of the first bakery factory. When the Great Patriotic War began he sent away his family – his wife and daughter Musia, while he himself stayed in Kiev at the assignment of the town committee for underground activities. He perished in Kiev few days before the Soviet troops entered the city in 1943, a former bakery employee, a policeman, reported on my uncle seeing him in the street. Grigoriy’s daughter Musia and her family live in Germany.

The youngest was my uncle Naum, born in 1900. He got a higher education finishing Kharkov Polytechnic College. His wife Anna was an obstetrician. When the Great Patriotic War began, Naum was recruited to the army and his wife Anna and their children Ada and Yefim, born few months before the war, evacuated to Kazakhstan. Grandmother Pesia was there with them. Naum perished in Byelorussia at the very beginning of the war. Ada lives in Germany; Yefim lives in Kharkov.

My father Samuel was born in Murafa in 1895. He was named Shloime at birth, but later, before obtaining a Soviet passport he changed his name to Samuel that sounded more familiar to him. Being the oldest son in the family he went to work after finishing the cheder. First he worked as a loader at my grandfather’s storage facility while gradually he studied the pharmaceutical business. My father was subject to military service during WWI, but grandfather Yefim didn’t want his older son to go to the war and paid for him to be released from service. My father grew up in a very religious family. He went to the synagogue with his father and at the age of 13 he had a bar mitzvah. Therefore, when the Civil War began, my father, being a religious man, strongly believed that it was against the human nature, something that his character and education could never agree to. Many other young men including his brother Grigoriy joined the revolutionary activities, but he stayed with his parents. Somehow he met my mother, and I think they met with the help of matchmakers, and they got married in 1918.

As for my mother’s parents, I know even less about them than about my father’s parents. My maternal grandfather Berl Winner was born in the small Jewish town of Krasnoye near Murafa in the 1860s. He got married and the young couple lived with his wife’s parents. Berl had two children in this marriage: Berla, the daughter, lived with her husband in Vinnitsa region. She died in the 1930s. Then a boy was born. He was retarded and suffered from acute schizophrenia. He died before turning 13. Shortly afterward Berla died, too. My grandfather remarried, and his second marriage was more fortunate. In the 1890s he married Feiga, a young girl from Murafa. They had two girls, born one after another. My mother Revekka, was a younger daughter. My mother’s older sister Maria, born in 1899, lived in Kharkov after the revolution. She was director of a kindergarten. I didn’t have any contacts with them and don’t know what happened to her or her son during the Great Patriotic War , Berl was a craftsmen, but I don’t know what exactly he was doing. His family was rather poor: they rented two little rooms. Berl and Feiga raised their girls Jewish. They observed Jewish traditions, followed kashrut, celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and fasted on Yom Kippur.

My mother Revekka Winner was born in 1900. She helped her mother Feiga about the house before getting married. My mother had no education: my grandfather could not afford to pay for a teacher, but she studied in an elementary Jewish school for a year or two. Revekka was very quiet, even phlegmatic. She was a very tight-lipped person. I am sure that her marriage was prearranged by shadkhanim considering her personality.

My parents got married in 1918. Of course, there was a chuppah at the synagogue, but there was no big wedding party due to the hard times: this was the period of the civil war, when the power switched from one group to another resulting in pogroms. After the wedding the newly weds settled down in grandfather Yefim’s house that was bigger and more comfortable than my mother parents’ apartment.

Here, in the basement of my grandfather’s house I Frieda Ladinzon, was born on 17 June 1919. At this time there were Petlura troops [9], in the town and Jews were hiding away. Our family and few neighbors’ families were hiding in the big basement of my grandfather’s house. My mother’s neighbor Hilia was a midwife for my mother. The woman had many children and was quite capable of helping my mother. In early 1920, when I was a little over six months, my parents, my grandmother and grandfather Ladinzons and my father’s brothers left the house and all their belongings to move for Kiev escaping from continuing pogroms. Actually, by this time the family of my grandfather and father was miserably poor after so many pogroms and robberies.

Uncle Abram lived in Kiev. He was rich and bought a two-bedroom apartment in the center of Kiev in Shota Rustaveli Street for us, and a good big room in an old building in Krasnoarmeyskaya Street. Our family was very poor and if it hadn’t been for my uncle Abram’s support we wouldn’t have survived the famine in the 1920s. My father didn’t have a job. I remember that one time he unloaded buns in the private bakery in the yard of our house. I often came to the bakery and occasionally I got a hot bun – this was a delicacy.

One of my earliest memories was my grandfather Yefim’s death and funeral. He died in January 1924 around the time when Lenin died [10]. I remember my father and his brothers discussing that they could not make arrangements for my grandfather to be buried due to Lenin’s death. My grandfather’s body was lying on the floor wrapped in cerements. I remember my mother and other women sitting on the floor in torn clothes wailing. A rabbi and cantor from the Brodskiy [Brodski family – Russian sugar manufacturers. They started sugar manufacturing business in 1840s. Organized the 1st sugar syndicate in Russia in (1887). Sponsored construction of hospitals and asylums in Kiev and other towns in Russia, including the biggest and most beautiful synagogue in Kiev] synagogue located in Shota Rustaveli Street came to recite the mourning prayer after my grandfather. My grandfather was carried to the cemetery wrapped in cerements. The other children and I stayed at home.

My next memory is the birth of my sister about two months later in 1924. She was named Yelizaveta after our great grandmother – only I don’t remember whether it the grandmother on my mother or father’s side. Everybody called her Lisa. My father had a permanent job at the ‘Tochelectropribor’ (electric devices) plant. My mother was a housewife. After Lisa was born, and her delivery had complications, my mother became weird. She could sit idly staring into one point for hours. She didn’t cook. She happened to suffer from schizophrenia from her teens, but it was kept a secret from my father, but he would have never married her had he known. My mother had to stay in mental hospital for long periods. My father and I visited her on Sundays. She was quiet and looked enlightened when we came to see her in the hospital located on a high hill and it was hard to believe that mother was ill.

My grandmother Pesia took care of us. She either stayed with us or we went to her house to stay there a week or so. We went to the synagogue for women near the Brodskiy synagogue with my grandmother. On Jewish holidays uncle Abram and his family and we went to the Brodskiy synagogue. Uncle Grisha was a communist, and his family did not celebrate Jewish holidays. We often celebrated Sabbath in our grandmother’s home. There was a freshly baked challah, wine and delicious food on the table. Uncle Abram’s family also celebrated Sabbath with us. My great grandm9other Etl lit candles and later my grandmother took over this duty. We celebrated all holidays with my grandmother: I remember fancy crockery on Pesach, my grandmother kept it in a box, delicious potato pancakes on Chanukkah and hamantashen on Purim. We didn’t have any of these at our home because our mother was ill. Our family was much poorer than my father brothers’ families.

Grandfather Berl from Murafa visited us twice, when I was a child. He brought us cottage cheese and sour cream and ‘rooster-shaped’ lolly pops for Lisa and me. He visited us last in 1926. He died a year later.

I went to the Russian school on the fifth floor of a standard apartment house near our houses in 1927. After finishing the third form we were taken to a big school in Vladimirskaya Street. There were many Jewish children in my class. I had Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish friends. We got along well and I never heard ay abusive words against Jews from my classmates. The teachers also made no segregation among us. As for me, they were particularly sympathetic. During the famine in Ukraine in the early 1930s [11] our family was probably in a more miserable situation than the others. In summer 1932 my father moved to his sister in Balaklava (a town near Sevastopol). He explained that he wanted to find a good job there to support us better, but when I grew up I realized that just left my mother; he got tired of her disease, fault-finding and of the misery of life. He probably intended to support us, but he couldn’t find a decent job there. My mother, during intervals between attacks of her disease and her retirement to the hospital worked in a cafeteria washing dishes and peeling potatoes and vegetables. We probably wouldn’t have survived the hungry years, if it hadn’t been for my father brothers’ support. I often ran to uncle Grisha’s beautiful 3-storied house in Kreschatik Street [Kreschatik is the main street of Kiev]. They always had a good dinner at home. Uncle Abram sent us dried brown crust that my mother soaked in water for us. Our everyday food on these days was plum jam made from the plums that I picked from trees in summer and soup with a bit of flour.

It was hard for my mother to raise the two of us and I went to live with grandmother Pesia. I liked it more with my grandmother, she was very kind to me. I remember that she took some spoons to the torgsin store [12] to buy me food. Once she bought me a fancy red beret that was in fashion then. My grandmother also cooked for my mother and Lisa and I took the food to them. We exchanged our two-bedroom apartment for a room in Krasnoarmeyskaya Street near where grandmother lived.

Despite difficult circumstances, I was a cheerful and pretty girl. I studied well at school and took an active part in Pioneer and Komsomol [13] activities: I mainly helped those who had problems with their studies. I also participated in preparations to the school meetings dedicated to anniversaries of the October revolution and 1 May. I liked going to parades with my classmates. We didn’t celebrate revolutionary holidays at my grandmother’s home, but I knew all Jewish holidays. She celebrated Sabbath and this was sacred for her, and other holidays, and I went to the synagogue with her. However, sometimes I became naughty and brought home the pork sausage that my friends treated me to. My grandmother got angry with me and I laughed.

I finished my 7th form in 1935. I could continue my studies, but I knew I had to go to work to support my mother. My grandmother’s neighbor working in the security of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR, took me there to get an employment. I talked with Satin, a Jew, who was business manager. I worked as a courier and then went to the school in the Central Committee. I completed my secondary education. When they asked me what profession I wanted to study I almost pronounced that I wanted to be a cook. I was always hungry and my strongest desire was to eat my fill, but I was ashamed to say it and said that I wanted to be a telephone operator. I finished a course of few months and began to work as a telephone operator in the communications department of the central committee. These were the happiest years in my life. I knew all party leaders: Kosior [14], Postyshev [Pavel Postyshev (1887-1939), political activist. In 1926 he became secretary of the Central committee of the Communist party (of Bolsheviks) of Ukraine. In 1930-1933 secretary of the Central committee of the Communist party (of Bolsheviks), 1933 2nd secretary of the Central committee of the Communist party of Ukraine. Arrested in 1934-38. Rehabilitated posthumously], and I knew the voice of Stalin: I connected him through the governmental communication equipment. They were great people and they treated me, a poor Jewish girl so well giving me an opportunity to study. I received food coupons, garment and shoe coupons. I gained some weight, grew prettier and made many friends. My close friend Lenochka, the daughter of a frontier colonel, and I often went to walk on the Dnieper slopes where there was a brass orchestra playing. I loved dancing and often went to the dancing ground. The horrific 1930s [15] were on their way. I never thought why the boards on the party boss’ offices were often replaced and the people working in them disappeared to be later declared ‘enemies of the people’ [16]. Kosior and Postyshev disappeared, and so did humble human resource manager Satin and many others. Once I asked Lena’s father about it, and he advised me to never ask these questions, so I didn’t. I was young and didn’t want to think negative: we believed in communist ideas and credibility of everything happening in our great country.

In 1936 I had my first vacation. I took half of it: in May I went to my hometown of Murafa – I felt like visiting the town where I was born. My grandmother Feiga, whom I had never seen before, lived in Murafa. I plunged into the Jewish way of life that still existed in the town. We went to the synagogue, celebrated Sabbath according to all rules, went to the cemetery where grandfather Berl was buried. I was young and wanted to go to the new club to dance. There was an amateur orchestra playing: two Jewish violinists, a pianist and a drummer. The public also danced tango and waltz that had recently become in fashion. However, when they played Jewish music, everybody joined in dancing: freilakh in the circle and other dances. I met my distant relatives: uncle Grigoriy wife’s sister and her children, and we became friends. They all perished in Murafa during the Great Patriotic War. As for my grandmother Feiga, I saw her for the first and the last time in my life. She died in 1939.

That same summer I visited my father in Balaklava where he lived in a small room in the basement. When we met, we both cried: I forgave my father for having left us. He was not happy. He worked as a night man: he never managed to get a job in a pharmacy by his specialty. I spent two weeks with my father. I never saw him again: he was arrested in 1937. Even night men could be declared enemies of the people or spies at the time for a joke told at the wrong time and at the wrong place. This happened to my father. My father was taken to a camp in Komi ASSR. My grandmother Pesia wrote him letters, but I was afraid of corresponding with him, and asked her to not even mention anything about me. I understood that I would be fired if this happened. My father started work at the wood cutting ground, but later he was transferred to the pharmacy in the camp. In 1938 my grandmother went to visit uncle Abram in Leningrad, but then she stayed to live there. From there she sent my father my photograph in 1940. I was immediately invited to the human resource office where they offered me to resign. They never explained for what reason, but it was clear that it happened because of my father. What was surprising was that I had worked three years before they disclosed this information about my father: a daughter of an enemy of the people could not be allowed to work in party organs. My father died in 1940. My grandmother and I got to know this after the Great Patriotic War, when my father was rehabilitated posthumously in the 1950s.

I went to work as a telephone operator at the shipyard and repair shop ‘Leninskaya Kuznia’. My mother often went to hospital. My sister Lisa went to work at the registry office in a big polyclinic after finishing the 7th form. Lisa’s dream was to become a doctor or at least, a medical nurse.

I lived in my grandmother’s room, but I often went to visit my mother and sister. Life was gradually improving: Lisa and I earned our salaries and my mother didn’t have to peel potatoes to earn her living. On 22 June 1941 the Great Patriotic War began. Kiev was bombed on the very first day. We woke up hearing a distant roar, but it could never occur to us that these could be fascist aircraft. In the afternoon Molotov [17] spoke on the radio about the treacherous attack of Hitler armies. It was a complete surprise for me. In early July 1941 the shipyard where I was working began to prepare for evacuation: its equipment was shipped to Zelenodolsk Tatar ASSR by train. The management and engineering staff also went by this train, but there was no organized evacuation of workers or such common employees as I was. Basically, nobody ever mentioned that Jews were to evacuate in the first turn. The district Komsomol committee sent my sister Lisa to dig trenches in the Western area.

I continued going to work, helping to load the equipment and being on duty at the telephone station of the plant. In middle August, before the last train with employees was to depart, my boss, a Jew, said to me: ‘If you want to leave the town, run home to pick your documents and come back – the train is leaving soon’. I rushed home. I only had time to grab my passport, my Komsomol membership card and a change of underwear and clothing. This was all I had with me: no warm winter clothes or bed sheets. I didn’t go to see my mother: I could not take her with me and I didn’t have time to say ‘good byes’. Besides, like everybody else, I thought we would be back in two months’ time. As for me sister, she wasn’t at home: she was at the digging of trenches.

I ran back to the railway station and boarded the train. It was a freight train and we slept on plank beds. When the train was crossing the Dnieper over the railroad bridge, it was bombed for the first time. It was stupid, but I got so scared that I climbed under the plank bed. The train often stopped to let the troops going in the western direction pass. There was a fierce bombing near Bahmach. Half of the train was destroyed and we had to wait for a replacement of the damaged railcars. I met my distant relatives in Bahmach: Musia, uncle Grigoriy’s daughter. She told me she was evacuating with her mother, and her father stayed in Kiev. Few minutes late I met Zhenia Kligman, my grandmother’s cousin sister, with her family. They were surprised that I managed to leave Kiev, but neither Musia nor Zhenia offered me to join them. All other plant employees were with their families, but nobody suggested that I took my family with me. I felt bitter and hurt. Besides, I didn’t even have food with me. The other shared their food with me, however. My boss whose name I don’t remember regretfully, and his wife Sonia were particularly kind to me. They had no children and they cared about me. We occasionally had soup and porridge at bigger stations and at times we only managed to get some boiled water and some junk food.

In about 3 weeks we arrived at the point of destination: Zelenodolsk town, 2000 kilometers from home. Zelenodolsk was a small town on the steep bank of the Volga in about 40 km from Kazan, the capital of Tataria. I was accommodated in a dormitory where thanks to my boss’ arrangements, I could have a little 6-square meter room for myself, and went to work as a telephone operator. There was a bed, a table and chair in my room where I stayed till 1943. However hard yeas these were I recall them with warmth. Firstly, this was my youth. Secondly, through all these years the Soviet people were united with their common trouble. People were kind to one another and treated me well. We worked 3 shifts, and at pressing moments I went to work as a worker and I did it believing that it was my duty to work where required. I also had a big workload at my place receiving telephone messages from the center, making reports of work completed and connecting bosses with the Kremlin since our plant worked for the front. Of course, life was hard, but I was used to hunger and endured it easier than those having a good life and plenty of food before the war. I had many friends and there were Jews among them. I was particularly close with Sonia and her husband. They tried to celebrate Jewish holidays even in the evacuation. They fasted on Yom Kippur and celebrated Pesach. They always invited me to join them on holidays. Though I was not religious, I began to fast on Yom Kippur. By this time we already knew about fascist atrocities against Jews and about Babi Yar [18]. I knew that my mother and sister perished most likely. I wrote them many times, but never got their response. Of course, I blamed myself that I didn’t say good bye or take them with me, but what could I do? It was a miracle that I managed to leave. Well, what do I say? I was young and my friends and I often went to the club and cinema and dancing.

On 2 May 1943 my friend and I went to dance at the plywood factory club. I put on my new dress made from the cut of fabric that the trade union department gave me as a gif. A tall slim sailor invited me to a dance. We met: his name was Pyotr Rudometov. We dated few months and he proposed to me on 6 November 1943. This was a double holiday for me: our army liberated Kiev and also Pyotr and I entered the local registry office at 5 o’clock before it’s closure. The registry clerk was hurrying home and didn’t want to register our marriage, but Pyotr convinced her to do it telling her that on this day Kiev, the town of his beloved girl, was liberated. We got married and celebrated the wedding in the dormitory.

My husband Pyotr Rudometov, Russian, was born in Kharkov in 1918. His parents lived there. Pyotr’s father perished during the Civil War and his mother and little Pyotr moved to Arudovo village near Kalinin where she came from. After finishing school Pyotr entered a Navy school in Leningrad. When the Great Patriotic War began, Pyotr was sent to a short-term course in Batumi and then – to the ‘Stremitelniy’ cruiser ship. Pyotr was wounded and sell-shocked near Sevastopol. After recovery he was sent to serve on ‘Ohotnik’, a small boat in the rear Navy unit in Zelenodolsk. Shortly after we got married Pyotr was sent to Batumi and our wanderings began. In 1944 Pyotr was sent to Poti where I met aunt Manyusia, who was in evacuation there. In a month or two Pyotr was sent to serve in Kronshtadt. I was pregnant. Our trip lasted about three months. I started labor when we were approaching Kronshtadt. The medical nurse of the crew got scared. He said he had just finished his medical school and had no idea of deliveries. The wife of commanding officer tended to me, when my first girl was born. I had mastitis and puerperal fever, and other sailors tore beds sheets to make bandages. In Kronshtadt we were taken to hospital. I recovered, but my girl Luda died. The personnel bathed her in cold water and the girl died from pneumonia. My second baby was born in Arudovo village where my husband’s mother lived, in December 1945. I named the girl Lisa after my sister. Pyotr was serving in our army in Germany at this time. I need to say that Pyotr was very good to me. My nationality didn’t matter to him. His mother also loved me. I tended to her better than her own daughters, but Pyotr’s older sisters Vera and Tania, in particular, continuously wrote him letters trying to convince him to part with the ‘zhydovka’ [kike], setting him against me. Pyotr came to take me with him and I was beside him ever since. Pyotr served in Liepaja, Latvia, 15 years. Our daughter Nathalia was born there in 1951, and in 1956 our son Sergei was born. We had a good life. My husband supported the family. I also worked as a telephone operator few years. The anti-Semitic campaigns of the late 1940s [19] had no impact on me; firstly because I was at home and secondly, because nobody ever asked me about my nationality while I had my husband’s Russian surname. Latvia was like a foreign country for the rest of the USSR. There were many goods quite inaccessible in other towns. And Pyotr’s sisters took to liking me all of a sudden. I sent them nice clothes. Upon demobilization Pyotr’s older sister Tania living in Kherson invited us there. She wrote about nice climate and plenty of fruit, and after demobilization we moved to Kherson.

I visited Kiev, my hometown, in 1948. Our neighbors told me that my mother was taken to Babi Yar on the 2nd or 3rd day of shootings: the janitor gave her away. Sister Lisa hid at her friend’s for few days, but then she went home to find out about her mother, and the same janitor reported on her. Lisa perished in Babi Yar in early October. They also told me about the tragic death of uncle Grigoriy: the loader who recognized him in the street reported on him in early November 1943, few days before Kiev was liberated. Grigoriy was also executed. For many years I used to visit Kiev almost every year to go to Babi Yar where my dear ones were lying, I went to Kreschatik and Shota Rustaveli Street where we lied. I still believe Kiev to be my home town. I am so happy that the Brodskiy synagogue where my grandmother and I used to go has been reconstructed and is a center of the Jewish life in Kiev.

Now about my grandmother Pesia. After the war she lived with aunt Manyusia in Sevastopol. I visited her several times. Sometimes I went to see her with my children. I felt myself Jewish in my grandmother’s house recalling Jewish traditions and customs. I could not celebrate holidays or observe Jewish traditions at my home: my husband Pyotr was a military man and a party member. With all his love to me he would not have allowed this. Grandmother Pesia died in the early 1960s at the age of over 90.

After we moved to Kherson my husband sailed on civilian boats for 11 years and later he worked at a factory. I stayed at home. Then my husband had a stroke and he was bedridden and couldn’t move for 3 years. Pyotr died in 1990, 3 years before our ‘golden wedding’ anniversary. Since then I’ve been alone.

My daughters have Russian spouses. My older daughter Yelizaveta Zakurakina finished the Pharmaceutical Faculty in Kherson. She has worked as a pharmacists in Chermon for 3 years. Her daughter Ludmila named after my first daughter finished a college, worked as a teacher at school, and now she works for a commercial company. My second grandson, Yelizaveta’s son Alexei, also works for this company.

Nathalia finished a Trade School and works in a big shopping center. Her marriage to Titkov failed. Her son Andrei from her first marriage died of sarcoma, her husband took to drinking and they divorced. Now she is married for the second time. Her surname is Harlova. Her daughter Tatiana finished a college and also works for a commercial company. She is single.

My youngest is my poor son, I don’t feel like recalling him. He is a finished alcoholic. He lives with his mistress and they both drank away everything he had at home. He has tuberculosis and on top of it all he broke his femoral neck bone and he is bedridden. He lives in terrible conditions and misery.

My husband died at the time of revival of the Jewish life in Ukraine and Kherson. I began to socialize with Jews, go to the synagogue. I observe Jewish traditions and light a candle on Sabbath. I’ve got new friends among the clients and employees of the Hesed in Kherson. I attend the Day Center in Hesed every week. I get to know about the Jewish history, culture and about Israel. After a recent surgery I have problems with my right hand, and a visiting nurse from the Hesed helps me around. While my husband was working, I had a good life. I only traveled to Kiev or Sevastopol to visit grandmother, but I couldn’t afford a vacation on the seashore or a health center. After perestroika [20], I receive a small pension for my husband since I hadn’t worked enough to have my own pension. I also lease one room to students. My daughters are well provided for, but they need to support their children. I like today’s living, when Jews have opportunities to live community life and they are not ashamed of their nationality and do not fear to hear the word ‘zhydovka’ like I did. My granddaughter Tatiana studied in Israel under an educational program. She likes this country and is eager to go there. She and Nathalia go to the synagogue on holidays. Therefore, the perestroika is good, for it supported restoration of the Jewry in the country and in my family.

GLOSSARY:

[1] Khrushchovka: Five-storied apartment buildings with small one, two or three-bedroom apartments, named after Nikita Khrushchev, head of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death. These apartment buildings were constructed in the framework of Khrushchev’s program of cheap dwelling in the new neighborhood of most Soviet cities.

[2] Russian Revolution of 1917: Revolution in which the tsarist regime was overthrown in the Russian Empire and, under Lenin, was replaced by the Bolshevik rule. The two phases of the Revolution were: February Revolution, which came about due to food and fuel shortages during World War I, and during which the tsar abdicated and a provisional government took over. The second phase took place in the form of a coup led by Lenin in October/November (October Revolution) and saw the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

[3] Struggle against religion: The 1930s was a time of anti-religion struggle in the USSR. In those years it was not safe to go to synagogue or to church. Places of worship, statues of saints, etc. were removed; rabbis, Orthodox and Roman Catholic priests disappeared behind KGB walls.

[4] Jewish Pale of Settlement: Certain provinces in the Russian Empire were designated for permanent Jewish residence and the Jewish population was only allowed to live in these areas. The Pale was first established by a decree by Catherine II in 1791. The regulation was in force until the Russian Revolution of 1917, although the limits of the Pale were modified several times. The Pale stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, and 94% of the total Jewish population of Russia, almost 5 million people, lived there. The overwhelming majority of the Jews lived in the towns and shtetls of the Pale. Certain privileged groups of Jews, such as certain merchants, university graduates and craftsmen working in certain branches, were granted to live outside the borders of the Pale of Settlement permanently.

[5] Pogroms in Ukraine: In the 1920s there were many anti-Semitic gangs in Ukraine. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children.

[6] Civil War (1918-1920): The Civil War between the Reds (the Bolsheviks) and the Whites (the anti-Bolsheviks), which broke out in early 1918, ravaged Russia until 1920. The Whites represented all shades of anti-communist groups – Russian army units from World War I, led by anti-Bolshevik officers, by anti-Bolshevik volunteers and some Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Several of their leaders favored setting up a military dictatorship, but few were outspoken tsarists. Atrocities were committed throughout the Civil War by both sides. The Civil War ended with Bolshevik military victory, thanks to the lack of cooperation among the various White commanders and to the reorganization of the Red forces after Trotsky became commissar for war. It was won, however, only at the price of immense sacrifice; by 1920 Russia was ruined and devastated. In 1920 industrial production was reduced to 14% and agriculture to 50% as compared to 1913.

[7] The so-called New Economic Policy of the Soviet authorities was launched by Lenin in 1921. It meant that private business was allowed on a small scale in order to save the country ruined by the Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War. They allowed priority development of private capital and entrepreneurship. The NEP was gradually abandoned in the 1920s with the introduction of the planned economy.

[8] Great Patriotic War: On 22nd June 1941 at 5 o’clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War. The German blitzkrieg, known as Operation Barbarossa, nearly succeeded in breaking the Soviet Union in the months that followed. Caught unprepared, the Soviet forces lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the German onslaught in the first weeks of the war. By November 1941 the German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city, and threatened Moscow itself. The war ended for the Soviet Union on 9th May 1945.

[9] Petliura, Simon (1879-1926): Ukrainian politician, member of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Working Party, one of the leaders of Centralnaya Rada (Central Council), the national government of Ukraine (1917-1918). Military units under his command killed Jews during the Civil War in Ukraine. In the Soviet-Polish war he was on the side of Poland; in 1920 he emigrated. He was killed in Paris by the Jewish nationalist Schwarzbard in revenge for the pogroms against Jews in Ukraine.

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

[11] Famine in Ukraine: In 1920 a deliberate famine was introduced in the Ukraine causing the death of millions of people. It was arranged in order to suppress those protesting peasants who did not want to join the collective farms. There was another dreadful deliberate famine in 1930-1934 in the Ukraine. The authorities took away the last food products from the peasants. People were dying in the streets, whole villages became deserted. The authorities arranged this specifically to suppress the rebellious peasants who did not want to accept Soviet power and join collective farms.

[12] Torgsin stores: Special retail stores, which were established in larger Russian cities in the 1920s with the purpose of selling goods to foreigners. Torgsins sold commodities that were in short supply for hard currency or exchanged them for gold and jewelry, accepting old coins as well. The real aim of this economic experiment that lasted for two years was to swindle out all gold and valuables from the population for the industrial development of the country.

[13] Komsomol: Communist youth political organization created in 1918. The task of the Komsomol was to spread of the ideas of communism and involve the worker and peasant youth in building the Soviet Union. The Komsomol also aimed at giving a communist upbringing by involving the worker youth in the political struggle, supplemented by theoretical education. The Komsomol was more popular than the Communist Party because with its aim of education people could accept uninitiated young proletarians, whereas party members had to have at least a minimal political qualification.

[14] Kossior, Stanislav (1889-1938): One of the founders of the Communist Party in Ukraine and General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1928-1938. He was arrested in the course of The Great Purges of 1936-38, known popularly as the Yezhovshchina (after NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov who conducted them), and executed.

[15] Great Terror (1934-1938): During the Great Terror, or Great Purges, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik opponents in 1936-1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. The major targets of the Great Terror were communists. Over half of the people who were arrested were members of the party at the time of their arrest. The armed forces, the Communist Party, and the government in general were purged of all allegedly dissident persons; the victims were generally sentenced to death or to long terms of hard labor. Much of the purge was carried out in secret, and only a few cases were tried in public ‘show trials’. By the time the terror subsided in 1939, Stalin had managed to bring both the Party and the public to a state of complete submission to his rule. Soviet society was so atomized and the people so fearful of reprisals that mass arrests were no longer necessary. Stalin ruled as absolute dictator of the Soviet Union until his death in March 1953.

[16] Enemy of the people: Soviet official term; euphemism used for real or assumed political opposition.

[17] Molotov, V. P. (1890-1986): Statesman and member of the Communist Party leadership. From 1939, Minister of Foreign Affairs. On June 22, 1941 he announced the German attack on the USSR on the radio. He and Eden also worked out the percentages agreement after the war, about Soviet and western spheres of influence in the new Europe.

[18] Babi Yar: Babi Yar is the site of the first mass shooting of Jews that was carried out openly by fascists. On 29th and 30th September 1941 33,771 Jews were shot there by a special SS unit and Ukrainian militia men. During the Nazi occupation of Kiev between 1941 and 1943 over a 100,000 people were killed in Babi Yar, most of whom were Jewish. The Germans tried in vain to efface the traces of the mass grave in August 1943 and the Soviet public learnt about mass murder after World War II.

[19] Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’: The campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’, i.e. Jews, was initiated in articles in the central organs of the Communist Party in 1949. The campaign was directed primarily at the Jewish intelligentsia and it was the first public attack on Soviet Jews as Jews. ‘Cosmopolitans’ writers were accused of hating the Russian people, of supporting Zionism, etc. Many Yiddish writers as well as the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested in November 1948 on charges that they maintained ties with Zionism and with American ‘imperialism’. They were executed secretly in 1952. The anti-Semitic Doctors’ Plot was launched in January 1953. A wave of anti-Semitism spread through the USSR. Jews were removed from their positions, and rumors of an imminent mass deportation of Jews to the eastern part of the USSR began to spread. Stalin’s death in March 1953 put an end to the campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’.

[20] Perestroika (Russian for restructuring): Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s, associated with the name of Soviet politician Mikhail Gorbachev. The term designated the attempts to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized, market-oriented economy. Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratize the Communist Party organization. By 1991, perestroika was declining and was soon eclipsed by the dissolution of the USSR.

Rimma Leibert
Ternopol
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: September 2003

Rimma Leibert met me at the railway station in Ternopol where I arrived from Kiev. She came there with a group of ladies, activists of the Jewish community of the town. They were to help me find those who would agree to give me an interview. Rimma is a short round and very sweet lady radiating warmth and kindness. She showed me her family photos. She asked me whether I could interview her – though is relatively young, she said she wanted to have the history of her family written.  Rimma really did make an effort to convince me. Her only request was to not do it at her home – for some reason she didn’t feel comfortable about it. We had a meeting in the Ternopol hotel where I was staying. 

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

My maternal great grandfather Zalman Blumenzweig, an outstanding strong redhead man, was a loader in the Odessa 1 dock. My great grandfather was very religious. He prayed every morning, went to the synagogue, though it didn’t keep him from using ‘juicy’ jargon of Odessa dockers. He had three sons: I don’t know the name of the oldest one, the middle son’s name was Haim and the youngest son was my grandfather Abram. They went to cheder and this was all education they got. The two older sons followed into their father’s steps working as loaders in the dock. I don’t know anything about the life of my grandfather’s older brother – he must have died before the revolution of 1917 2. As for Haim, he lived as long as the beginning of the Great Patriotic War 3. He, his son, daughter-in-law and his little grandson Monia perished during the German massacre of the Jews of Odessa in 1941.

My grandfather Abram, born in 1880, went to study vocation after finishing cheder. He became an apprentice of a blacksmith. Grandfather Abram was also a big strong man and did well in his vocation. Abram married Riva, a Jewish girl, and this is all I know about my grandmother. After the wedding the newly weds moved to Kerch town in the Crimea, in the east of the Crimean peninsula, where my grandmother’s distant relatives lived. This town recently celebrated the 2600th anniversary of its foundation. It was founded by ancient Greeks and was called Panticapea. There was a big fish and trade dock in Kerch. The population dealt in fishing and fish industries. The population was Russian, Ukrainian, Greek, Turkish, Crimean Tatar, Karaim and Jewish, of course. The Krymchaks and Karaims belonged to the Judaic faith like Jews. There were Christian churches, a Muslim mosque, six synagogues, a Karaim kinasa and a Krymchak synagogue in Kerch. There was a Jewish school for boys and girls in the town. The biggest synagogue was attended by Jewish doctors, lawyers and wealthy merchants. There were two synagogues for the military: there was a garrison in Kerch. One was for officers and another one – for soldiers. There was a craftsmen’s synagogue and two smaller synagogues. My grandfather Abram went to the craftsmen’s synagogue on Friday, Saturday and Jewish holidays. On weekdays he prayed at home with his tallit and tefillin on starting his days with a prayer. Grandmother Riva was also very religious. She was a housewife, as Jewish traditions required.

According to what my mother and older sister told me, my grandfather lived in a small house whitewashed from the outside in the suburb of the town near the seashore. In the evenings my grandfather went fishing to provide additional food for the family. My grandparents kept chickens and even a cow at one time. However, later, when the children grew older, they had to sell the cow. It was hard to get cow food in this steppe part of the Crimea where there was little grass.  After my grandmother Riva died my grandfather remarried. My grandfather earned his living by making iron beds. He even made me one, when I was a child. My grandparents were poor and my grandfather could earn as much as was necessary to survive. My grandmother Riva was a kind woman. My mother’s early childhood was fair and happy. My mother told me she liked helping her father in the forge. On Friday my grandmother cleaned the house for Sabbath and cooked dinner leaving it in the stove till Saturday. There was plenty of fruit, watermelons and melons in the south. My grandparents grew grapes and had their own wine for adults and juice for the children on the Sabbath table. In 1920, during the Civil War 4, the time of devastation and epidemics, my grandmother Riva contracted cholera from her neighbors, whom she was trying to help, and died within few days leaving five children behind.

Grandfather Abram remarried, but his second wife, whose name I don’t remember since my mother didn’t even want a mention of her, happened to be a poor replacement of the mother of the children. My mother’s older sister Lusia, born in1903, got married and moved to live with her husband. Her husband Yefim Tsyrulnik, a Jew, worked at the mill. In the early 1930s he became chief engineer. Lusia had three children: sons Mikhail and Ruvim and Alla, the youngest, born in 1938. When the Great Patriotic War began, Lusia’s family decided to evacuate, but since Yefim was busy with supporting evacuation of other employees, they failed to leave.  Kerch was invaded from the sea and the power in it switched from one side to another several times. Many Jews failed to leave Kerch. Grandfather Abram and his wife also stayed in Kerch.  They were killed during the first anti-Jewish action. During the second action the Tsyrulnik family was killed. According to what our neighbor, whom my mother met with after the war, said, Galifa, a Tatar woman reported on them to Germans. They were neighbors and Lusia and her husband had helped her a lot before the war. Galifa had many children, and my aunt gave her children’s clothes and supported her with money before the war. 

My mother’s brother Boris, born in 1905, finished a rabfak 5 and entered Odessa Polytechnic College. He became an engineer. He lived in Odessa with his wife Polia, a Jew, and their daughter Bella. Boris was recruited to the army and perished near Sevastopol in 1941. Polia and Bella were in evacuation. Polia never remarried. She died in the early 1990s in Odessa. Her daughter Bella and her family live in Australia. I have no contacts with her. 

My mother’s sister Ola (Jewish Golda), born in 1910, my mother Reizl, born in 1912, and the youngest Tsylia, born in 1915, had the hardest life with their stepmother. Actually, I don’t know what was so bad about this woman. Perhaps, she just failed to win the girls’ love. My mother didn’t like her whatsoever. My grandfather’s brother Haim came to Kerch to take my mother to Odessa, when she was 14. This happened before she finished the 7th form at school.  Ola stayed in Kerch. In the late 1920s she married Adolph Vakerman, a Jewish man from Odessa, and moved to Odessa. In the late 1930s Ola’s daughter Galina was born. Tsylia never got married and lived with Ola’s family.

Haim’s family lived in two little rooms near the dock in Odessa. However, Haim’s wife welcomed Reizl, Haim’s niece, warmly and never caused my mother’s any discomfort about her living with them. Thus, my mother understood that it was hard for them to support her. Shortly after ward she went to work at the food preserve factory where she worked few years. Then she went to the cable factory. Having no education my mother worked as a laborer at both factories. In Haim’s family my mother slept in a folding bed in the corridor. She gave her earning to Haim. She made friends in Odessa and they went to dancing parties, to the cinema and theater. When obtaining the passport, my mother changed her name to Rosa, a more convenient name at the time. My mother got fond of communist ideas like many young people of her time. She joined Komsomol 6 and started a new life. In Haim’s family Jewish traditions were still strong. They celebrated Jewish holidays, bought matzah on Pesach and conducted seder. However, things were changing. Haim worked in a dockers’ crew on Saturdays and could not celebrate Sabbath any longer. When famine began in Ukraine 7 they gave up kashrut eating whatever they could get to survive. 

My mother was an active Komsomol member. On weekends she traveled to villages with a group of other activists to propagate kolkhozes 8. These groups arranged meetings and made concerts singing revolutionary songs, reciting poems for the communist regime. For her activities my mother was awarded a stay in a recreation center in Odessa in 1932. That was where she met my father, who was there on vacation.

I don’t know anything about my father Boris Leibert’s parents. All I know is that my grandfather’s name was Iosif. They said my father, his brothers and sister grew up in a children’s home in Odessa.  My father didn’t tell me anything about it. My mother mentioned once that grandfather Iosif was a craftsman. I don’t know how the children happened to grow up in the children’s home.  Aron, born in 1903, was the oldest in the family. The next was Sima, born in 1905. My father Boris was born in 1907, and Mikhail, the youngest, was born in 1911. I don’t know my father brothers or sister’s Jewish names. I give their names as I heard them from my mother. It goes without saying that these children did not get any Jewish education.  I don’t know whether the boys finished cheder since I don’t know at what age they became orphans. After the children’s home they went to the army, finished military schools and became professional military. They were members of the Communist Party and were far from religion.  This was the best way possible for the poor and orphaned: they were provided meals and uniforms in the army. Besides, they had a place to leave since after the children’s home those children hardly ever had a place to go to. So, the army came to my father and his brothers’ rescue. 

My father’s brother Aron finished a political military school in Leningrad and stayed to serve there. He also finished the Military Academy. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War he was a colonel and lectured at the Academy. His wife Sonia, a Jew, came from the town of Mirgorod in Ukraine. They had two daughters: Lidia and Rita, born in the middle of the 1930s. They have a prewar photo where the girls were photographed with their friends. In early June1941 Sonia and the girls went to Mirgorod to visit Sonia’s parents. When the war began, they failed to evacuate and perished in Mirgorod. They and Sonia’s parents were killed by fascists. Aron went to the front on the first days of the war. He was commander of a regiment. He perished near Kharkov in 1941. He didn’t know what happened to his family. He was probably hoping they had survived.

My father’s younger brother Mikhail also became a military. He was at the front during the Great Patriotic War. After the war he settled down in Ufa, Bashkiria (today Russian Federation), where his wife, son and daughter, born in 1941, were in evacuation. I know that my mother corresponded with uncle Mikhail, but I never saw him. I don’t remember my cousin brother or sister’s names. Uncle Mikhail died in the middle of the 1990s. I have no contacts with his children.

Sima, my father’s sister, her husband and daughter lived in Odessa. I don’t remember her husband’s name. I know that he was a barber and earned well. Aunt Sima never had to go to work. In 1937 her daughter Nora was born. During the war Sima and her daughter were in evacuation some place in the Ural. After the war they returned to Odessa. Aunt Sima died about 20 years ago. Her daughter Nora and her children live in Israel. 

My father Boris Leibert finished a political military school and served in Tbilisi, Georgia, where he was chief of political department of the garrison in Tbilisi. In 1932 he went to a military recreation house in Odessa. He met my mother and proposed to her almost two weeks after they met. My mother returned my father’s feelings. They went to grandfather Abram in Kerch where they had a small wedding. They registered their marriage in a registry office in Kerch.  My father didn’t even want to hear about any Jewish wedding or traditions: he was a convinced communist.  After the wedding my father and mother went to Tbilisi where my father was on service. 

They lived in a good two-bedroom apartment in the apartment building for officers near the center of the town. My mother fell in love with Tbilisi, one of the most beautiful towns in the world, a warm hospitable town, with the beautiful thoroughfare of Shota Rustaveli, the Mtazminda Mountain dominating over the city and the narrow streets running down with two-storied houses in them, the laundry lines running across the streets. It was a multinational city. The population was Georgian, Armenian, Russian, Greek, Turkish and Jewish. There were Christian churches – Georgians are Christian, and Armenian Gregorian churches. There was a Jewish community in the city, but they led a very isolated life. My mother didn’t have any Jewish acquaintances in Tbilisi. She socialized with other officers’ wives and there were no Jewish women among them. My mother took an active part in public activities and was continuously elected to the women’s council [editor’s note: Women’s councils - departments, included in Party organs at the direction of the party Central Committee in 1918. Their members were women activists and their tasks included ideological work with women industrial employees and peasants with the aim of their socialist education. Reorganized in 1929] of the military unit.

In 1934 my sister Maya was born named after the 1 May holiday. She likes recalling her childhood in Tbilisi. She had many friends. My parents’ friends often got together in our house. They celebrated Soviet holidays – the October Revolution Day 9, 1 May [‘International Day of Workers’ Solidarity’, now Labor Day]. My sister told me that they sang Soviet songs and danced waltz – the room was big enough for them to dance. Since my father was a military and a convinced communist he didn’t want a mention of Jewish holidays or traditions. He believed them to be the vestige of the past. My mother also adopted communist ideas and had no urge for Jewish traditions.

In 1939 my mother and sister went to Kerch for the summer. My sister often told me how she was struck by the Jewish life and the traditions that my grandfather and his wife led and observed. There were no bigger Jewish holidays in summer, but she enjoyed Sabbath, delicious challot that my grandfather’s wife baked, the ceremony of blessing the bread, wine and lighting candles.   My mother said that after they returned to Tbilisi my sister cried and asked our father to allow us celebrate Sabbath at home, but he just laughed waving his daughter away.

Growing up

I was born on 27 October 1939. Even my name reflects the contradictions that existed in the family. My mother wanted to name me Riva after her mother, but my father was dead against this Jewish name. The only thing my mother managed to beg from him was to leave the first letter of my grandmother’s name: the letter R. They named me Rema – an acronym of ‘revolution’ and ‘Marxism’. This name was put down in my birth certificate. At home, though I was called Rimma and I only heard the name of Rema for the first time, when it was time for me to obtain a passport. It was then that I changed my official name of Rema to Rimma.

I don’t remember about my childhood years in Tbilisi before the war, naturally. In summer 1941 our parents were planning to take my sister and me to our grandfather in Kerch. As for them, they wanted to visit my father’s brother Aron in Leningrad. My father had train tickets to Kerch for 21 June, but he had some things to do at work and returned the tickets. On 22 June 1941 the Great Patriotic War began.

During the war

However little I was I remember how my father went to the front. Of course, these are dim memories. I remember us all going to the railway station in a car. Many people came to see my father off. My mother and I stayed in Tbilisi. My mother went to work at the army headquarters. She didn’t know anything about grandfather Abram, his family or her older sister Lusia. There were no letters from them and my mother realized that they either decided to stay in Kerch or failed to evacuate. We lived in Tbilisi during the wartime. My mother received cards [the card system was introduced to directly regulate food supplies to the population by food and industrial product rates. During and after the Great Patriotic War there were cards for workers, non-manual employees and dependents in the USSR. The biggest rates were on workers’ cards: 400 grams of bread per day] for my father who was at the front for herself and two children. I don’t know how she managed to get food for us, but I don’t remember being starved. I remember the market in Tbilisi where my mother often took me. I remember Georgian vendor women giving my mother discounts seeing her with two children. They gave me fruit and put more in my pockets. So I remember how kind these people were. I remember the feeling of shared disaster and sympathy. In 1942 there were air raids in Tbilisi and we had to go to bomb shelters. I even remember a plane with two fuselages flying over our yard. Before running to the bomb shelter my mother used to take the laundry off the line and we were helping her. Often after work my mother went to help in the hospital in half hour drive from our house. My mother spent most time away from home. My sister looked after me and gave me food. Every now and then a neighbor would have come by to see whether everything was all right with us. Sometimes my sister and I took an old tram to go to the hospital. We recited poems and sang songs to patients. The wounded military laughed and looked happy. They gave us chocolate. This chocolate was so very delicious that I still seem to feel the taste of it on my lips.

My mother often wrote my father. I contoured my hand on a sheet of paper and put it in the envelop. My mother also corresponded with her sisters: Ola, her daughter Lidia and Tsylia were in evacuation in Kazakhstan. In 1942 Ola’s husband Adolph Vakerman disappeared. My father, hearing about it, wrote Ola a letter stating that he would take care of Ola and her daughter and promised to take them to live with us after he returned from the front, but my father never returned. He perished during the liberation of Western Ukraine on 16 August 1944. I remember my mother turning into stone, when she received the death notification holding it in her hand.  We were assigned to receive a little pension for our father.

In early 1945 the military unit where my mother was working in the headquarters, relocated to Western Ukraine. My mother decided to move with them.  She didn’t want to stay back. So we arrived in Lvov in January 1945 in a military train. My mother went to work in the officer’s restaurant. There were many vacant apartments in Lvov and my mother received a posh two-bedroom apartment in the center of Lvov. There were furniture and household utensils in it. Its owners must have perished in the ghetto. My mother understood that they were Jews, when she saw a silver ritual dish for Pesach in the apartment. My mother sent an invitation letter to her sisters in Kazakhstan, and in autumn 1945 Ola, her daughter and Tsylia joined us. We lived together in our apartment. My mother brought food leftovers from her work, so we tried to manage through those hard postwar years.

After the war

Once a military man came to the restaurant where my mother was working. He liked my mother and began to come there more often. So my mother met Boris Evenchik, who fell in love with her and proposed to my mother. My mother invited him to our home. He spent this evening with us and told us his story. Boris Evenchik was born to a common Jewish family in Minsk. His older brother’s name was Iosif and his sister’s name was Hana. Boris’ mother died in the early 1920s and Boris went to work at an early age. He got fond of playing the tuba at the house of pioneers, when he was a child. Later he learned to play other musical instruments. He turned out to have a talent for music and entered a military music school. After finishing it he became a military conductor. Before the Great Patriotic War Boris, his wife Sonia and their daughters Maya and Lilia lived in Minsk. Boris was conductor of the military orchestra of Byelorussia. On the first days of the war Boris’ military unit relocated to the frontline area. I don’t know how it happened that his family failed to evacuate. I know that his wife, their two daughters, Iosif, his wife and two children, Hana, her husband and their three children perished during the first actions in Minsk.  Boris was at the front through the whole period of the war. He was in Prague, when the war ended.   He was awarded an order of Lenin 10, Combat Red Banner 11 and Red Star 12, and had numerous medals. When he returned to Minsk, he found the ashes of his home: a bomb hit the house directly. His friends Yakov and his wife Maria, who were in Minsk during the occupation, told him about the tragedy of his wife, children and relatives. Boris had a hard time telling us his story, but he wanted to tell us all about his background. Mama and Boris got married soon and he moved into our apartment.

What do I say – Boris charmed me at once. It probably happened because I was growing without my father and I must have missed him a lot. I began to call my stepfather ‘papa’ almost at once and I never ever regretted this. He loved me as his own daughter and spoiled me even more than he probably would have spoiled his own daughter. But Maya did not accept the new father. She was older than me. She remembered and loved papa. She was even childishly cruel to mama reminding her of how she was sobbing after receiving the death notification and how wonderfully we lived before the war. However, my mother’s sisters were very bad to Boris. Only when I grew up I understood this was simple women’s jealousy on their part: they were alone while my mother had a handsome caring and loving husband.  

For a few moths we were living in the atmosphere of hatred that Ola and Tsylia created, and my sister Maya was with them. Tired of all this Boris (I will call him stepfather for convenience, though he was the father for me) requested his management to give him an assignment some place far away from Lvov. He got an assignment to Zholkva town in Lvov region in autumn 1946. My sister refused to come with us. My mother only packed whatever clothes we had and we left without taking a cup or any other thing from the apartment in Lvov. Now I understand how hard it was for my mother to leave Maya behind, and I still have a hard feeling about Maya for this matter. We lived in Zholkva for less than a year before my stepfather got an assignment in Yavorov where we received a good four-bedroom apartment. Our life was gradually improving.

I went to a Russian school in Yavorov in 1947. There were no Jewish children in my class. I remember how the children in another class teased Valia Finkelstein, a Jewish black-haired curly girl. I had fair hair and didn’t look like a Jew, but I became very quiet fearing being insulted. I clearly identified myself with the Jewish nation since my early childhood and not in association with Jewish holidays or traditions. I didn’t have these, but I caught hostile glimpses and heard whispers, sometimes direct insults. To make the long story short, I never felt one of them among Russian and Ukrainian children. I always felt inferior about it and tried to draw no attention to my person. In the course of time this type of conduct became my way of life and I’ve remained quiet and distant. I wasn’t the best student at school, but I wasn’t among the worst either. I didn’t take part in any public activities and was always eager to come back home to enjoy the warm and cozy atmosphere of my family. 

In 1950 my brother Eugeniy was born. My mother was a housewife. Boris earned well and we were doing rather well in this regard. In summer we went on family vacations to the Crimea. We rented a little hut at the seashore and enjoyed the sun and the sea, each other and doing nothing for few weeks in a row. These were the happiest moments of my life. I remember everybody’s concern in the early 1950s, when the state anti-Semitic campaign called ‘the doctors’ plot’ 13 began. My stepfather was very nervous. He smoked a lot reading newspapers with all those articles accusing rootless cosmopolites and poisoning doctors. However, this campaign had no impact on out family or acquaintances. The town was very small and there were not many Jews in it. In 1957 my stepfather got a job in Ternopol. I finished the 10th form in this town. 

I liked chemistry and was attracted by medicine, when at school. After finishing school I tried to enter the Medical College for two years, but… it was next to impossible for a Jewish girl to get there. On the third year I submitted documents to the Faculty of Chemistry of the Polytechnic College. Some time before I went to work at the chemical laboratory of the sugar factory – this was the vocation I was going to learn. However, I failed to enter the college again. They reasoned this by saying that I didn’t have sufficient work experience. I worked at the sugar factory some time going home after night shifts across the dark town. It was next to impossible to get another job. Only on the fourth year I entered the Lvov Technical School of Cinema Logistics only because they didn’t get sufficient number of students against their requirements. After finishing it I got employment at the Ternopol Department of Cinema Logistics where I worked as an engineer/economist till retirement. I also entered the extramural department of Kiev College of Public Economy and finished it. I had no conflicts or problems at work. Everything went quiet. I dutifully did my work as an engineer of the cinema physical plant. I got a small salary that was only enough buy sufficient food, necessary clothes and spend one week per year in the Crimea. I’ve never dreamed of having a car, a dacha or traveling far away. However, the majority of people in the USSR lived like this, and I never felt uncomfortable about it.

My sister Maya lived in Lvov with our aunts. However, in the course of time she made it up with my stepfather. She visited us and spent weekends or vacations with us. Ola’s daughter Galina also visited us. My aunts never got married. All I know about Galina is that she started drinking vodka at the age of 16 and left her home with some gypsies. Ola fell ill from suffering and died in the late 1950s. Tsylia passed away in 1961. Since then Maya has lived alone in Lvov. She also finished a technical school and worked as an economist. Unfortunately, she and I are single.

It’s hard for me to tell about Maya, but as for me, I’ve never met a man, whom I might fall in love with and who would be close spiritually to me. Firstly, there’ve never been Jews in my surrounding, and I’ve felt antagonism from others. Generally, I’ve been humble in life and it’s been hard for me to make a closer acquaintance with somebody. It seems to me, I’ve grown up in the warm atmosphere of our home and was afraid that I would not love or be loved. I had friends and we went to the cinema and theaters and on tours together, but there was nobody with whom I might want to live my life. At work I was an active Komsomol member and even applied to the party, but the party district committee invited me there telling me that I wasn’t mature enough to join the party. This was another demonstration of anti-Semitism. My stepfather felt so sorry for me. He told me to not reapply to the party. I became even quieter, worked mechanically and tried to not stand out. So I kept living in the apartment with mama, stepfather and my brother’s family. 

In 1984 mama got paralyzed, but she managed to recover. She died in 1991. A year and nine months later my stepfather passed away. Since then I’ve lived with my brother’s family. My brother Eugeniy finished a music school and worked as a music teacher for some time, but later he began to play in restaurants and organized his own band. His wife Galina is Ukrainian. Boris, Eugeniy’s only son, born in 1977, is my joy and delight. I helped to raise him and I feel happy for his successes. After finishing school Boris moved to Israel under a students’ exchange program. He now studies in the University in Karmi’el in Israel. Galina has visited him there and now my brother’s family is going to move to Israel. I will probably go with them. Traveling will be hard and I will have to cope with the hot climate in Israel, but I am so eager to see Israel. I dream of approaching the Wailing Wall and visit towns in Israel and I hope to be needed in Israel and if not – I will come back here.

I loved my parents dearly and it was very hard for me, when first my mother and then my stepmother passed away. Besides, a short time after my stepfather died, I was forced to retire before time since I was the only Jewish employee at my work. I was having a hard time, but it happened so that at that time I came to the newly founded Jewish community in Ternopol. I felt myself at home and among my own people. I became an activist in the community. I go there for Sabbath every week, I help them to prepare for Jewish holidays, enjoy their celebration and study Yiddish in the community. I like everything about it. I feel that I missed a lot, when I was young. My mother or father were far from the Jewish life, but now I feel like discovering the Jewish world.

This is exactly why I am grateful to independent Ukraine. It gave the Jewish communities and traditions a chance to develop and prosper. Ukraine, almost the only one among the former Soviet Union republics, peacefully builds up a democratic society and I like it, because many other republics are at war – this is horrifying. In 2002 I visited Kerch, my mother’s hometown. I was struck by its contrasts: ruined plants and mines, half-ruined dock and the shining sea, ancient fortresses and plundered burial mounds. It will take time and effort to make Kerch and Ternopol developed town. What else struck me in Kerch was the reconstructed synagogue in a beautiful street with young cypress trees, nice Hesed and the Jewish community. This wasn’t possible during the Soviet rule, and I am happy that the Jewry has revived in my grandfather and mother’s hometown. I also went to the common grave outside the town where my grandfather and his family perished. The community installed a modest monument on the spot where the Jews of Kerch were killed (later Krymchak and Karaim people were killed here), where the mortal remains of my kin lie.

GLOSSARY:

Yelizaveta Zatkovetskaya
Kherson
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: September 2003

Yelizaveta Zatkovetskaya lives in one half of a private house built in the 1950s in a sunny street in the suburb of Kherson. She opens the gate for me and I see a nice old woman with young eyes wearing a kerchief, a modest dark blue dress. We enter the house: nice clean rooms with the 1960-70s furniture and a kitchen on the verandah. We make ourselves comfortable for our conversation on the verandah. There are onions, garlic and pepper drying on the walls. The hostess grows them in her little garden near the house. There are also jars with freshly made jam and pickled cucumbers, tomatoes and paprika that she preserves for the whole family. There are hens and a turkey cock walking in the garden, and every now and then there is a friendly little dog running around the yard. Her neighbor drops by to borrow some salt and her son Alexandr comes to see his mother few times a day. On this lovely sunny day this old woman’s house is warm and cozy: the hostess seems to emanate this warmth, and it makes one feel like staying longer in her home.

My parents’ families come from German colonies south of Russia where in the Azov region, in Kherson steppes [present southeastern Ukraine, about 500 km from Kiev] during the rule of Catherine the Great [1] settlements of the minorities, so-called colonies were established on rich fertile lands. In the middle of the 18th century the tsarist government of Russia sent Polish, Greek and German minority groups to populate the areas that previously belonged to the Cossacks [2], who were actually exterminated. Later, in the middle of the 19th century, they deported Jews to this area. They took to farming. I didn’t know my maternal grandparents. They died before I was born. I became an orphan when I was just a baby. My mother, dying from puerperal fever asked to name me after her mother, my grandmother. Therefore, all I know about my grandmother is that her name was Yelizaveta like mine, and that she and my grandfather died during an epidemic in the 1910s. I don’t know my grandfather’s name or what he did for a living. I think that he dealt in farming, like the majority of colonists in the Jewish colony of Ingulets [450 km southeast of Kiev], in Yekaterinoslav [present Dnepropetrovsk] region. [Editor’s note: Ingulets, a big Jewish colony; its population in early 1900 2700 residents and 2600 of them were Jews. There were two synagogues and a Jewish elementary school. Now it’s a small industrial town. After WWII there were hardly any Jews left in the town]. My mother’s brother Zalman Miller, about 10 years older than my mother, lived in Ingulets. Zalman was married twice. His first wife Tsylia died leaving him with four children. He didn’t have children with his second wife, and they were raising those four children. During the Great Patriotic War [3] Zalman and his family were in evacuation somewhere in Siberia. He and then his wife Lubov died shortly after they returned from the evacuation. Zalman’s older son Moishe, born in about 1912, finished a college and lived in Dnepropetrovsk [450 km from Kiev]. His wife’s name was Rosa and their son’s name was Rudolf. During the Great Patriotic War they evacuated to Siberia, Novosibirsk town [about 6000 km from Moscow] and stayed there after the war. Moishe died in the middle 1960s. This is all information I have about his family. Zalman’s second son Israel, born in 1915, perished at the front at the very beginning of the war. Zalman’s daughters Yelizaveta, born in 1913, and Riva, born in 1919, had education. Yelizaveta became a zootechnician and Riva finished a teachers’ college. Yelizaveta married a Ukrainian name, and the family kept it a secret from Zalman for a long time. She and her husband went to work in Yama, a miners’ town in Stalinsk [present Donetsk region in about 700 km from Kiev]. Yelizaveta named her daughter Tsylia after her mother. Yelizaveta and her husband passed away a long time ago, and Tsylia lives in Yama. Riva married Yan Usviatov, a Jewish man. They settled down in Krivoy Rog [about 400 km east of Kiev], where she lives now. She has a son and a daughter. As for my mother’s brother Benyum Miller, a lame man, I saw him few times. He was single and died long before the Great Patriotic War.

My mother Mirl Miller was born in Ingulets in 1898. I don’t know anything about her childhood. She got a Jewish education at home, finished two or three forms of a Jewish elementary school and could write and read in the Jewish language. Before she got married she was helping her father with farming and about the house. From what my uncle Zalman says, my grandmother and grandfather were very religious. They observed all Jewish traditions and celebrated holidays. I don’t know how my mother met my father. Probably they met through matchmakers that was customary with Jewish families. She got married in early 1916.

My father’s parents lived in Sagaydak, a Jewish colony in Nikolaev region. It was a small colony: there were 2 or 3 streets in the settlement. (Editor’s note: according to the census of 1897, the population of Sagaydak constituted 770 residents and 760 were Jews). The Jews dealt in farming in the colony. It was a green town and there were gardens and vegetable gardens near each house. Villagers lived in plain clay houses with ground floors and thatched roofs. My grandfather and grandmother Etah were born in Sagaydak some time in the 1860s. My grandfather was a farmer and my grandmother was a housewife taking care of the house, the garden and raising seven children. They got Jewish education and were raised in accordance with Jewish traditions, but when they grew up and left their parents’ home moving into bigger towns, they lost their religiosity. However, they had Jewish spouses, but their families did not observe any traditions.

Feiga, the oldest of the children was born about 1885. Feiga’s husband Abram Lubashevskiy perished during a pogrom [4] during the civil war [5] leaving Feiga with three children: sons Mosia and Semyon and daughter Olga. During the great Patriotic War Feiga’s sons were at the front, and Feiga and her daughter were somewhere in the Ural in evacuation. Feiga lived a long life. After returning from the evacuation Feiga lived with her younger son Semyon in Odessa [6]. She died in 1980. Semyon and his family live in Germany now. Mosia became an invalid at the war and died shortly after the war. Olga, whose family name was Zeldina, finished a college and moved to Zhdanov (present Mariupol in the east of Ukraine, 670 km from Kiev). She died in the middle 1990s.

My father’s second brother Motia , born about 1888, lived and worked in Kirovograd [about 260 km from Kiev]. I don’t remember his wife’s name, but his children Yura and Asia and I were friends, when we were children. During the Great Patriotic War they were in the evacuation. Motia and his wife died in 1946, shortly after they returned from the evacuation. Yuriy became an engineer. He lives with his family in Dnepropetrovsk. Asia and her children moved to Israel in the middle 1990s. I have no contacts with her.

My father was the next child in the family and then came his brother Berl, born in 1892. Berl married his friend’s widow whose husband perished during a pogrom in the middle 1920х. She had a child, but Berl didn’t have children with her. In the early 1930s he and his family moved to Krivoy Rog to work in a mine. They lived there until the great Patriotic War. During the war he evacuated with his mine and after the war he moved to Kirovograd. He died in the middle 1970s.

My father’s youngest brother Duvid lived in Dnepropetrovsk. I don’t remember about his education. He worked as assistant accountant. His wife Olga came from Sagaydak. Duvid perished at the front during the Great Patriotic war. I lost contact with his wife and two children afterward. I know that they moved to USA in the early 1970s.

My father’s sister Manya. Born in 1898, was an elementary school teacher. Her husband Abram Schwartzman was a musician. Before the revolution he played at weddings with his orchestra and after the revolution he worked at the philharmonic. They lived in Kirovograd. Manya and Abram had one daughter whose name was Clara. She finished a Medical College after the war. She lives in Odessa now. Manya and Abram died during the evacuation.

My father’s youngest sister Yelizaveta, born in 1902, didn’t get a higher education. She married Yontl Paikin, a Jewish man from the Jewish colony of Romanovka. She and her husband worked in a Jewish kolkhoz [7]. During the Great Patriotic War Yelizaveta, her husband and their son Mikhail were in the evacuation, and stayed in the Ural after the war. Yelizaveta died in the middle 1980s. Mikhail lives in Israel now.

My father Haim Zatkovetskiy was born in 1889, I don’t know the exact date of his birth. My father got an elementary Jewish education. He studied in cheder till the age of 13 and then he followed into grandfather Benyum steps taking to farming. This is all I know about his childhood. I know that shortly after he married my mother, and they had a traditional wedding under a chuppah at the synagogue, my father was recruited to the army during WWI. My mother was pregnant with me. I was born on the 2nd day of Chanukkah in December 1916. My mother had mastitis that resulted in blood poisoning. She died in winter 1917 when I was one and a half months old. My grandmother Etah was looking after my mother, when she was ill. When my mother was dying, she took grandmother Etah’s hand and asked her to name me Yelizaveta after her mother. Besides, my mother made grandmother Etah promise that she would never allow me to be raised by a stepmother. My mother said that my father would get married. He was young and handsome, she said, and asked my grandmother to raise me in her house. Grandmother Etah became my mother from then on, and I called her ‘Mama’ till the last days of her life.

My grandmother’s neighbor Sarrah Nikitina, who also had a baby, gave my grandmother her breast milk once a day and I also had cow milk. About 1919 my father returned from the war. He came to live with us. He loved me dearly and my first memories are associated with him. He spent all his leisure time after working hard as He played with me, carried me around and made plain toys for me: straw and cloth dolls. The first years of my childhood passed in the atmosphere of love and care. Everybody loved me: grandmother Etah, who gave me the most delicious food, though the family was poor, grandfather Benyum, who always told me interesting stories about Jews before bedtime, and my father’s sisters and brothers. Uncle Motl, who was young away from him hiding under the table and he caught me, held me in his hands and kissed. When I was asleep by the time he returned from his outings, he en over grandmother (I slept with my grandmother) to kiss me. My aunts Manya and Yelizaveta always argued about whose turn it was to bathe me and comb my hair. They loved me so dearly that they enjoyed taking care of me. My father’s younger sister Yelizaveta loved me the most. During pogroms, when gangs broke into Sagaydak, Yelizaveta grabbed me telling them I was her daughter. Bandits used to rape young girls, but they didn’t touch those who were married and had children. Pogroms stayed in my memory as one of my first childhood memories. I remember that my father’s brother Duvid was ill, when a pogrom began, and my father took him to the attic fearing that bandits might kill him. Then my father grabbed me and ran into a field where we were hiding in high sunflower plants. I remember that I was thirsty, and he went to pick a watermelon in the adjoining field and there bandits captured him. My father begged them to allow him take me from the field or I would get lost in the field of sunflowers that were 3 times higher than me. They ordered him to take off his boots, and made him run across the fields holding me to the village. At home bandits turned our wardrobes upside down looking for good clothes, but we were poor and there was nothing to take. My father often hid me and other children in a haystack during pogroms and at times we spent few days there. My father brought us water and food and ordered to be quiet. I remember some military staying in our house. They made my grandfather unharness horses, water and feed their horses and told grandmother to bake bread for them. I have this vivid picture before: my grandmother Etah kneading dough in a big kneading trough with her sleeves rolled up, and tears falling from her eyes into the trough.

Those were horrifying years. When pogroms were over, another disaster began: famine in the early 1920s. Aunt Yelizaveta and uncle Boris gathered everything there was in the house including a Zinger sewing machine and went to sell them or change for food in a town in the north of Ukraine or in Russia. I was almost 5 years old, and I remember well the feeling of hunger. Our neighbor, my wet nurse, whose family was a little better off than ours, brought us potato peels, and my grandmother made Saturday challah bread with them. Our family was very religious, and celebrated Sabbath even in those hard years. My grandfather, father and his brothers went to the synagogue on Friday. There was a big beautiful two-storied synagogue from red bricks in the town. When they returned, the family sat down to dinner. There was challah bread, salt in a salt-cellar covered with a clean napkin and at least some wine on the table. My grandmother lit candles, and my grandfather said a prayer. Then he took a piece of challah, dipped it into salt, and the meal began. In those hungry years there was nothing, but challah baked from potato peels on the table. I remember celebration of Sabbath after the famine was over and life improved. The family was big: Feiga and her children also lived with my grandparents after Feiga’s husband was killed during a pogrom. There were 13 of us sitting at the table. All adults worked in the field. On Friday Feiga stayed at home to help grandmother prepare for Sabbath. My grandmother cooked in the Russian oven [8], and needed help with handling heavy casseroles and frying pans. My grandmother and Feiga always covered their heads: with either a plain kerchief on weekdays or a lace shawl on holidays. Men also covered their heads and always had a kippah on sitting at the table. They followed kashrut, and grandfather even forbade his sons to smoke inside.

I remember preparations to Jewish holidays. Before Pesach kosher crockery was taken down from the attic. As a rule, there was more needed and grandmother koshered everyday utensils in a big trough. The walls were whitewashed and the floors clayed and painted on edges to imitate carpeting. All children had new clothes made for them before Pesach. I remember dresses made for Yelizaveta and Manya from gray sack cloth with colorful edging, and grandmother made a dress from the remaining pieces for me. My grandfather usually conducted seder reclining at the head of the table: with his big beard, tallit and fancy kippah, posing questions and one of the older boys answering them. I also liked Sukkoth, when the family had meals in the sukkah near the house installed by grandfather and his sons. Chanukkah was my favorite holiday since it was my birthday. On Chanukkah every day another candle was lit in a special chanukkiyah candle stand. My grandmother made delicious dough nuts and potato pancakes. The children were given some money. The family bought another dress for me and there was a birthday cake made.

When I turned 6, my father remarried. His wife Esther came from Bobrinets, a Jewish town in Kirovograd region. She didn’t have children, and my father wanted to take me with him moving to her town, but my grandmother didn’t let me go: she promised my mother that she would not let me grow up with a stepmother. She promised my father that I would visit them. Once every few months my aunts Manya or Yelizaveta took me to Bobrinets. I didn’t like it there: my stepmother, who actually wasn’t a wicked woman, was cold with me. She wasn’t bad, but probably having no children of her own, she didn’t have any motherly feelings. My father loved me dearly and missed me a lot. Therefore, one or two years later he insisted that they sold their house in Bobrinets to buy one in Sagaydak. My father bought a small house across the street from where my grandmother lived. From then on I sort of lived with my father, though I spent all of my time with my grandmother. My father bathed me and washed my hair. I remember that once he decided to rinse my hair with kerosene solution. Some women advised him that it made the hair grow better. He did something wrong and burned my skin. He almost cried from annoyance applying some herbs on my head. He combed my hair plaiting in ribbons and putting fancy combs into my hair. My stepmother only cooked food and set the table for me. I was used to loving care in my grandmother’s house and I often ran into the field crying. Once my aunts Manya and Yelizaveta found me there. They insisted that I told them the reason, but I never confessed that it was because of my stepmother. I felt sorry for my father.

There was a 4-year Jewish school in Sagaydak. I studied very well. I even remember that I helped my cousin brothers and sisters with their studies. On winter evenings we all sat by the stove nibbling seeds and read books. I only went home to sleep, but often stayed in my grandmother’s home overnight. My teachers thought I was the best in my class recommending my father that I continued my education. After finishing the 4th form in my school in 1928 a group of my classmates and I went to Israilevka, a Jewish colony [editor’s note: in the late 1940s this village was either renamed or became a part of the nearest town; it didn’t seem possible to identify its present status] near Sagaydak, to continue our education. Israilevka was bigger than Sagaydak. There were twice as many residents and there was a 7-year Jewish school in the village. We, children from Sagaydak, were accommodated in an abandoned house that formerly belonged to a Jewish family declared to be kulaks [9] and exiled to Siberia. Fortunately, residents of Sagaydak didn’t suffer from this dispossessment, so poor they were. Boys accommodated in one room and girls – in another. I studied in Israilevka for a year. When my uncle Zalman got to know that I lived in a hostel, he came to pick me up and take to his house in Ingulets colony, my mother’s home town.

My life in Zalman’s house was very good. His wife Lubov treated his children like her own, and I was like their third daughter. I even envied my brothers and sisters for having never enjoyed so much warmth from my stepmother. My brothers Moishe and Israel had left their parents’ home by then. I became lifelong friends with my sisters Yelizaveta and Riva. Uncle Zalman was a grain procurer. He traveled on business a lot and the family always looked forward to his return. Zalman wasn’t a truly believing Jew. He had to work on Saturday. However, they celebrated holidays, symbolically, though: Pesach, Rosh Hashanah and Chanukkah. I studied in the 6th and 7th forms in Ingulets. I studied well and was a pioneer and an activist. I was usually responsible for helping pupils who were not so good with their studies. I liked it and decided to become a teacher.

In 1932 I finished this 7-year school. Two of my friends also wanted to become teachers and convinced me to go to the Pedagogical College in Kiev. Uncle Zalman tried to talk me out of traveling so far, but I was eager to see a big town, live and study in it. Besides, I had never seen a train before. Everything seemed interesting to me, and I was not afraid of anything. In Kiev we accommodated with a distant relative of one of the girls. Her husband was a Party official, and they lived in a big apartment in the center of the city. There were rabfak schools [10] in colleges – faculties preparing workers for colleges. The girls and I submitted our documents to this school. There were interviews and exams, and I was the only one of the three of us who was admitted. The girls left home ad I stayed in Kiev. I became a student of the Jewish Faculty of Kiev Pedagogical College. This faculty trained teachers of the Jewish literature and language for Jewish schools. There were many Jewish schools in Ukraine at that time. We studied in Yiddish. I lived in a hostel. There were huge rooms. There were 16 tenants in my room. We got along well and had a lot of fun together. Then the period of famine [11] began. Our stipends of 24 rubles were only enough to buy tea and sugar plums. So we had sugarplums with boiled water. In the college canteen we got thin soup with a bit of cabbage or beetroots. Many girls quit their studies. There were military schools in Kiev where cadets received rationed food. The girls were eager to meet cadets and many of them got married and quit the college. Some left home. Once I missed two days of classes looking for some work to do for money in Kiev. The dean asked me why I missed my classes. He started telling me that I should continue my studies in college for whatever it cost me, that I was a born teacher and had to study regardless any problems. I wasn’t going to quit the college. I even wrote my father that everything was fine and that we had good stipends. He wrote back that he was happy for me. In summer 1934 I visited my father, and he proudly walked with me around the town brabbing of my successes. My stepmother also gave me a warm reception. She even wanted to give me her suit since I hardly had any clothes, but I refused understanding that my stepmother wouldn’t manage to make another outfit for herself. I only took a skirt and later my co-tenants borrowed it from me to wear to a date or to the theater.

I also became a Komsomol member [12], when I was the first-year student and took an active part in public activities. Again I was responsible for helping other students with their studies. We were to study four years, but there was a need in teachers, and they reduced our course to three years. After the second year of studies this Jewish Faculty moved to Odessa to be farther from the capital. We didn’t understand then that it was a beginning of a slow attack on the Jewish culture and education. I lived in a hostel in Odessa. We celebrated all Soviet holidays, went to parades and festivals, but I also remembered the Jewish traditions. Being a Komsomol member, I couldn’t openly celebrate holidays or go to the synagogue, but I tried to observe traditions quietly. I tried to do no hard work on Saturday and fasted on Yom Kippur without mentioning it to anyone. Of course, following the kashrut was out of the question since we were always hungry and ate whatever we could get.

In the late 1920s – early 1930s new Jewish settlements were established in the south of Ukraine with the help of AgroJoint [13]. Some villages had names and some – Numbers: 16th, 17th, 23rd sites. AgroJoint helped poor Jews with moving to new locations and built houses and schools for them. There was also a need in Jewish teachers, and I received a job assignment [14] to a 7-year school in the 17th site in Kherson region. I am sure that this village is no longer there. It probably became a part of the nearest town. I rented an apartment from the logistic manager of school. Her family treated me like their own daughter. I made friends with doctor assistant Fira who came there from Gaisin Vinnitsa region after finishing a medical school. She worked in the laboratory where we received two rooms where Fira, sanitary assistant Nina, Russian, and I were accommodated. We got along well and had lots of fun. We made a communal budget putting our salaries together spending it for food. We also shared clothes, and my stepmother’s skirt became a popular outfit for my friends. The 17th site was a small settlement with a railroad station. There were trains to and from Kherson stopping there. Local young people used to walk along the platform at the station. There was a custom to dress up and go there at the time when a train arrived, walk along the platform nibbling sunflower seeds making comments about boys. Fira dated a zootechnician from the farm. Once we invited him to our home. That evening we made macaroni for dinner and the moment we served the table there was a knock on the door. We put our dinner under the table, just in case, having no intention to share our dinner with anybody and opened the door. There was Fira’s friend and an interesting young man with him. It was his friend, senior zootechnician. Fira’s friend wanted us to meet. They stayed for quite a while, and we were only concerned that one of them didn’t turn our dinner upside down. When the guys left we burst into laughter, but I didn’t really feel like laughing. I liked the guy very much. We began to see each other and few months later he proposed to me. I wrote my father (my grandmother Etah and grandfather Benyum had passed away by then) that I was planning to get married, described my fiancé and he gave me his blessing. Then my father and uncle Zalman visited us to meet my husband to be. In late 1936 we got married. We just had a civil ceremony in a registry office. Traditional Jewish weddings were not practiced at that time. We were both Komsomol members and might be expelled from Komsomol or even fired from work. Besides, there was no synagogue in our village.

My husband Peretz Freidkin was born in 1910 in Kalinindorf, a Jewish colony in Kherson region. His parents Zalman Berl and Rasia Freidkins also dealt in farming. Besides, my father-in-law was a shoemaker and it made his additional earnings. My husband’s family was a traditional Jewish family. He studied in cheder and then finished a Jewish elementary school. He also finished the Agricultural College in Kherson and became a zootechnician. After the wedding we lived in a small room of a three-apartment house in the 17th site. Our co-tenants were few other newly wed couples. We had a common kitchen and ‘comforts’ in the yard. Then we moved to the Jewish colony of Seidemenucha where I got a job assignment from the regional department of education half a year later. My husband worked as a zootechnician there as well. In 1937 our son was born. I named him Mikhail, by the first letter of my mother’s name. After our son was born we moved to my husband’s parents in Kalinindorf. We had a good life together. My husband’s parents had a nice big house and a garden. I worked at school. We hired a baby sitter for my son and my mother-in-law was helping me. She observed Jewish traditions. On Saturday our Ukrainian neighbor came to set the table for our family and feed our livestock. My mother-in-law made matzah and we celebrated Pesach. We usually spent vacations with my husband’s sister Tsylia in Kherson where she lived with her husband and two daughters: Yenia and Genia. Tsylia and I became friends, though she was significantly older than me.

My husband was a zootechnician in the kolkhoz [15] ‘The way to communism’. It was a very rich Jewish kolkhoz, a ‘millionaire’, adjoining to Kalinindorf. It was an advanced kolkhoz in the district, and in the late 1930s my husband and his crew were invited to the Exhibition of Achievements of Public Economy in Moscow. He took his pedigree cows and bulls to the exhibition and received a diploma for participation in the exhibition. I still keep this diploma and the photograph of my husband’s crew at the Exhibition in the fair memory of Peretz. By that time I had lost my job: the Jewish school was closed. Many teachers got training to become teachers of Russian, geography or history, but I couldn’t afford any training having to take care of our son.

This was a concerning period. In 1939 Jewish refugees from Poland appeared in our area escaping from fascists. At that same time my husband’s older brother on his father’s side Moishe Freidkin, his wife Kleina and their five-year-old daughter and little son Mosia arrived at Kalinindorf from Bessarabia [16]. We began to receive letters and photographs from him after Bessarabia was annexed to the USSR. Of course, we knew about Hitler and fascism, but we didn’t have thoughts about a war: it all seemed to be so far away. The Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact [17] made people think that there was going to be no war. I shall always remember the day of 22 June 1941, when the Great Patriotic War began. It was a warm sunny day, Sunday, and we were at home. My husband was cutting wood in the yard and I was playing with my son nearby. It was about noontime and we were going to rest in the garden after lunch, when our neighbor ran in screaming ‘It’s the war!’ We ran into the house: we were the only owners of a radio. We listened to Molotov [18] who spoke about the war and perfidious attack of fascists on our country. Mobilization began. My husband obtained a military service release certificate. He was responsible for evacuation of the livestock. He went to Lvovo colony with his crew where they arranged transfer of the cattle. He stayed there few weeks. I and other residents were digging an anti-tank trench. If only we had known how easily Hitler’s tanks overcame those funny obstacles for them while we believed that this trench would stop fascists and they would not invade our home town.

My husband returned in late July. There was panic and people tried to escape wherever they could manage. On 8 August my husband went to a meeting in the district party committee. Although he wasn’t a member of the party, they invited all managers of the kolkhoz to this meeting. They said at this meeting that fascists would not come to this area and that it was necessary to stop those defeatist moods and tell people that everything was all right and that they had to go back to work and stop panicking. My husband returned late. Our neighbors waited for him at the gate. He told them what he heard at the district committee. We went to bed. At 2 o’clock in the morning somebody knocked on our window. It was Gudkovich, chief of the district chemical department, who was on duty at the district executive committee. He said Germans were bombing Kherson and that we had to leave. He managed to keep two good horses and now he harnessed them. His wife and four children were already sitting in the wagon. They were small children: the youngest was a 2-week-old baby. Gudkovich offered us a ride. We packed whatever we could grab in a basket and a bag, locked the house – and left. In all this chaos I didn’t take warm clothes, but I grabbed white bed sheets for my sonny: I couldn’t imagine that Mikhail could sleep without white sheets. We didn’t have any money. The day before we left my mother-in-law wanted to take our savings from the bank, but they told her there was no money available. I didn’t say ‘good bye’ to my father. I never saw him again. It turned out that his wife refused from evacuation and sent back the wagon that uncle Boris sent for them from Krivoy Rog. Like other Jews she believed that Germans were not going to do anything bad to Jews. My father obeyed her thinking that I was staying in Kalinindorf and he would be there to support me. Besides my husband’s parents, my husband, my son and me, there was my husband’s niece Genia, a ten-year-old girl, his older sister Tsylia’s daughter, with us. She was spending her vacation with us and since we didn’t where her mother was at the moment we had to take her with us. Besides, there was senior accountant of the district chemical department with his wife and daughter in our wagon. Gudkovich also rode with us as far as the river crossing. On our way a wheel broke and while the men were fixing it, local boys were running around shouting ‘zhydy [kike] are running away!’ It was the first time in my life that I heard an abuse of this kind. I had always lived among Jews before and I don’t think I even suspected existence of anti-Semitism.

So we reached Lvov where there was a crossing on the Ingulets River. There were masses of wagons, horses and cattle near the crossing and the crossing was closed following the order of authorities who were concerned about possible panic. While we were there waiting we heard that my husband’s sister Tsylia and her younger daughter Genia came to our home and were looking for us. My husband and father-in-law took one horse and rode back home to pick her up. They were also concerned about the older brother. It turned out that Moishe and his family also made an effort to evacuate, but the crossing was closed and they were told to go back home. This family perished in the occupation.

A messenger from the town came to the crossing telling people to go back home. I still don’t know whether he represented some authorities or he was a saboteur. There were many sent by fascists. .The crossing was often bombed. During an air raid people around began to yell at me demanding that I took away my son’s white sheets and our white horse that might be a guiding point for German bombers. I took the horse to the bushes. There was screaming and groaning, cows and bull mooing and horses shying. After the bombing about ten people remained lying on the ground. This was terrible! In the morning my husband and father-in-law returned with my husband’s sister Tsylia and her daughter Yenia. My husband made arrangements for us to cross the river. People knew him since he had been involved in evacuation of the cattle some time before. Gudkovich said ‘good bye’ to us and we agreed to keep in touch via his relative living in Kazan. When we crossed the river my husband said that thought he was released from military service he could not be an outside observer in this blood shedding war and that he had to fight fascists. Peretz hugged and kissed me and said he understood that I would have a hard time having to take care of our son and old folks. He gave me his watch to sell it for money. I begged my husband to stay, but he was inexorable. In the morning he left with the accountant’s son. I never saw my husband again. There was no military registry office in Kalinindorf and the accountant’s son returned, but Peretz went on looking for our troops. He must have perished on his way: there were violent battles in this area at that time.

We went on. My father-in-law was riding the wagon and Tsylia and I walked behind it. There were few bombings on the way. We reached Rostov region having covered over 250 km. We spent the nights in the woods. Local villagers gave us some food on the way. We stayed in a kolkhoz. There was an order issued to kolkhozes to accommodate the newcomers and give them jobs. We rented a room in a house. Tsylia and I worked in the kolkhoz. My father-in-law was a shoemaker and my mother-in-law looked after the children. Tsylia and I went to the railroad after work every day: there were trains passing to the front or to the rear with the wounded. We were hoping to find our husbands or hear something about them. Tsylia’s husband was recruited on the first days of the war. We were standing there giving bread or crumbs to the soldiers: whatever we had with us. We never heard anything about our relatives or acquaintances. My father-in-law’s brother Gershl Kalman found us in the kolkhoz. He had evacuated with his daughter, a lame and sickly girl, and his wife. His wife died on the way and his daughter got lost. Gershl stayed with us. His daughter found us few days later: somebody told her where we were.

In late October the management of this kolkhoz notified us that we had to leave urgently: fascist troops were approaching Rostov. There were no horses available. Chairman of the kolkhoz had left on them. We got two bulls. My father-in-law was angry: how was he going to manage them? But what could we do? So, we harnessed them and started on our way. My son fell ill with measles on the way, he had fever of 39 degrees lying in the wagon in the rain. Tsylia sprained her joints jumping off the wagon. I walked after the wagon carrying my son. Every night we asked villagers to let us in to stay overnight. There was so much trouble. Once the hostess’ husband wanted to rape me and we had to pack and escape. Once I left my son lying on the floor and went out to unharness the bulls, when the hostess ran out of the house screaming: she decided that I left a dead child in the house. I told her that my son had measles. She started fire in her oven to warm up my son, gave him a hot drink and tried to help me. I was grateful to this woman and felt like staying in her warm house. But we had to move on. Winter began. We were cold having no warm clothes. Gudkovich’s wife came to our rescue. She shared her warm clothes with us. In the daytime fascists were bombing roads and villages and Tsylia suggested that we traveled on forest roads that were quiet. She said we had to stay near rivers so that if fascists captured us we could rush into the water and get drowned. The bulls were very good especially considering that ground roads became muddy and they were very enduring. We often unharnessed them to help to pull other wagons out of the mud. I liked these bulls and tried to gather more grass or hay to feed them.

In late November we reached Elista town, the capital of Kalmyk ASSR in 900 km from home. It was a small town. There were mostly private houses in it. There were bigger houses in the center of the town: the Supreme Soviet, Party Central Committee, central post office and a theater. There was a kolkhoz in the suburb where we left our hardworking bulls. A Kalmyk family gave us shelter. We slept on the floor in a big room. I was sleeping near the door and every morning I found a piece of bread or a lump of sugar by my side. The host of the house left them feeling sorry for us, but keeping it a secret from his wife. His wife also sympathized with us. She gave food to the children till I went to work. I began to work at the post office and Tsylia got a job of a cloakroom attendant at the theater. We received bread coupons for us and the children. My father-in-law worked as a shoemaker and his customers paid him with food: milk, eggs or read. Gudkovich arrived shortly afterward. His relative from Kazan told him our whereabouts. I asked him whether he knew anything about Peretz, but he didn’t. He left with his family. We lived there till summer 1942.

When fascists approached the Volga, we decided to move on to the east. Again we harnessed our bulls and went to the railway station. We left our bulls with some people. We kissed the animals thanking them for rescuing us and asked their new owners to take care of them. We boarded a freight train. Our trip lasted about ten days. We didn’t know where we were going. My mother-in-law Rasia fell severely ill on the way. She got poisoned and had high fever, vomiting and bloody flux. We got off at a station. It turned out to be inviting people to come with them. Our family left for a kolkhoz and I stayed with my mother-in-law. Rasia was taken to hospital. My son and I spent the nights at the railway station. I exchanged some clothes for food and cooked in a casserole on stones and visited my mother-in-law in hospital. Rasia recovered: she had good treatment and food in the hospital. We stayed at the railway station ten days more before I found out where our family was. We got a ride there. I remember an Uzbek girl kissing me ‘hallo’: this turned out to be Genia’s daughter wearing an Uzbek gown. We were accommodated in a nice house. The kolkhoz provided wheat grains to us. Tsylia and I took it to the mill to have it ground. We worked in a cotton field. It was hard work. Misha and I were allergic to cotton. We decided to leave this sovkhoz. We took a freight train to Begovat station near Tashkent where we met a Russian woman from Nikolaev. We started talking to her at the station. She helped us a lot. She found accommodation and paid for us, lent us some money and helped me to find a job. She also helped us to obtain a residential permit [19] through her Uzbek acquaintance working in the militia. We lived in a small room in the basement. Tsylia and I went to work at a shop manufacturing ropes for the front. Mikhail and Yenia went to a kindergarten and Genia went to school and helped her grandmother about the house. Tsylia received letters from her husband. I wrote many requests searching for him, but it was in vain. One of commanders wrote me that my husband may have perished never reaching our troops. I was ready to do any work to support my family. After work I made jam from cherry plums or apples – whatever I could pick in the streets, and ran to the market to sell it. I sold jam in glasses and then bought food for the money I got. I was surprised that locals didn’t make jam, but willingly bought it from me. My father-in-law fixed shoes sitting and working on his box outside. He earned a little, when a financial inspector [state officer responsible for identification of illegal businesses], a young and strong Uzbek man demanded that we paid him 10 rubles per day. My father-in-law didn’t have this much. Once this inspector pushed his box throwing his tools about the street and told the old man to stay away from the street, if he didn’t have money for him. When we came back from work, my mother-in-law and father-in-law were crying. I wrote a letter to the Ministry of defense in Moscow. I wrote about our life, about having to escape from our home leaving all our belongings behind, and that our husbands had perished and the old man was trying to earn some money to support the family and we didn’t beg the state to help us, while this young strong inspector was not at the front for some reason. Two weeks later a commission came from the executive committee. They inspected our room, saw drying bread on the stove and allowed my father-in-law to do his work without fearing anyone. . The financial inspector, his offender, never showed up again. I don’t know what happened to him. In early 1944 my father-in-law died. Local Jews buried him wrapping him in his tallit and recited prayers. They buried him on planks in the grave. There was no coffin.

On 14 March 1944 Kalinindorf was liberated. I submitted a request for going back. We received permission for reevacuation only in November. I wrote to the village council that we were returning and asked them to inform me on what happened to our relatives. They wrote me back that Moishe and Kreina Freidkins and their children were shot by fascists in Kalinindorf. I received the same notification for my father and stepmother in Sagaydak. I was eager to go back to my home place. Our return trip lasted for about a month. The trains were passing by without stopping, so overcrowded they were and we had to wait at stations for a long time before getting on another train. Finally in late December 1944 we arrived at Kalinindorf. I hired a wagon to take us home. Our house was there, but the door was locked. A Ukrainian woman and her son had moved into our house. She came back in the evening with a friend of hers and chairman of the village council. They allowed us to live in half of the house, but we were happy about it. Hungry and exhausted, we fell asleep on the floor. In the morning we found out that there was nothing left in the house: this woman had taken our belongings away. Our Russian neighbor Maria came to see us. She was very happy that we were back. She gave us stools, dishes, buckets and casseroles: everything we needed to start with. That same day the Ukrainian woman moved into another Jewish house. Its owners had perished. There were many empty Jewish houses in Kalinindorf and other colonies. Tsylia and I went to work in the kolkhoz. People were helping us giving us whatever they could. I remember how my son got severely ill. I found the apartment of an assistant doctor, but he wasn’t at home. When I returned home, my son was almost fainting from pain and I burst into tears for the first time in the past years. I felt so unhappy that I rescued my son in Asia and in the hard conditions when we were evacuation, but now my son was dying. At night the assistant doctor knocked on the door. He examined my son, gave him some medications and stayed beside him through the night till my son got better.

In January 1945 the Supreme Soviet issued an order about opening children’s homes for all homeless children. In Kalinindorf a children’s home was opened in the building of the Jewish school built before the war. The executive committee [20] authorized me to take the responsibility for restoration of the building and opening of the children’s home. We gathered bricks to make a stove and washed and cleaned the walls and windows, bought beds, desks, blankets and bed sheets. The villagers also donated whatever they could. On 16 March 1945 I conducted the opening ceremony. At first there were six children in the home. Four of them were German children, whose parents had been deported from the colony before fascists came to the village. The children stayed in a Ukrainian family. At first I was acting director of this home till they appointed a nice man for this position. He returned from the front where he had lost his arms. I became a teacher. I assisted director with everything. We celebrated 9 May 1945 – Victory Day, in the children’s home. God, it was happiness!

Some time later men began to return from the front. In early 1946 Abram Aral, our neighbor, returned. We were friends with his family before the war. Abram had a wife and two children: Sonia, 6 years old and a baby son. His older brother Shmilyk lived in this same house. When the war began, Abram was recruited to the army and Shmilyk took his time considering whether they should evacuate or stay home. When they finally decided to move, it was too late. There were Germans all around. They were shot by fascists in 1941. Abram’s sister from Zaporozhie, whose husband perished at the front, came to live with him. Abram and his sister often came by to see us and Tsylia visited them. We were sad about our deceased dear ones often talking about them. In summer 1946 Tsylia’s husband Avrum returned from the front. They moved to Kherson, and my mother-in-law Rasia went with them. My mother-in-law sold the house under condition that my son and son would live there as long as we needed. Some time later Abram and I felt that there was more to our relationship than just the memories: our late and much suffered for love came to us. I moved in with Abram and we got married in 1947.

We got along very well. My husband was good to Mikhail and my son began to call him ‘papa’. In 1948 our son was born. I named him Alexandr after Avrum’s brother Shmidyk. I worked in the children’s home and my husband worked as a storekeeper in the military registry office. In 1956 our second son was born. I named him Yuriy after my father (Yefim is ‘Yuhym’ in Ukrainian, and I found the name with the same first letter). My mother-in-law Rasia visited us every summer.

My older son Mikhail finished school in 1956 and went to take exams to a military college in Tambov. It was his dream to become a military. They didn’t admit him without explaining the reasons, though it clearly had to do with his nationality. He went to work at the mechanic plant of Perovskiy in Kherson. He lived with Tsylia’s family. Then he went to his mandatory service in Azerbaijan and then in Moscow region. Mikhail’s dream was to study in college. He wanted to become a doctor and he studied a lot when in the army. After the term of his service was over Mikhail entered Moscow Medical College and after finishing it he became a physician. He married Galia Aronina, a Jewish girl from a traditional Jewish family. I often visited my son in Moscow and went to the synagogue with her parents. I always brought matzah for my family from Moscow. Mikhail had twin boys: Pyotr (after his father) and Ilia, born in 1964. Ilia and his wife live in Israel and Pyotr lives in Moscow.

My middle son Alexandr was very fond of history. After his service in the army he submitted his documents to the Historical Faculty of Simferopol University. They didn’t admit him explaining that there was a quota for Jews. He returned home and went to work as a mechanic. He finished Machine Building College in Kherson. He married Sopha Yudich, a Jewish girl from Kherson. They have two children: son Yevgeniy and daughter Alla.

My younger son Yuriy also got a secondary technical education. He married Yelena Zeiger, also a Jewish girl and they moved to Kherson. Yuriy and Yelena have two daughters: Lilia, born in 1980, and Anna, born in 1984. Yelena’s parents went to Israel telling their daughter to come with them. My son Yuriy didn’t want to leave me here. So his wife and the girls moved to Israel and Yuriy lives alone in Kherson. They get along very well. Though they are officially divorced Yuriy visits them once a year and my granddaughters visit us here. My sons Alexandr and Yuriy are in computer and software business and so is Yevgeniy: he has a store in Kherson. Alla is a 5th-year student of University. She wants to move to Israel upon graduation.

I retired from the children’s home in 1972. Abram and I often visited our children in Kherson, and our children and grandchildren came to see us. We had a big and close family. Abram was always interested in the situation in the world, particularly in Israel. He bought a good radio listening to the Voice of America and Free Europe [The Voice of America and 'Free Europe’ were popular radio stations broadcasting from America and Germany in Russian. They were thoroughly jammed in the Soviet Union so that Soviet citizens couldn’t hear the truth about life in capitalist countries and actual state of things in their own country], Freedom [21], in the evening discussing their programs with his Jewish neighbor. He was particularly concerned when there was a war there and the Soviet propaganda throwing mud at Israel. However, none of us wanted to leave the country where our dear ones perished. We tried to observe Jewish traditions and teach our children to remember them. . Abram knew when it was a holidays. Of course, we didn’t follow kashrut, but we never ate pork or mixed meat and dairy food. On holidays we had festive meals with traditional Jewish food: chicken necks and gefilte fish. We invited friends and neighbors. On Yom Kippur my husband and I fast and so do our sons and their wives. That’s mandatory.

We never traveled on vacations: at first our children were small and there was nobody to look after them and later we were hard up and couldn’t afford a family vacation, though my husband and I worked and had a garden and a vegetable garden where we grew vegetables and fruit, but we lived on our salaries. We were doing well and our children had all they needed, but we never afforded any luxuries. We lived like everybody else: from one pay day to the next one.

In 1982 Abram died. I lived 7 years in our house and then gave up to my sons’ requests to move closer to them. They sold my house and bought half a house for me in Kherson in 1989. My sons support me and I have everything I need. I know that many people are unhappy about perestroika [22] and the resulting changes in the country, but I feel content as long as my sons are happy. They manage well in life and support me. My grandchildren often visit me. They treat me with great respect and love.

In 1962 I decided to visit Sagaydak to bow to the land where my father perished. I went there by bus. When it stopped in the square an old Ukrainian woman met me. She was our neighbor. She said she recognized me and that I was Haim Zatkovetskiy’s daughter. We went to the suburb and she told me how they were shot: children by the edge of one pit and adults – another. The earth was stirring for a long time afterward. There were human remains on the ground. After the war the chairman ordered to plough the field and forget the deceased. It was an insult. It was terrible that people didn’t install a monument to honor the deceased. I left that same day so hard it was for me.

There was a monument to the deceased installed in Kalinindorf. My sons and I attended the opening ceremony in 2001. Two old women approached me there, too: they were daughters of the storekeeper of the school. Back in 1936 I rented a room from them. Their father also perished, and we recalled our dear ones with grief. The opening ceremony was grand. There were administration representatives and veterans of the war present. After the opening ceremony Jews and a rabbi recited the prayer. My sons recited the words of prayer with them. They observe Jewish traditions, go to the synagogue on Sabbath and celebrate Jewish holidays. It was Rosh Hashanah recently, and my sons and their families came for a festive dinner with us. I attend the synagogue once a year on Yom Kippur. I am not religious, but I always remembered Jewish traditions. I do my best to observe the rules: I light candles on Sabbath and give my grandchildren Chanukkah gelt on Chanukkah.

GLOSSARY:

[1] Catherine the Great (1729-1796): Empress of Russia. She rose to the throne after the murder of her husband Peter III and reigned for 34 year. Catherine read widely, especially Voltaire and Montesquieu, and informed herself of Russian conditions. She started to formulate a new enlightened code of law. Catherine reorganized (1775) the provincial administration to increase the central government's control over rural areas. This reform established a system of provinces, subdivided into districts, that endured until 1917. In 1785, Catherine issued a charter that made the gentry of each district and province a legal body with the right to petition the throne, freed nobles from taxation and state service and made their status hereditary, and gave them absolute control over their lands and peasants. Catherine increased Russian control over the Baltic provinces and Ukraine. She secured the largest portion in successive partitions of Poland among Russia, Prussia, and Austria.

[2] Cossack: A member of a people of southern European Russia and adjacent parts of Asia, noted as cavalrymen especially during tsarist times.

[3] Great Patriotic War: On 22nd June 1941 at 5 o’clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War. The German blitzkrieg, known as Operation Barbarossa, nearly succeeded in breaking the Soviet Union in the months that followed. Caught unprepared, the Soviet forces lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the German onslaught in the first weeks of the war. By November 1941 the German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city, and threatened Moscow itself. The war ended for the Soviet Union on 9th May 1945.

[4] Pogroms in Ukraine: In the 1920s there were many anti-Semitic gangs in Ukraine. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children.

[5] Civil War (1918-1920): The Civil War between the Reds (the Bolsheviks) and the Whites (the anti-Bolsheviks), which broke out in early 1918, ravaged Russia until 1920. The Whites represented all shades of anti-communist groups – Russian army units from World War I, led by anti-Bolshevik officers, by anti-Bolshevik volunteers and some Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Several of their leaders favored setting up a military dictatorship, but few were outspoken tsarists. Atrocities were committed throughout the Civil War by both sides. The Civil War ended with Bolshevik military victory, thanks to the lack of cooperation among the various White commanders and to the reorganization of the Red forces after Trotsky became commissar for war. It was won, however, only at the price of immense sacrifice; by 1920 Russia was ruined and devastated. In 1920 industrial production was reduced to 14% and agriculture to 50% as compared to 1913.

[6] Odessa: The Jewish community of Odessa was the second biggest Jewish community in Russia. According to the census of 1897 there were 138,935 Jews in Odessa, which was 34,41% of the local population. There were 7 big synagogues and 49 prayer houses in Odessa. There were heders in 19 prayer houses.

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

[8] Russian stove: Big stone stove stoked with wood. They were usually built in a corner of the kitchen and served to heat the house and cook food. It had a bench that made a comfortable bed for children and adults in wintertime.

[9] Kulaks: In the Soviet Union the majority of wealthy peasants that refused to join collective farms and give their grain and property to Soviet power were called kulaks, declared enemies of the people and exterminated in the 1930s.

[10] Rabfak (Rabochiy Fakultet – Workers’ Faculty in Russian): Established by the Soviet power usually at colleges or universities, these were educational institutions for young people without secondary education. Many of them worked beside studying. Graduates of Rabfaks had an opportunity to enter university without exams.

[11] Famine in Ukraine: In 1920 a deliberate famine was introduced in the Ukraine causing the death of millions of people. It was arranged in order to suppress those protesting peasants who did not want to join the collective farms. There was another dreadful deliberate famine in 1930-1934 in the Ukraine. The authorities took away the last food products from the peasants. People were dying in the streets, whole villages became deserted. The authorities arranged this specifically to suppress the rebellious peasants who did not want to accept Soviet power and join collective farms.

[12] Komsomol: Communist youth political organization created in 1918. The task of the Komsomol was to spread of the ideas of communism and involve the worker and peasant youth in building the Soviet Union. The Komsomol also aimed at giving a communist upbringing by involving the worker youth in the political struggle, supplemented by theoretical education. The Komsomol was more popular than the Communist Party because with its aim of education people could accept uninitiated young proletarians, whereas party members had to have at least a minimal political qualification.

[13] Agro-Joint (American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation): The Agro-Joint, established in 1924, with the full support of the Soviet government aimed at helping the resettlement of Jews on collective farms in the South of Ukraine and the Crimea. The Agro-Joint purchased land, livestock and agricultural machinery and funded housing construction. It also established many trade schools to train Jews in agriculture and in metal, woodworking, printing and other skills. The work of Agro-Joint was made increasingly difficult by the Soviet authorities, and it finally dissolved in 1938. In all, some 14,000 Jewish families were settled on the land, and thus saved from privation and the loss of civil rights, which was the lot of all except for workers and peasants. By 1938, however, large numbers left the colonies, attracted by the cities, and most of those who stayed were murdered by the Germans.

[14] Mandatory job assignment in the USSR: Graduates of higher educational institutions had to complete a mandatory 2-year job assignment issued by the institution from which they graduated. After finishing this assignment young people were allowed to get employment at their discretion in any town or organization.

[15] Collective farm (in Russian kolkhoz): In the Soviet Union the policy of gradual and voluntary collectivization of agriculture was adopted in 1927 to encourage food production while freeing labor and capital for industrial development. In 1929, with only 4% of farms in kolkhozes, Stalin ordered the confiscation of peasants' land, tools, and animals; the kolkhoz replaced the family farm.

[16] Bessarabia: Historical area between the Prut and Dnestr rivers, in the southern part of Odessa region. Bessarabia was part of Russia until the Revolution of 1917. In 1918 it declared itself an independent republic, and later it united with Romania. The Treaty of Paris (1920) recognized the union but the Soviet Union never accepted this. In 1940 Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the USSR. The two provinces had almost 4 million inhabitants, mostly Romanians. Although Romania reoccupied part of the territory during World War II the Romanian peace treaty of 1947 confirmed their belonging to the Soviet Union. Today it is part of Moldavia.

[17] Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: Non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, which became known under the name of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Engaged in a border war with Japan in the Far East and fearing the German advance in the west, the Soviet government began secret negotiations for a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939. In August 1939 it suddenly announced the conclusion of a Soviet-German agreement of friendship and non-aggression. The Pact contained a secret clause providing for the partition of Poland and for Soviet and German spheres of influence in Eastern Europe.

[18] Molotov, V. P. (1890-1986): Statesman and member of the Communist Party leadership. From 1939, Minister of Foreign Affairs. On June 22, 1941 he announced the German attack on the USSR on the radio. He and Eden also worked out the percentages agreement after the war, about Soviet and western spheres of influence in the new Europe.

[19] Residence permit: The Soviet authorities restricted freedom of travel within the USSR through the residence permit and kept everybody’s whereabouts under control. Every individual in the USSR needed residential registration; this was a stamp in the passport giving the permanent address of the individual. It was impossible to find a job, or even to travel within the country, without such a stamp. In order to register at somebody else’s apartment one had to be a close relative and if each resident of the apartment had at least 8 square meters to themselves.

[20] Ispolkom: After the tsar’s abdication (March, 1917), power passed to a Provisional Government appointed by a temporary committee of the Duma, which proposed to share power to some extent with councils of workers and soldiers known as ‘soviets’. Following a brief and chaotic period of fairly democratic procedures, a mixed body of socialist intellectuals known as the Ispolkom secured the right to ‘represent’ the soviets. The democratic credentials of the soviets were highly imperfect to begin with: peasants - the overwhelming majority of the Russian population - had virtually no say, and soldiers were grossly over-represented. The Ispolkom’s assumption of power turned this highly imperfect democracy into an intellectuals’ oligarchy.

[21] Radio Liberty: Radio Liberty, which started broadcasting in 1953, has served as a surrogate 'home service' to the lands of the former Soviet Union, providing news and information that was otherwise unavailable to most Soviet and post-Soviet citizens. During that time, the station weathered strong opposition from the Soviet Union and its allies, including constant jamming, public criticism, diplomatic protests, and even physical attacks on Radio Liberty buildings and personnel. In 1976, Radio Liberty was merged with Radio Free Europe (RFE) to form a single organization, RFE/RL, Inc.

[22] Perestroika (Russian for restructuring): Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s, associated with the name of Soviet politician Mikhail Gorbachev. The term designated the attempts to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized, market-oriented economy. Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratize the Communist Party organization. By 1991, perestroika was declining and was soon eclipsed by the dissolution of the USSR.

Irina Lopko
Chernigov
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Orlikova
Date of interview: May 2003

Irina Lopko is a well-known person in the Jewish community of Ukraine: she was head of Hesed in Chernigov for many years. Now she is a pensioner. She had a surgery recently and is on the way to recovery.  Irina lives with her husband in a small two-bedroom apartment on the first floor of a 5-storied house, khrushchovka 1 built in the 1960s. There is a quiet green yard near the house. Their apartment that was recently repaired is also quiet and cozy. There are many books in their apartment. There are Russian and Ukrainian classical books and many books on the Jewish history. There are bookmarks in some of them. This means their owner works with them. There are cushions in nice knitted pillowcases on the sofa. Irina is fond of knitting.  There is nice crockery in the cupboard and beautiful pictures on the walls. There are two beautiful gobelin pictures on the walls: this is the memory of her mother.  There are many items with Jewish symbols on them. One cannot resist the charm of this lady. She is very friendly. One cannot help enjoying working with her. During our interview Irina’s acquaintances dropped by to ask her how she was feeling. Someone gave her a bouquet of flowers through the window.  Later Irina’s husband Stanislav came home and began to set the table for dinner. They always invite their guests to share a meal with them. This is what they are used to.
I saw Irina again two months after the interview in Kiev institute of social and community workers. She is as full of new plans as usual and as friendly as we know her. Now she shares her experience with heads of Heseds and other Jewish organizations. She is a great authority among them. 

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

All my maternal and paternal ancestors were born in this green town of Nezhin on the Ostyor river in Chernigov region in about 100 km from Kiev. My mother and father’s families always supported each other at hard times and were friends. There was Ukrainian and Russian population in Nezhin and there were numerous Jewish and Armenian communities. The Greek community was the biggest. Greek merchants were the richest.  In 1815 one of three Russian lyceums was established in Nezhin. This was a school for the children of nobility. Later, during the soviet regime, a Pedagogical College was formed on the basis of this lyceum. Nezhin was not within the Pale of Settlement 2, but there were many Jews in the town before the revolution. They lived among other nationalities. There were three synagogues in the town.

My maternal grandfather Isroel Silin’s family had many children like all other Jewish families.  My grandfather was born in 1881. He owned a small haberdashery store in the center of the town. He worked alone purchasing and selling his goods. My grandfather was an educated man. He always had some club gatherings at home and my mother laughed that my grandfather was a member of Bund 3, and my grandmother was a member of another Jewish party and they always had arguments at home. They were a religious family. My grandfather’s friends were religious Jews who finished a yeshivah school like my grandfather. My grandfather also studied in a grammar school. The family observed all traditions and my mother knew about all holidays. My grandfather died at the age of 44 (in 1925), leaving his widow with six children. After he died the family did not observe traditions any longer, but my grandmother remained religious for the rest of her life. 
 
My grandmother Basia, born in 1886, was a religious woman for her time. She studied in a grammar school, but I don’t know whether she finished it. She was religious and observed all Jewish traditions and customs. They followed kashrut strictly and lit candles on Friday before Saturday. There was a Ukrainian cook who knew Jewish cuisine well in the house. My mother could make Jewish food and I learned from her. We didn’t make traditional gefilte fish, for example, but we stewed it with vegetables (carrots, beetroots and onions), cooked beans in a specific manner and made chicken stew with stuffed necks. They often made strudels and pudding with honey and poppy seeds. My grandmother spoke Yiddish in the family, but she could speak fluent Russian and knew Ukrainian like everybody else in Nezhin. My grandmother was interested in politics and read books and newspapers. It’s hard for me to tell about her political preferences before the revolution of 1917 4, but I know that she was interested in Jewish movements and parties. My grandmother wore clothes that were in fashion in the early 20th century. She wore her hair popped up and she always went out with a hat on, which wasn’t based on her religious convictions, but was a trend of the time. It was improper for ladies of all religions to go out without a hat.

After my grandfather died most of the children moved to Moscow looking for a better life and they took my grandmother there.  She tried to observe at least main traditions living with her children in Moscow. She asked them to make her a special dinner on Saturday and when her son died she demanded to have him buried in the Jewish cemetery according to traditions. She didn’t go to the synagogue, but she gave those who were going to the synagogue some money to order memorial prayers for her gone dear ones on her behalf. When she evacuated during the Great Patriotic War 5 to Petropavlovsk in Northern Kazakhstan she was desperate that there was no place to order prayers. We continued lighting candles on a memorial day in our family.  She celebrated all holidays and when there was no way to have a celebration she always remembered about a holidays and observed at least what she could.  She taught her children to be this way. They were far from religious prejudices, but they always remembered they were Jews. My grandmother passed away in Moscow in 1973. Her daughters looked after her until she died. They buried her in the Jewish section of a town cemetery. 

My grandfather and grandmother Silin had seven children. The children were born every year and a half. The oldest girl Mehama was born in 1905. She studied in a grammar school and in 1917, at the age of 12 she died of an infectious disease.  
         
Then my mother Fania Silin was born in 1907. She also studied in grammar school for few years and she often recalled this time in her life. Here is an episode from her school life: on a Christian holiday all children lined up to come to a priest to kiss his hand. My mother knew she couldn’t do it and if she did her mother wouldn’t let her enter her home. She worried a lot when her class tutor came to her rescue. She said ‘Jewish girls won’t kiss the hand’. In the future she bowed when she saw a priest, but she didn’t kiss his hand. My mother did very well at school, but in 1818 the grammar school was closed and later it was reopened to be a labor school. My mother continued studies in an accounting school. After the Great Patriotic War my mother finished extramural Moscow Financial College.

The third daughter Olga (her Jewish name was Golda) was born in 1909. She also studied in grammar school few years. After  school she moved to Moscow where she went to work as a draftswoman at a plant. She married Ziama Alpershtein, a nice Jewish guy, a worker. They received a room in a communal apartment 6 where their daughter Lena was born. In summer 1941, at the very beginning of the war, Ziama perished at the front.  Olga died in Moscow at the age of 44. Their daughter Lena worked at a post office. She passed away in Moscow in 1998.

The next daughter Manya was born in 1911. She followed into her sister’s steps moving to Moscow. She became a highly qualified marker at a plant. Her husband Nikolay Zaitsev was a highly qualified worker. He came from Klin in Moscow region. They said that when Nikolay married my aunt Manya his father came to visit them from Klin. He asked Nikolay ‘Son, there are no icons in your room. How am I supposed to pray?’ and Nikolay replied ‘Father, I have a Jewish wife. We do not pray’.  The old man was full of respect. He said ‘Jews are special and important people. There was a Jewish pharmacist in our town: he was a well-respected person'.  The Russian son-in-law respected my grandmother very much and she lived with them. Regretfully, Manya had an invalid baby. She spent all her time looking after the child, but the child died. Manya was a housewife. She also took care of my grandmother. Manya died in 1978.

My grandmother’s favorite son Avraam, born in 1912, was a very decent, smart, talented and a very handsome man. He worked as a joiner at the same plant in Moscow where his sisters were working. He met his future wife Frieda at the plant. Avraam died of some infectious disease in 1929. They have lived only a few months together, unfortunately, they did not have children. This was a terrible loss for his family and for the collective of the plant. My grandmother never recovered from this tragedy.

My mother’s sister Rieva, born in 1913, didn’t complete her education. She followed her sisters moving to work in Moscow. She was a draftswoman and later she went to work at the aviation plant where she worked at the design office. Her husband Ruvim Gitiz, a Jewish man, worked at the same plant. Rieva was called with the Russian name 7 Rita (Jewish names were not popular at the time.) I don’t think they had children. She died in Moscow about 10 years ago.

Malka, the last one, born in 1915, followed her sisters to Moscow. She worked as technician at a big plant. She met her husband Polosin at the plant where he was an engineer. He was Russian. The Silin family were very proud of Malka. She was a champion of Moscow in swimming. Malka died in 2002.

The sisters were very close. They spoke Yiddish, cooked for holidays, always celebrated holidays together and supported each other. Although they moved to Moscow when they were young they kept their identity of provincial Jews from Nezhin.

My grandfather Mindel’s branch of the family originated from Lithuania. Our ancestors moved to Nezhin in the late 18th century and we don’t know any relatives in Lithuania. Grandfather Simon Yankel Mindel was a shoemaker. He was born to the family of Moisey Mindel, a shoemaker in Nezhin, in 1874. He kept hitting his little hammer sitting on a small shoemaker’s stool all his life. My grandfather was very religious. He was a senior man at the synagogue and the Jewish community of the town respected him very much for his honesty. He was a wise and reserved man. My grandfather Simon Yankel sang beautifully. He was a tenor and sang at the synagogue. Now I understand that he was a cantor. I remember my grandfather singing children’s songs in Yiddish. One of them was about a tailor singing a song and his needle followed his song. Sometimes he sang Ukrainian songs. He didn’t know any Russian songs. My grandmother had strong will and was a very determined woman and my grandfather always obeyed her.

I often recall my paternal grandmother. I took from her all human values that I have. My grandmother Masia was born to the dynasty of butchers named Lempert in Nezhin in 1878. They were not just butchers. They purchased cattle across the province, slaughtered it in Nezhin and then sold meat in their shop.  My grandmother was a butcher. She cut meat in her shop and then sold it. She had housemaids to help her with housekeeping. She observed traditions, lit candles on Friday and cooked a substantial kosher dinner. My grandmother adored her husband who sat there hitting his hammer while she was the breadwinner. She gave birth to eight children: three daughters and five sons, whom she was very proud of and adored them.

In 1919, when my grandmother was 40 years old, my grandfather’s brother Haim Iosif Mindel came from the front of the Civil War 8. He had typhoid. She isolated him from her family and shut herself in a room with him to nurse him. She brought him to recovery and died saving her husband and children’s lives. They survived. She was the only one who passed away. The rich and the poor of the town took part in the procession following her casket at her funeral. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery. All beggars and handicapped came to the funeral. She always helped and supported them. My father worshipped his mother.

My grandfather was very religious and was to remarry according to the rules. Four months later a shadkhan sent him to another town where he met a Jewish woman, a widow with four children.  Her name was Miriam. She was big and beautiful. She suffered from diabetes. The children got along well and we all loved her. We called her ‘grandmother’ and she loved us, too. Only my father was devoted to his mother. It upset him that she slept in his mother’s bed and he also saw her wearing his mother’s shawls. Everything she said or did exasperated him. In 1919, when my father turned 18 he overtook responsibility for the family. My father joined his Lempert uncles’ business. I remember Barko Lempert, a huge fat man. He always spoke Yiddish using many Ukrainian words.  

The most wonderful and close of my grandmother’s relatives was her tiny sister Haya. She didn’t have any children of her own and she just adored her deceased sister’s children. When she was very old and had poor sight my father always gave her money when they met. He gave her all he had at such moments. And their meetings were all alike. My father said ‘Hallo, grandmother Haya’. She pretended she didn’t recognize him and replied ‘Hallo, and who are you?’ My father had a sense of humor and continued her game ‘Well, then if you don’t know me, may I bid you good bye’. Haya screamed ‘Don’t go, you tramp!’ fearing that he wouldn’t give her an allowance. Another thing about Haya: when a relative visited Nezhin my father harnessed a horse and took the family to the grave of grandmother. Haya approached her sister’s grave and said ‘Masia, can you hear me?’ My father said from behind ‘Yes, Haya, I hear you’. She turned and said ‘Shut up, you tramp. Do not let him spoil the whole thing’. And she started again ‘Masia, hallo, can you hear me? Here is this and that one. They‘ve come here. Of course, David brought them here. David is a graf (‘count’ in Russian). His wife Fania is a real grafinia (‘countess’ in Russian) and they’ve brought two grafinchiki [Editor’s note: this is a word game. ‘Grafinchiki’ means ‘water bottle’ in Russian], so she reported standing by the grave. On the way to the cemetery my father was trying to persuade Haya: ‘Haya, please don’t act like this’, but it was impossible to stop her. She used to say about my father’s younger brother Pyotr: ‘Your son is a pilot, He is your ‘little finger’, he is so famous’.  He was 24 at that time and he was a lieutenant and was not famous yet. She said ‘You will be proud of him and the whole country will know him, the whole ‘mishpukha’.  She loved and cared about her nephews, Masia’s children.

Unfortunately, all I know about my father’s brothers and sisters is what he told me. They kept in touch and visited one another. I know that they were not religious and they did well in life. I have no contacts with their children.

My father’s older sister Lisa (her Jewish name was Livsha), born in 1899, was a terrific person. She married Solomon Levin, a Jewish man. Before her marriage she knew she would never have children like Haya and her fiancé knew about it, but he married her anyway. He loved her so. Solomon perished at the front and Lisa remarried twice. She over lived two husbands. She moved to USA with the children of her third husband in the 1990s. She died at an elderly people’s home there at the age of almost 100 years. She was a nice lady, very sweet and pleasant and everybody loved her.

The next sister Sima, born in 1900, was lame from birth. She was amazingly smart and attractive. Yevsey Levin, Lisa husband Solomon’s brother, a Jewish man, very handsome, had to compete with other men to marry Sima, so beautiful and smart she was regardless of her handicap. They moved to Moscow where they both worked at a plant. They named their daughter Masia after my grandmother. During the Great Patriotic War Yevsey had an affair with a young girl at the front. He didn’t even think of leaving his family, but aunt Sima didn’t forgive him: she cut him off once and forever. After the Great Patriotic War Sima and her daughter stayed in Moscow. Sima died at the age of 74. She went to the kitchen to have a glass of kefir when her daughter was at a concert. She fell with this glass and died. Her daughter was smart and educated. He was an economist. She moved to USA in the 1980s. She died in New York.

My father David Mindel, born in 1901, was the oldest of his brothers. He was tall and swarthy and had fair eyes, but everybody thought he had dark eyes. My father went to cheder while the rest of his brothers studied in a Soviet Jewish school.

After my father uncle Shaya (Esaih) was born in 1905. He was different from my father. He could sing and dance well. When he was young he used to run away to gypsies.  He loved women and they loved him. He was a cattle dealer and at times he got engaged in swindling and put in prison. The family was sort of ashamed of him. After his last time in prison Shaya changed dramatically. He became very religious and reserved and led a very quiet life. In his last years of life Shaya was head of the Jewish community in Nezhin. He made arrangements for funerals. Shaya died in Nezhin at the age of 86. His two daughters live in Los Angeles, USA, and his son lives in Nezhin.

The next two children had one date of birth written in their birth certificate, but they weren’t twins. My grandfather was too lazy to go register his baby and waited until another was born a year later. He registered a brother and a sister at the same time. So it happened that Rosa and Yuzik were like twins, though they were not born at the same date. Rosa was born in 1908 and Yuzik was born in 1909. Aunt Rosa was a professional singer. She had a dramatic soprano, a very strong voice. It was too loud to listen to her singing in a room. She studied in a music school that taught all soloists of the Bolshoi Theater 9 and she entered it without any problems. She also danced beautifully and wanted to sing in musical comedy, but her voice fit in opera well. Her first husband was from Dagestan. He was a Party member, but she was his fourth or fifth wife. It was impossible to live with him. He was a despot and she ran away from him. She returned to Moscow and was in hiding there. This Dagestanian man happened to be terribly jealous and promised to kill her. Once in Moscow Rosa met her acquaintance from Nezhin Nikolai Zhuravlyov.  He was Russian. He had finished a college and was to go to work in Kursk.  He had been in love with Rosa for a long time and proposed to her right away. A few days later they arrived in Kursk. Some time later he became director of a factory and Rosa organized a choir of Russian folk songs. She became its director and a soloist. She frequently got invitations from the best choirs in Moscow, but she didn’t want to stay away from her husband and refused these job offers. It was her dream to form a Jewish choir. She and her husband moved to Lipetsk. He was director of a big plant. He was a wonderful person. During the Great Patriotic War he was a private at the front. Rosa died in Moscow in 1987. Her only son Vladimir Zhuravlyov lives in Moscow. We are friends. 

Yuzik, born in 1909, worked as a joiner in Moscow. He had a Jewish wife. During the Great Patriotic War he was at the front like all brothers. He lost a leg at the front.  After the war he worked with logistics. He became obese and suffered from asthma. He died in Moscow in 1973. His son Mikhail lives in Moscow.

My father’s next brother Mikhail, born in 1911, studied in a Jewish school and served in the Navy. Only tall and athletic young men were selected for this service. There is a family legend related to Mikhail’s service on a cruiser. The legendary military commander Voroshilov 10 visited his cruiser and there was an amateur concert. Mikhail sang wonderfully. He was a tenor like grandfather. He sang a Jewish song at the concert. Voroshilov liked the song very much. He asked ‘Is it a gypsy song?’ ‘No’, said uncle Mikhail, ‘it’s a Jewish song’. Voroshilov gave my uncle a guitar. He kept it for many years, but it was lost during the Great Patriotic War. The family tried to persuade Mikhail to study music and singing, but Mikhail didn’t have education and he was used to manual work. In his employment record book he had only one entry working as a car mechanic in a garage in Moscow. Like his five brothers Mikhail was in the army during the Great Patriotic War. He served on the ‘Road of Life’ 11. He supervised transportation of half-dead people from Leningrad. He had awards for his service. Mikhail had a Russian wife. I don’t remember her name and I don’t know whether they had children. Mikhail died of cancer at the age of 60 in 1971.  

The family was very proud of my father’s younger brother Pyotr (Jewish name Pinia), born in 1913. He studied in the Soviet Jewish School in Nezhin. At the age of 16 he moved to Moscow   where he worked at a plant and later entered an Air Force School. Uncle Pyotr was a pilot and in July 1941 he was awarded an Order of Lenin 12 for a heroic deed. He was a hero, but he was a humble person and didn’t like talking about his heroic deeds. After the great Patriotic War he finished Military Academy and served in civil aviation. He flew across the country in emergency situations. He had many awards. He was a very decent and interesting man. He was the most educated of Mindel brothers. Pyotr’s wife Yelena was Russian. She lived in Moscow. She merged with our family and adopted all our traditions like nobody else. She had a good voice and sang Jewish songs. It was funny when Yelena started Jewish songs at our family gatherings.  She didn’t know Yiddish, but she learned lyrics of Jewish songs. Pyotr died a sudden death from a heart attack when he was on vacation in Yevpatoriya. He was 67.  His daughter Tamara was an aviation design engineer in a design institute in Moscow.

In this big family my father David always had a deciding word since he was the oldest son. My father was well shaped and strong. When a circus came on tour into the town my father’s relatives tried to persuade my father to stay aside from its performances. My father gave his word, dressed up and went to the circus. When wrestlers came onto the stage and invited volunteers from the audience to take part in their performance the audience began to call ‘David! David!’ and my father went onto the stage against his relatives’ objections. He often won. My father used to say that he had an incomplete lower education. He was a cattle driver since childhood and he even had a certificate of ‘cattle driver’. Later he became a cab driver when he met my mother.

My parents met when standing in line to pay fees: my mother came to pay a fee for her dying father and my father came to pay tax for his horses. My mother didn’t have enough money and my father came and said ‘I will pay for you’.  She was confused. My mother was tiny and shy. She asked ‘How do I pay you back?’ and he replied ‘I will find you’. My mother studied in an accounting school and other boys she knew were not at all like my father. He was a big man with a whip (now they have keys from their cars with them, but at that time they had to take their whips with them) and he made a great impression on my mother. My mother told her friends about this man. She didn’t know how he would find her.  Everybody knew Mindel brothers in Nezhin. When there were girls on the beach they used to gallop their horses into the river. They were athletes and absolutely adored horses. Once my mother was dancing at a party in her accounting school when her friends said ‘Fania, there is a man standing in the doorway gazing at you. He looks like the one you described’. My mother looked back. It was him, but he disappeared. After the party my mother went out and my father stopped her. He said ‘Hallo, I’ve come to pick the debt’. She felt confused again. She never had any money. He said ‘In that case marry me’. My mother and her friends burst into laughing and got on his sledge. There was no space left for my mother and then my father grabbed her with his hand and put her on the seat beside him wrapping her in his winter coat.  My mother recalled later ‘I felt like fainting. I thought I could ride in his embrace for the rest of my life’. Such was a beginning of this great love. My mother’s father died shortly afterward. Her father died young and my mother told me later that she had my father in her dreams, although he kept his distance, but she already was tying her life to his. After the funeral he took all children home on his wagon. He took responsibility for their family.

They got married a year later in 1826. I know for sure that there was a chuppah on their wedding. It was customary for the time that bridegrooms borrowed somebody else’s clothes for a wedding. My father had someone else’s coat on to have better looks. This was the coat of Yevsey, my father’s sister Sima’s husband. When it was over my father was looking for his coat. My mother whispered to him: ‘David, you’ve come wearing Yevsey’s coat and he left in yours’.  They often recalled this episode laughing. 
 

Growing up

I was born in 1931. I was their second child. Their first girl died of some disease at the age of three and a half years. I was a white-skin baby with no eyelashes. I was very quiet. Before I was born my parents rented apartments in various parts of the town, but when I was born they bought a house in the center. It was a big house that belonged to a landlord in the past. As I understand now they bought it almost for nothing. This house was bought for three families: my grandfather Mindel, our family and my father sister Sima’s family. Sima and her family moved to Moscow some time later and our family lived in this house until my father died. I was brought to this house from the maternity hospital where I was born. I was named Sarra after my maternal grandfather Isroel. These two names sound similar. My grandfather Mindel insisted on giving me this name. He respected my mother’s father who had died by then very much. He saw that I wasn’t a pretty baby and to console my mother he said: ‘The girl looks very intelligent’.

My mother often recalled the period of hunger in the early 1930s 13, there was nothing to eat and they ate potato peels and other junk food, but my mother had a lot of breast milk and she breastfed me until the age of two. My mother had sufficient milk to breastfeed another baby. He was a Ukrainian boy from a dispossessed family 14 of Petriks who lost their home. My parents gave shelter to a few dispossessed families and they were grateful to my parents for the rest of their lives. I was very fat in my childhood and everybody thought I was swollen from hunger.  My mother always said: ‘I survived the periods of hunger in 1931-1932 and during the war and I don’t want to be hungry ever again’.  When the period of famine was over my father took a cow into the house and it stayed with us until the end of his life. It was a deity of the family. The family worshipped it and we had a housemaid who milked the cow. If the housemaid was away my father put on her apron and kerchief to milk the cow. My mother never came close to the cow. She was a softie and my father never allowed her to do physical work to preserve her appearance.

My brother Yefim was born in 1936.  I remember sitting on my mother’s lap and she had such a big belly and there was something stirring inside. Then this crying and screaming nubbin came into the world. He was big and beautiful. Eight days later my brother was circumcised. I remember this well. The baby was whining there were old people around him doing something to him and I was very worried and horrified thinking that they might harm this little baby and they were trying to calm me down. 

Something happened in 1936. This incident made me grow mature and feel for the first time in my life that we were Jews and that we were different from all others. My mother went to work two months after Yefim was born. She was a highly qualified accountant. She worked all her life. My parents hired a Ukrainian girl from a village to look after the baby. She also helped my father to look after the cow and milk it. My father’s stepmother looked after the whole household. All of a sudden this girl disappeared on the eve of Pesach. My father contacted her family, but she was not there either. Her sister came from the village, we searched for the girl, but she was not found. She was missing for three days. The whole town came to our yard. My father and grandfather were sitting on a bench and there were militiamen beside them on both sides.  Actually, they were about to take my father and grandfather to prison. There was a rumor that they killed the girl to make matzah. People were yelling ‘They always kill girls to add their blood into matzah’. We had never heard anything like that before. The girl’s brothers didn’t say anything. They kept looking for her. They looked in the river. This river was sparrow knee deep. Other people held torches for them and they searched the bottom with hooks. She was found suddenly. It turned out that she suffered from mental disorders since childhood. She suddenly fell into depression and then she found shelter where she could sleep for days. She removed a plank in the chicken house and slept there, warm and healthy, all in her urine. She was taken to hospital. There was one ward for patients with mental diseases in the hospital in Nezhin. Her sister replaced her and stayed with us until the war. Everything ended well, but we had a bitter aftertaste. We faced anti-Semitism. I kept asking ‘Who was killed when matzah was to be made?’. I couldn’t get rid of this horror for a long time.  

My grandfather and grandmother Mindel only spoke Yiddish. I visited them for a cup of tea  after kindergarten every day and they spoke Yiddish in my presence and once my grandmother commented ‘I think she understands’ and I nodded my head ‘Yes, yes, I understand’. Then my grandmother and grandfather began to speak Yiddish to me and I enjoyed talking with them in Yiddish. There we sat at the table having tea and jam, my grandfather on my right and my grandmother on my left quietly talking in Yiddish. My grandfather taught me everything Jewish I know: Jewish songs, traditions, dishes, Jewish warmth and Jewish soul. Matzah was made in his home and Jews got together to pray in his home when there were no synagogues left in the town after the Great Patriotic War as a result of titanic efforts 15 of the Soviet regime.

We always had housemaids before the war. My mother worked a lot as deputy chief accountant of the municipal trade department. This was a very important position. In late 1930 my father also changed his job. I liked the horse smell in our house, but my mother rebelled against his profession. However, my father adored horses and went to work as horse dealer at a military registry office. My father was responsible for providing horses for the needs of the army and he often went on business trips. Every spring he went to military camps where he stayed through summer.

Arrests in 1937 16 did not reflect directly our family, but my father had adamant anti-Soviet  ideas. He could speak out his ideas and my mother was very concerned about his safety. There was fear in our family when my mother was interrogated about Ms. Grudina when my father was in a military camp.  My mother said she didn’t know anything about the woman. Nothing good or bad, although she actually knew this woman very well, she was our neighbor. I do not know in what she was guilty and what incriminated to her.  My mother was kept there until morning. My grandfather was waiting for her sitting on the bench. My mother always mentioned this bench where grandfather waited for her 24 hours without any food or water worrying about her. He said ‘Fania, if they arrest you I will come there in the morning to tell them to take me instead. David will not forgive me if they arrest you’. My mother recalled that when she came home my grandfather couldn’t stand up from the shock, although he was not old then. Later this Ukrainian woman about whom my mother was interrogated was arrested anyway.

I went to school in 1939. There were no Jewish schools left in Nezhin by then and I went to a Russian school. My mother always wanted to give me good education. I studied German with a governess and had music classes at home. My grandmother and grandfather taught me Yiddish. I did very well at school. I had all excellent marks and I and my friend Yasha, a Jewish boy, were the best in our class. There were many Jewish children in my class. I was a very quiet child.  My first teacher who also knew my mother since grammar school used to say ‘Why doesn’t she speak louder? How will she live?’  

During the war

I remember some vague alarm that everybody felt at the beginning of war on 22 June 1941. My father was immediately called to the army. Before he left he managed to make some arrangements for my mother to go to work at the military hospital. She worked as an accountant and document assistant. My father thought it was better this way and he was right. The hospital evacuated to Astrakhan [a town in Russia in 1200 from Moscow where the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea] and we evacuated with this hospital leaving our home and belongings. Our housemaid took our valuables to her home in a village. We had beautiful carpets and old gobelin pictures. She kept them in a cellar where the carpets got rotten. The pictures were all right and I have them in my apartment now. Our dog, a beautiful pedigree spitz, perished. Germans killed it. They knew who the dog belonged to. They said ‘Jude’ and killed it. 

In Astrakhan we were accommodated in an apartment. My mother wasn’t on military service, but she wore a uniform with no badges of rank. On 1 October 1941 I went to school and my brother went to a 24-hour kindergarten. There was one such kindergarten for evacuated children whose mothers had to work long hours. At that time I faced anti-Semitism again, although there were no Jews in Astrakhan before the war and there could be no roots for local anti-Semitism. We lived in a terrible neighborhood for exiled enemies of the Soviet regime. They were mainly former kulaks and wealthy families from Ukraine. Their anti-Semitism went back to pogroms in the 1910s 17. Their children must have told their parents that there was a girl with a very strange name of Sarra [Editor’s note: Jewish names were targets of mockery, vulgar jokes and abuse at the time]. Their parents probably explained what it was about and they beat me brutally saying that they were beating me for being a ‘zhydovka parchataya’ [kike]. I was a weird child. I was very quiet and never fought back. I came home and told my mother: ‘Mom, take it easy, but I shall never go to school again and I shall never go out to play with children’. I didn’t go to school for a year. Teachers from school came to talk me out of it and commissar of the hospital came to talk with me, but I didn’t change my mind.

About half a year passed when the owner of the apartment Lutikova said: ‘I am so lucky that you are not Jews. Other apartment owners have Jewish tenants’. Actually, 75% of hospital employees were Jews. My mother slept overnight and in the morning she packed and said: ‘I need to tell you that I am a Jew’. The hospital sent a truck to pick us and we moved to the hospital. I didn’t go to school. I studied at home, helped in the hospital, did housework and went to help an old woman, our neighbor, to water her vegetable garden and she gave us vegetables from her garden.  I remember that this old lady gave me five apples on my birthday.

In autumn 1942 there were frequent bombings of Astrakhan. There were oil tanks burning around. Fuel was shipped to the front from Astrakhan. It was not safe to stay there. My father’s brother Pyotr was commanding officer of a squadron and teacher at a pilot school after he was wounded. The school was in the Ural, in Chkalovsk town (present Orenburg) in 2000 km from Kiev. He sent us documents to move to him. I remember that we traveled across the Caspian Sea on a bare to Gurievsk in 720 km from Astrakhan and from there we took trains to get to Orenburg. We stayed with uncle Pyotr’s family and my mother went to work as accountant.

Here was the issue of my going to school again. I said: ‘I am not going to school’. Pyotr’s wife Yelena had a strong character. She attacked my mother ‘What kind of a name is this?  Sarra is written on all fences. This doesn’t make other children feel friendlier’. She asked me ‘What name do you like?’ and I said ‘Irina’. I knew Irina in my former school and she had such beautiful plates. Yelena went to school and said ‘You’ve got the wrong name of a girl. Please change Sarra to Irina. Sarra is a mistake’. They changed my name and my family convinced me that nobody would know I was a Jew. I studied very well and got along well with my schoolmates. We received letters from my father and always waited for them. He was 40 when he went to the front. He had gout and after a year of service he was released from his front line service. He had lost many friends and grieved after them a lot. He was a great person with a great heart. He was very kind. He continued his army service as cattle supplier.  

My mother corresponded with her former colleagues from hospital.  By the end of 1943 the hospital moved to Taganrog, a Russian town on the border with Ukraine, in 800 km from Kiev. My mother got an offer to return to the hospital and she accepted it gladly. We returned to Nezhin in 1944. About this time my grandmother and grandfather returned from evacuation in Tatarstan. Our neighbors and acquaintances were happy to see us again, I recall.  They helped us with food, although they didn’t have much. I gratefully recall a bag of beans and some potatoes that our acquaintances brought from a village. There were Assyrian tenants living in our house since wartime and my grandfather thought it was not proper to make them move out. They lived in a wing of the house. It didn’t make us very comfortable. They were noisy people with their own traditions, but my grandfather and father were patient with them. I received my first lessons of humanity and tolerance. Nobody ever told them to get out. 

Shortly after we returned, in 1944 my grandfather Mindel’s second wife Miriam died of diabetic coma. The war was still on, our house was cold and she didn’t survive. I remember her funeral in the Jewish cemetery. She was buried according to Jewish traditions. She was wrapped in white cloth. There were four planks, on top, at bottom and on each side and the cloth was wrapped around. I was terrified to see my grandfather doing this. Then men took this out of the house and then to the cemetery. I stayed at home. My grandfather then sat on the floor taking off his shoes and the others were cutting his clothes. There was no synagogue in Nezhin. On Friday and Saturday old men gathered in my grandfather’s room to pray.  Matzah was baked in our house and we, children, took part in the process. Then matzah flour was made from matzah and there were dishes with dumplings. 

After the war

My father returned in summer 1945. It is such happiness when the family is together. He continued his work as cattle supplier. He never joined the Party and had anti-Soviet convictions, but he had to keep this a secret from others. His stay in Germany at the end of the war convinced him stronger that he was right. He used to say ‘How did we manage to win a victory, when there is such good order there and everything is such a mess here?’ He felt happy when Israel was established in 1948. Everybody thought that we would move there right away knowing the attitudes in our family, but this was impossible to do and my father didn’t dare. Graves were more important to him than anything else. It was his dream to get to a Jewish state. He was a real Jew.

My mother was an apologist of the landlord nobility way of life. She admired their education, culture and literature. She stressed that the Russian classical literature was created by the nobility. She hated it that all cooks, housemaids and laborers were trying to come to power. My mother hated their lack of culture, their manner of speaking. She was hurt by this lack of culture while they felt masters of this life. 

In 1945 I fell severely ill with tuberculosis of glands. My relatives from Moscow took me to Moscow. I studied at school and stayed with my father brother Mikhail’s family. All relatives took part in arrangements for my medical treatment. I was taken to an institute and then I was taken to a healer, an old man in Moscow region where I was to go once a week. I left school and missed almost a year of studies. I recovered and returned to Nezhin a year later. I went to school with another class. However, another severe illness began: psoriasis.

In 1946 a teacher of Hebrew named Ash came to our house. I don’t have the slightest idea where my father found him. My father hired him for my brother. He was a poor man, one of emigrants from Russia. He came from America and somehow happened to arrive at the provincial town of Nezhin. Five other Jewish boys came to his classes in our house and he taught them by wonderfully beautiful books. My father arranged these classes for him since he wouldn’t accept alms, but he had to support his ill wife. He taught the boys Hebrew and Yiddish, but my brother was no good at languages. The teacher used to say to my brother ‘Fima, can’t you hear one word when your parents talk?’ and my brother replied ‘I can, but talk so that I didn’t understand anything’. Other boys were as dumb as my brother. Ash didn’t accept money from widows’ children. Then my father doubled his payment to keep this teacher working. Ash lived in Nezhin several years until he disappeared. Nobody knew where he went. When I was in Israel at the 65th birthday of my brother in 2001 I met rabbe Ash’s former pupils. They spoke of him warmly. They remembered his first name, but I only remembered his last name of Ash.  

When I returned from Moscow I became more active at school. I was an active pioneer and then Komsomol 18 member. I am a funny person. I yield to convictions.  My parents were not quite happy with my fervor, but they didn’t interfere. I became a leader at school. I was Komsomol organizer and chairman of the pupil’s committee.  I devotedly participated in all activities. I conducted Komsomol meetings speaking for better studies, was eager for our school to win the first place for gathering waste paper, convinced schoolchildren to join Komsomol and was responsible for admission. I quit music school where I was very successful for the sake of Komsomol.  I studied brilliantly, but another period of wild anti-Semitism called ‘struggle against rootless cosmopolites’ 19 began. I remember cold suspicious attitudes of my classmates. There were few Jewish pupils in my class. Those girls and I felt something and tried to stay closer to one another. Many years later I analyzed why Jewish children are so active and study so well. Jewish children has always had a feeling of inferiority and they took every chance where their talents could develop.  

I didn’t have ant document proving that I was Irina. When I turned 16 my mother went to the passport office and said that her girl would have a terrible stress if they wrote the name of Sarra in my passport. She said I already got used to the name of Irina. Everybody knew and respected my mother. They knew that her daughter was Irina and that I had psoriasis. So nobody argued. They just wrote the name of Irina in my passport. 

I finished school in 1950 and had huge plans. I was going to enter the Faculty of Philosophy and Children’s Psychology in Moscow state University or Polygraphist College to study children’s publication business. My parents knew where I was going and they also knew that it didn’t make sense trying to make me change my mind.  They were very worried. The family didn’t have money to support me and they didn’t want to let me go alone to cold Moscow where I would not have enough food. We heard rumors from Moscow that Jewish children were not appreciated in higher educational institutions. It was the period of struggle against cosmopolitism. There was a very good Pedagogical College in Moscow. One day my parents came home and I said: ‘I’ve submitted my documents to the Pedagogical College’. They were so happy. I passed all exams with ‘5’ marks and was admitted. My specialty was Russian philology. I had problems with the Ukrainian language, but I studied it with such effort that before graduation I knew it perfectly.

In 1951 my grandfather passed away. My father arranged Jewish funeral for him, only there was no cerement, but a casket, I don’t know for what reason. There were older Jewish men at the funeral. My father and father’s brother, those of them who managed to come to the funeral, were not supposed to walk after the casket and had to take another road to the cemetery. Again clothes were cut and the funeral prayer recited. This was another day when our family began to light candles. 

In the early 1950s I studied in college. Since I had all excellent marks at the age of 18 I was photographed with Stalin’s portrait on the background. I brought this picture home, but my father said: ‘Throw away this photo’. He understood very well what was going on in the country and that Stalin was aware of everything and he was the one who issued orders. He often said ‘Beast, what a beast’. The drama called ‘doctors’ plot’ 20 was played in the country.  Wonderful doctors who worked with us in the hospital didn’t have patients any more. There was doctor Khizes. There were rumors in town that he instilled some throat diseases in his patients.  This situation drove my father mad. My father said: ‘Here, I told you he is a beast’. I hate those memories of this horror and all those terrible articles in newspapers.  

There were few Jewish lecturers and students in our college. They pestered us at Komsomol meetings for little things. There were village wenches and demobilized military in their uniform coats and they couldn’t forgive us for our successful studies and intelligence when they were dumb and uneducated. However, there were nice Ukrainian and Russian girls and teachers, but there were so few of them. I am sure that anti-Semitism is based on jealousy.  I remember two senior Jewish students: Bishler and Braier. They were two years senior. They were intelligent and talented guys. They were criticized at every meeting. Once I spoke in their defense. Later they said that these ‘zhydy’ [kikes] were all the same. I was the best student. I liked studying and everything was interesting for me, including the Russian and Ukrainian languages and literature and there was nothing to reproach me with.

However, I was naive like everybody else and I believed in justice. When Stalin died in 1953 I thought I was going to die too. Life seemed to have stopped.  My father felt different. He didn’t say anything and one could see not joy, but gloating delight in his eyes. He was hoping that the chief’s death would change the situation. It was true. Some time later talks about doctors came to an end.

When I was a student I became interested in the Jewish subject and began to make a log of outstanding Jewish people. I consulted assistant professor Polonski, a Jew. Then I became obsessed with it. My acquaintances always called me when they wanted to find out information about Jews. Everybody knew that Irina knew everything about all Jews. I didn’t keep it a secret that I collected information about Jews, but only Jews took interest in it. Polonski was fired from our college. He worked in Tyumen and sent me letters with new information.

I got married in 1953. I met my future husband at a Komsomol conference in Chernigov [200 km from Kiev]. His name was Boris Lopko and he was born in 1927. He studied in a technical college after serving in the army for seven years. In 1944 he was sent to the Far East. He had a hard life. His mother Mera Barkan was an assimilated Jew. His father Fyodor Lopko was Ukrainian. During the war Boris and his mother were in occupation. The burgomaster rescued her giving her a Ukrainian passport. He rescued several Jews. We met and I felt sorry that he had to serve seven years in the army and that his 20-year-old sister died and that he suffered so much in occupation. He was in love with me, but I was feeling sorry for him. His Jewish mother was not happy that her son married a Jewish girl. She feared everything Jewish and tried to conceal her Jewish identity. We registered our marriage in a registry office in Chernigov.

After graduation I taught the Russian language in a school in Nezhin for two years. On days off I traveled 90 km to my husband in Chernigov by bus. Boris worked as an electrician. Later I convinced him to enter extramural department of Polytechnic College in Chernigov. I helped him with his studies and did tests for him. When he received his diploma he said ‘I can give you this diploma. It’s yours’, but I said ‘Thanks, I already have one’. It was hard for us to be together. We were different people. He got irritated at my attachment to books and my inclination for going into the depth of things. During the period of anti-Semitism his instincts told him that it was better to conceal that he was a Jew and he never objected when somebody spoke against Jews. I was different and the first thing I said when meeting people was that I was a Jew. 

There was a vacancy in a children’s library in Chernigov and I appealed for it. I wanted to be with my husband in Chernigov. I worked in the reading hall first and later I became director of this library when my predecessor retired. I had to be on guard all the time: if a writer got arrested and there were articles in central newspapers we had to remove his books from our stocks. I had to enter the Party to keep this position and I did. It was a formal and routinely ceremony. 

At first we lived with my husband’s relatives in Chernigov. Later we rented an apartment. When our baby was due my husband worked as an engineer and received a nice room in a communal apartment in the center of the town.

Our son was born in 1957. We named him Fyodor. My husband’s father died shortly before our son was born. He was a very nice person and we named the baby after him. About five years later my mother-in-law moved in with us. Life became unbearable and I left my husband taking my son with me. I received a room and later an apartment. I had a small salary and asked my acquaintances to find me a better job. I got an offer from a geological organization. I worked there as an editor for five years. I finished editor’s training course.  Later I went to teach at the Advanced Teachers’ Training College. 

My father was a very important person in my life. My life is divided into two parts: before and after my father died. When my father died in 1967 old Jewish men came to me and said: ‘You must give your consent for us to make all necessary arrangements’. I replied: ‘My father never went to the synagogue. I think you are wrong. My father wasn’t really religious’.  They said: ‘Your father always gave money to Jews and to the underground Jewish community’.  If he met a money collector he gave his contribution and then when he met another he gave him money, too. It didn’t matter whether he was hard up at the moment or not he knew that he had to make contributions to the community and that was it. Faithful Jews washed his corps and buried and recited a prayer. His colleagues and our Assyrian tenants came to the funeral, but faithful Jews played the main role. I couldn’t allow my mother to walk 3 km to the cemetery alone, though. We were told to wear old clothes to the cemetery. They told us they were going to cut our collars. My brother and I did as we were told, although we were both communists.

After my father died I took my mother to Chernigov. She worked as an accountant until she turned 70. I was raising my son and my mother was helping me.

My brother Yefim finished a school of civil aviation in Moscow region. Later he worked as a technician in Vinnitsa, a regional town in Ukraine in 200 km from Kiev. There he married a lovely Jewish girl. However, he always missed me and wanted to live in my town.  He moved to Chernigov where he served in a military school. He was promoted to the rank of captain. He has two children: daughter Arina and son Oleg. When Chernobyl disaster 21 happened in 1986 Arina prepared to move to Israel. In 1990  my brother and his family moved to Israel. My mother thought their departure was my father’s dream coming true.  She said: ‘He couldn’t move there in 1948. Now that he died let his son go there’. My brother’s daughter is 43. She had divorced her husband before. She doesn’t want to remarry. She lives for her child. In Haifa, Israel, my brother’s wife and my niece learned Ivrit. My brother’s wife taught mathematic in Ivrit for 11 years. Arina works as an office administrator in a legal advice office. My brother didn’t want to study. He worked as a welder. My nephew moved to Eilat where he works in tourist business.  He is very happy. My brother and his wife are pensioners. They have a good live and like Israel. They’ve bought an apartment facing the sea. I’ve visited them twice.  

My son Fyodor graduated from the Faculty of Indo-European Languages in Kiev University. He is a Spanish and Portuguese translator. Now Fyodor owns a woodwork company in Moscow. He likes this business and is successful. He was married three times. There is something wrong with his marital life. His wives were non-Jewish. His older son David, named after my father, lives with his wife and mother in Kharkov [450 km from Kiev],  and his 14-year-old daughter Dasha lives in Moscow. I hardly know her.

My son knows that he is a Jew. When I ask him: ‘Who do you feel you are?’ he replies “I am who I am’.  He loves his relatives, our big family, but I didn’t develop the love to Judaism and everything Jewish in him. My grandson David is different. After I retired at the age of 55 I raised him. Later he went to live with his mother in Kharkov, but he never forgot about me and visited me every time he got a chance. He often called and wrote me.  We are very close. He even has absolute hearing and a wonderful voice taking after the Mindel branch of the family.  Recently David married Lena, a lovely Jewish girl. Now we have another dearest creature: David’s daughter, my great granddaughter Katia. She is only 2.5, but I can tell that she understands me completely. David and Katia live in Kharkov. They often come to see me on holidays and days off.

Over 20 years ago I met my current husband Stanislav Martynenko, born in 1935. When we met I was eager to keep or acquaintance, but I said: ‘I am a Jew and you must think about it’. He didn’t think. He just said he loved me and didn’t care about it. We registered our marriage and began to live together. Stanislav is a box trainer, a champion in the past.

His first family is in Kharkov. His first wife took every effort to separate the children from him. My grandson and granddaughter love him. He married me when little David was with me.  His mother feared that he might marry a woman with small children and when little David and I came to meet her she almost fainted seeing my grandson. Stanislav said: ‘Mother, you’ve always told me about a woman having small children, but you never mentioned grandchildren’. He has a terrific sense of humor.

Beginning from 1986 I dedicated myself to my family looking after my mother, my mother-in-law and raising my grandson. I lived the life of a pensioner. My mother had a poor heart. She died before Pesach in 1992. There was a prayer recited at her funeral. Not many people in town did this. There was a Jewish community formed in Chernigov. Chairman of the community was looking for a place to celebrate the holidays. He came to me and said: ‘The best memory of your mother would be if we start preparations for Pesach here’.  We prepared everything for Pesach  and celebrated it in my apartment without hiding. This was the first Jewish holidays celebrated in Chernigov after many years of oblivion. There was something subconscious in me. I began to read about it and I read about commandments, it was such a discovery for me. There is an inner voice in people and I was proud of my Jewish identity, but I wasn’t aware what exactly I was proud of.  When I began to read more I opened a whole world for me. We’ve always had many books at home and we liked to give books as presents.  My mother had a wonderful collection of books before the Great Patriotic War. She had many wonderful pre-Revolutionary books. During the war this collection was gone.  I gave my son my collection of books that I collected after the war.  Now I have another collection. I’ve always read a lot. 

I was very happy and enthusiastic about perestroika 22. I believed in Gorbachev 23. If I ever liked any politicians at all he was the one.  The independent Ukraine gave Jews an opportunity to develop our national self-consciousness. There were cultural and community centers opened.  I liked it very much. Once I attended a seminar of the women’s international association. There was a woman rabbi of progressive Judaism of USA. She said: ‘Those of you who haven’t had  bat mitzvah can have it now and adopt Jewish names’.  I decided to have my name of Sarra back. She had a form with an emblem. I was given the name of Sarra-Haya. This may seem a miracle, but I recovered from my diseases that I suffered from all the time when I was Irina.  I understood that I haven’t exhausted my potential yet. I became one of activists of the Jewish live in Chernigov. When my mother was ill I was terrified thinking ‘How do women who have no daughters leave this life? If they have nobody who takes care of them?’  My mother had friends who had nobody to help them. They were nice people. In 1996  Hesed was organized in our town with the help of Joint 24. I was offered to get involved in this. I met in Kiev with Yakov Blaich, a young rabbi, and we set priorities. He said we had to meet with old Jews.  We talked with nurses and doctors in clinics to get information. We visited our first clients at home. We saw so much grief, diseases and poverty. I am a squeamish person, but suddenly I managed to overcome this. I found the love of people in me. I do not mean material support. Moral support and human dignity are of the utmost importance. My husband supported me in everything. He helped me to go through hard moments. My husband is my happiness. People around ask: ‘How can he stand it all?’ He was the first volunteer in Hesed. He delivered food products to old women, helped them and was patient and friendly. In the first years after Hesed was established we didn’t have an office faculty. My mother’s apartment was vacant and we used this small two-bedroom apartment for the Hesed office. Nobody paid me for it. This was my contribution into tzdoka. Later, when Hesed acquired a nice new facility we made a storeroom in this apartment. Work as director of Hesed is complicated. There is a lot of pressure and it takes a lot of effort to work there, but it is a wonderful job. I met many interesting people and filled myself needed. I had a full life. I can say proudly that our Hesed was one of the best in Ukraine. We spent a lot of time to restore the Jewish cemetery. I was also involved in restoration of the Jewish cemetery in Nezhin where my father was buried. I’ve always thought that a cemetery is as important as everything else. We also installed a memorial gravestone at the place of mass shooting of Jews during the war.  I spoke at a meeting.  I was also involved in the establishment of a Jewish men’s choir in Hesed. I always recalled grandfather Mindel and his sons singing when I listened to the choir. 

Later I needed to have a surgery. I needed to have my hip joint replaced. I had a surgery in Kiev. I felt the warmth and care of my friends, employees of Hesed in Kiev. I had David’s psalms with me before the surgery. I have my prayer. I was a public person and I didn’t like it that people would see me lame, and I quit my position in Hesed. Now I learn to walk at home. I do not give up and have many plans. I have an idea of establishing a fund for the children who have no fathers and ill children. There is a synagogue I know in USA and a committee. They promised to help. I would also open a synagogue of progressive Judaism here. I’ve been a member of the community for ten years and always contribute the tenth part of my income to tzdoka. This corresponds to Jewish commandments.

I’ve visited Israel several times. I’ve been to synagogues. I’ve felt and fell in love with this country. I am eager to go to Israel. I see it my dreams. My husband also wants to go there, but I have the only son and I cannot part with him.  Besides, we can only be pensioners in Israel while I have many plans here. It is very important to realize that people need you. 

GLOSSARY:

Maya Pivovar
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Oksana Kuntsevskaya
Date of interview: December 2003

Maya Pivovar is a nice short lady with a short haircut. She lives with her second husband in a small two-bedroom apartment in a remote district in Kiev. She is a very lively woman with a great sense of humor. Maya is a good housewife. Her apartment is in ideal order. She manages all housework by herself despite her age of 76 years. She does the cooking and often bakes pastries – her husband is a hearty eater. She has no children and has dedicated herself to her husband and his children. Maya speaks very correctly and with a good rhythm. She willingly told us about the events of her life.

My mother came from a small town of Narodichi [about 150 km from Kiev] Kiev region. My grandfather’s, my mother’s father, name was Boruch-Benicion Freidman. He was born in 1878. I don’t know where he was born. My grandfather was a teacher of the cheder in Narodichi. My grandmother Malka Freidman, her maiden name was Chuzhaya, was born in 1876. I don’t know where she came from. I don’t know how or when my grandmother and grandfather met. They had nine children: three sons and six daughters. My grandmother was a housewife. My grandmother and grandfather spoke Yiddish. They probably celebrated Jewish holidays, but we didn’t know about it.

I know little about my mother’s brothers. They left Narodichi in the 1920s. –One of my mother’s brothers lived with his family somewhere in the Krasnodarskiy Kray in Russia, another brother was an agronomist and lived in Kherson region, and the third brother lived in the Crimea. They all perished during the Great Patriotic War [1]. We have no information about them.

My mother’s older sister Sophia Min’kovskaya (nee Freidman), was born in Narodichi in 1901. She was the only one of all children to learn Hebrew from her father, my grandfather. She moved to Kiev in 1921 and began to teach Hebrew as a private person. Sophia didn’t have a higher education, but she was well-read. In Kiev she met a Jewish man named Yefim Min’kovskiy and married him. After getting married Sophia was a housewife. Yefim must have had a higher education in economics. Before and after the Great Patriotic War he worked as chief accountant of the Darnitsa railcar repair depot. In 1924 Sophia’s son Alexandr was born. During the Great Patriotic War Min’kovskiy, his wife and son evacuated with the depot to Omsk [Russia, about 3400 km from Kiev]. After the war Sophia continued to be a housewife. She died in Kiev in 1980. Her husband Yefim worked as chief accountant at the plant till he retired. He died in Kiev in 1975, it seems. Their son Alexandr finished a therapeutic Faculty of the Medical College and became a doctor. He lives n Kiev and works in a town hospital now.

My mother’s another sister Ida Freidman was born some time in 1904. I don’t know whether she had any education. In the 1920s she left Narodichi for Kiev and settled down not far from where her sister Sophia lived. Ida went to work as a seamstress at the garment factory. In the late 1920s she married one of my maternal grandmother’s distant relatives. His name was Solomon Chuzhoy. Ida had a Jewish wedding with a chuppah. My mother laughed talking about Ida’s wedding. She said Ida was already pregnant, when she was getting married, and either my mother or Sophia were standing under the chuppah on her wedding since it was an unsuitable situation with this pregnancy. In 1939 Ida’s husband was sent to work in Rovno [324 km from Kiev], when after the division of Poland [2] the Western Ukraine was annexed to the USSR. He was chief of the trade department in the regional executive office [3]. After moving to Rovno Ida was a housewife. They had two children: a son and a daughter. Ida’s husband was a soldier at the front line during the Great Patriotic War, from the first to its last day, and was at the avenue of approach to Berlin, when the war was over. Ida and their children evacuated somewhere to the Volga, to the town of Engels, I guess. She worked at a bakery there. After the Great Patriotic War her husband, Ida and the children returned to Rovno. He continued to work as chief of trade department. Ida was a housewife taking care of the children and the house. Her husband died in 1977. Ida died at the age of 89 in 1993.

Ida’s son Alxandr and I were of the same age and we were close friends before the Great Patriotic War. Our relatives even wanted us to get married, but I didn’t want to marry him. He finished a college in Rovno, I don’t remember, which one. He worked then as chief of the inter town telephone station. Now he lives in Germany with his family. They left in 2002. His younger sister Bronia finished the Polygraphist College in Kiev and stayed to live here. She was chief of technical editor office of some magazine. She didn’t have a family. She died in April 2003.

My mother’s sister Fania Freidman, born in 1910, also left Narodichi some time in the 1920s. Se went to work at the knitwear factory in Kiev. She was a common worker there. Later she entered and finished the extramural Faculty of Economics of the Textile college. She was chief of the planning department of the knitwear factory. She was single. She died in Kiev in 1990.

My mother’s sister Genia Freidman, was the prettiest. She was born in Narodichi in 1912. She was an accountant. Genia didn’t have a higher education. She finished a secondary school and a course of accountants and worked as an accountant, but I don’t know where she worked. Genia got married before the Great Patriotic War. Her husband’s name was Yakov Gol’man. He had some medical education, since when the Great Patriotic War began, he was mobilized to a hospital. Shortly afterward Genia and her husband followed the hospital to Kharkov. Then my mother’s younger sister Lisa joined them there and they all evacuated to Krasnoyarsk in late 1941.

From Krasnoyarsk Yakov was sent to a training course in Omsk and he was supposed to go to the front. My mother’s older sister Sophia and her family were in the evacuation in Omsk. Before departing to his military unit Yakov visited her and complained to her of a pain in his stomach. Sonia advised him to go to see a doctor, but he replied: ‘You know, I am about to be sent to the front, and if I start complaining, it will look as if I am trying to get out of it’, and from them he left for the unit where he was to take a course of training. Some time passed and there was no news from Yakov. Sophia was worried and went to his military unit somewhere in the suburbs of Omsk. When she arrived there they said: ‘He died and we buried him’. What happened there was that Yakov had a ulcer and there was another attack of it and he was operated on. It was cold in the hospital and he was coughing, at least, this is what they told, and his seams opened. Some time later Genia and her younger sister Lisa moved to Omsk to Sophia. After the Great Patriotic War Genia returned to Kiev and worked in the regional committee of trade union of builders in Kiev. She was agreeable and pretty and everybody liked her, but she never remarried and she had no children. In the early 1950s she fell ill and died in 1953.

My mother’s youngest sister Lisa was born in Narodichi in 1918. She moved to Kiev with her parents in the late 1920s. My grandmother and grandfather moved in with their oldest daughter Sophia and her family. When in 1939 Ida and her husband moved to Rovno, grandmother and grandfather and Lisa moved into her apartment and lived there before the Great Patriotic War began. In Kiev Lisa finished a secondary school and entered the Faculty of Economics of the Light Industry College. She defended her diploma on the second day of the Great Patriotic War, on 24 June 1941, and got a job assignment to [3] Poltava. She didn’t work there long since the Germans were advancing. Genia was in Kharkov with her husband. Genia convinced her to evacuate to Krasnoyarsk with her family. After her husband perished Genia and Lisa moved to their older sister Sophia in Omsk. About 1942 their cousin brother on my grandmother’s side. I don’t remember his name, but his surname was Chuzhoy. Later he married Lisa. In Omsk Lisa’s son Arkadiy was born in 1943. After the Great Patriotic War Lisa, her husband and their child returned to Kiev and lived with us for some time. Lisa had a hard life. Her husband finished an extramural department of a Law College and worked as a lawyer at the Darnitsa railcar repair depot, but he must have had a mental disease since he committed suicide in the 1960s. Their son Arkadiy had poor sight since childhood. His parents decided that it was best for him to become a teacher of history. Arkadiy graduated from the History Faculty of the University, when he was totally blind. Lisa and other women, whom they paid, read to him, and they mainly read the first sources to him. Arkadiy was well developed. He taught in schools at first, but then he fell mentally ill. He had all diseases imaginable: schizophrenia, diabetes, anything one could imagine. He died in 1999, I guess, and then Lisa died in 2000.

My mother Buzia-Rivka Freidman was born in Narodichi in 1902. She left Narodichi at the age of 17 looking for a better life. I don’t know what she was doing before her departure to Kiev. My mother hardly told me anything about her life. In Kiev my mother entered the rabfak [5]. She worked as a tutor in Kiev Jewish children’s home and later she went to work at the garment factory in Podol [6]. My mother met my father at the rabfak.

My father’s name was Mikhail Pivovar. He came from Kornin Zhytomir region [about 160 km from Kiev]. My father’s parents died from some disease and hunger in 1919. I don’t know exactly where this happened. All I know about them is that my grandfather’s name was Yakov. My father had eight brothers and sisters, but I have no information about them and don’t even know their names. My father was the youngest. He was born in 1904. He finished four years of the Russian state school in Kornin. There was an annual quota in this school for one Jew to be admitted each year. My father managed to enter this school and finish it. My father was 15 years old, when his parents died. He had to earn his living somehow. He became a teacher. So, in 1919 he was a teacher. My father traveled from one village to another where he had pupils who were children of wealthier farmers, or kulaks, [7] as they were called at the time. He taught them to read and write in Russian. Then he moved to Kiev. I don’t know how it happened or why, he probably told me, but I don’t remember. My father entered a rabfak school and worked as a clerk in the regional pharmacy department. My father was a very nice person and a very sociable one. Everybody liked him. He met my mother in 1925 and they got married. They didn’t have a traditional Jewish wedding. They were the children of their time and didn’t observe any traditions. My parents lived not far from where my father was working, in the center of the city, in a communal apartment [8] with neighbors.

My father worked in the regional pharmacy department till the middle 1930s, I guess, before he went to work at the Kiev experimental institute of endocrinology. He was production manager. In Ukraine, and probably in the USSR there were two such institutes: one in Kharkov and one in Kiev. My father finished the extramural department of the Pharmaceutical College in Kiev. In 1941 he failed to take state exams due to the war and he never obtained a document about graduation from this college. My mother continued to work at the garment factory where he was promoted to the position of a forewoman and she earned well already. My parents earned well and we were a family of an average wealth. We didn’t live in luxury, but we were not needy either.

I, Maya Pivovar, was born in 1927. I was born and grew up in Kiev. I didn’t have a nanny. I went to the kindergarten, but there was a period of time, when I didn’t go to the kindergarten, and my mother and father had to go to work. There was a woman in our house, who had a group of 5-6 children in her care. She told us something, I don’t remember. She was called ‘frebelichka’ tutor and she had finished a Frebel school [9].

Our family didn’t celebrate Jewish traditions. My parents were members of the party and atheists. In 1926 my father joined the Communist Party. My mother was a member of the communist Party since 1932. Our family spent our leisure time like many other Soviet families. My mother’s relatives visited us – they were a big family. We got together on birthdays, on Soviet holidays and new Year. Of course, we went to the theater and to the cinema. I remember the theater of Red army in Merngovskaya, present Zankovetskaya, Street, and the Children’s Theater in Karl Marx Street. Once all school children went to the theater. I don’t remember what we watched, but I remember having bought an ice cream during an interval. It was wrapped in cellophane paper. I didn’t finish my ice cream during the interval and was still having it, when the performance started. I was a brought up child and couldn’t throw the cellophane under the chair, so I ate it slowly…

My father took me to the first form: my mother was working. This was an ordinary Russian school, the nearest to our home. There were no school uniforms. I remember as if it were happening now – I was wearing a white dress in blue polka dots. The desks were freshly painted, and the paint had not got dry. I sat down in my white gown and stuck to this chair! Fortunately my father was still there and brought me another dress to change. I studied well and enjoyed it. I was good at all subjects. There were 40 children in my class, there were also Jewish children, but we never gave it a thought then, we were friends, ran to the beach in summer, played with a ball and there was no segregation before the war.

We lived with our parents in a huge communal apartment before the Great Patriotic War. There were five other families living there. There was a big kitchen in the end of a long corridor. There were six tables in the kitchen, one table belonged to each family living in the apartment. There must have been a stove, but I don’t remember. Each family had a primus stove [Primus stove - a small portable stove with a container for about 1 liter of kerosene pumped into burners]. There was no gas then. Gas appeared after the war. We had two rooms in the very beginning of the corridor. There used to be steam heating in this house in the past, but when I remember, for example, in 1932, there was no steam heating. There was a small stove and smoke from it was crawling to a neighbor’s apartment across the room: there were no chimney flues that were not necessary for steam heating. Probably, there was a smoke duct in another apartment, there was a tube going there and it dipped, this was such nuisance! I remember somebody brought potatoes to my father and it was dropped on the floor. I and our neighbors’ children used to bake these potatoes in a small oven. We had plain furniture: a desk, a divan with a high back and a cupboard. There was plain crockery. There was a plate-shaped radio hanging almost under the ceiling on the wall. We liked listening to the radio: there was always merry music on it. The desk was right beneath this radio plate and when there was an interesting program, I got onto this desk to be closer to radio to listen to the program.

I remember famine [10]. Our family hardly suffered from the famine. My parents received some miserable food packages each on his work. There was no sufficient food, but enough to not die from hunger. In 1932 starving people were escaping to towns from villages. There was bread sold at markets in towns, but it was impossible to buy any food in villages. Somehow those people managed to get some money to buy bread, they ate it and were dying in the streets. I remember I was 5 in 1932, I was sitting on the window sill in our apartment and saw how they were loading something on a truck. There was a club of homeless children across the street from our house. I didn’t understand then what they were loading, but now I know those were corpses. Starved exhausted people came to this club where they could get some food. They ate it and died. From overeating.

I had finished seven forms before the Great Patriotic War. As far as I can remember, my parents were talking about a war somewhere abroad, but this seemed to me to be far away from where we lived and was not going to happen to us. I don’t think my parents realized how serious this was, or they wouldn’t have allowed my grandfather and grandmother (on my mother’s side) to stay in Kiev when Germans came. I remember well beginning of the war on 22 June 1941, I was already 14 years old. We were on vacations and were walking with our neighbor in a park, it was in the morning and she said: ‘They say, they were dropping bombs at night on the Post-Volynskaya station out of town’. His was something wild to me: bombs in peaceful time! We went home, and at 12 o’clock in the afternoon Molotov [11] spoke on the radio, he announced that the war began. My father was a reserve officer and he had to make his appearance at the military registry office in case of war. He went to the registry office on Monday and they told him to pack his luggage and come to an induction center. Then somebody told us that the recruits had not been sent to the front and were waiting at the railway station. My mother and I took his coat, it was still cold at night, and went to see him. We met with him. My mother was working at the factory round the clock. She sent me to my grandmother and grandfather since I was on vacations. When the time came for my mother and me to evacuate she was trying to convince her parents to come with us. My mother and I were the last of the family to leave Kiev. But they didn’t want to leave. My grandfather as ill. He seemed to be old to me, but he was only 63 years old. He said: ‘I am going to die on the way. I want to die in my bed’. If only we had known that our army would leave Kiev. We would have been more insistent, but since we weren’t, they stayed and perished in Babi Yar [12], but we only heard this from our neighbors in 1944.

My mother and I evacuated with my mother’s factory where she was working on a barge in July. The factory products were dumped into the hold of the barge and we were sitting on those bales. We were heading to Dnepropetrovsk [500 km from Kiev]. It was believed that Germans didn’t bomb Dnepropetrovsk as much as our town and that factories could operate there. To describe our trip on those bales in the hold, I would give an example. One night I woke up having the feeling of suffocation. Somebody’s leg in a boot was on my chest. I tried to throw down this leg, when a man’s voice said: ‘Why are you pulling my leg?’ This happened to be a man stretching his legs to feel more comfortable.

When we arrived in Dnepropetrovsk, we were not allowed to get off: there were two lines of military men, and they made us board some freight railcars for transportation of coal – there were no roofs in them. We moved on we didn’t know where. It was pouring with rain, we got black from coal dust all over. I don’t remember how long the trip was: two or three days… At night we were told to get off. In the morning we were taken to a kolkhoz [13]. It turned out we were in Krasnodarskiy Kray. Starominskaya village [over 1000 km from Kiev]. We worked in the kolkhoz there till another party of workers of the factory evacuated to Zlatoust town [about 900 km from Kiev], and we were taken there. We changed few freight trains for transportation of cattle to get to Zlatoust. The conditions were terrible. Our trip probably lasted five days. This was a beginning of the winter 1941.

In Zlatoust we were accommodated in local apartments. The owners of the apartment where we accommodated, an elderly couple, were nice people, and they treated us kindly. My mother continued to work at the factory that worked for the needs of the front: they made military overcoats, uniforms and tents for the front. I went to the local school but gave up my studies very soon to go to work at my mother’s factory. We didn’t hear from my father and were very concerned about him at the time.

My father was in the 5th Army. At the very start of the war he was wounded and sent to a mobile field hospital. In the fall this Army got in encirclement somewhere near Kiev. When it became clear that they were in encirclement chief of the hospital said to the patients and personnel of the hospital: ‘Drift apart! By whatever means drift apart!’ My father told us later that he was in a field with a group of military. They were lying in hiding. Germans encircled the field and shouted: ‘Russ, surrender!’ Someone lying beside my father said: ‘Why lying here, I will surrender!’ My father didn’t know what happened to him. Then Germans sent tanks onto the field. My father said one tank drove beside him on one side and another tank – on his other side, in few centimeters that saved his life! He stayed in the field till dark and then he came to a village where people gave him some civilian clothes. He was 37 years old, but the children in the village said: ‘God, what a scary looking old man!’ He wasn’t shaved and he was thin after he had been wounded. My father was going from one village to another till he reached the front line that was along a river. One villager was bringing soldiers from encirclement across the river on his boat. The boat was small and they were taking turns to go across the river, when somebody ran from the village shouting that German troops were already coming to the village! ‘You may be punished for this!’ but the villager said he would remain till he transported all those waiting for his help. And indeed, he transported all troopers.

My father was in encirclement 18 days. Later he had problems in this regard. Near Kharkov. He was looking for a toilet at the railways station. He went to and fro once, then another time, when somebody paid attention to him. They took him to the commandant’s office. My father didn’t have any documents with him and had civilian clothes on. They decided he was a spy, but he managed somehow to get out of it. The group of military who had been in encirclement with my father gathered in Kharkov. They were sent for retraining in the Ural. Then my father was sent to the Moscow Front and was wounded in January 1942. His right arm didn’t function and he had lost thee fingers on his left hand. My father was sent to a hospital in Novosibirsk [about 3000 km from Kiev]. When he was released, he decided to look for my mother and me. From my grandmother and grandfather’s letters my father knew that we were in Krasnodarskiy Kray, but we had moved to Zlatoust before then.

When my father was being released from the hospital in Novosibirsk, the chief doctor of the hospital, hearing that he had worked in the Institute of Endocrinology before the Great Patriotic War, advised my father to go to Biysk town where the Kiev and Kharkov institutes of Endocrinology had evacuated. But my father decided to first go looking for my mother and me and asked that they gave him a ticket to Krasnodarskiy Kray. Biysk town was near Novosibirsk and my father visited it on his way. There he was told that his Institute had moved to Frunze [about 3000 km from Kiev]. My father went to Buguruslan where there was an evacuation information agency where he submitted the information about his and my mother’s relatives. Of all our family he got the address of my mother and me in Zlatoust from this agency. He came to Zlatoust and we all moved to Frunze. In Frunze we first accommodated in a club building till my father rented an apartment for us. Our main food was bread and vegetables, but we didn’t starve, actually. I hardly saw any local residents there. It happened so that in the center of Frunze where we lived, there were mainly those who came in evacuation. Several times we, schoolchildren, were sent to pick potatoes where I aw the locals. They could hardly speak Russian, those, whom I saw, but they were quite friendly.

In Frunze my father was chairman of the local committee [14] of the institute trying to make the life of employees of the institute easier. For example, he found a jobless shoemaker and the management of the institute managed to get pieces of leather, and this shoemaker fixed employees’ shoes. It was important during the war! My father also made arrangements for opening a canteen for employees at the institute, and my mother went to work there as a cook.

I finished the 8th and 9th forms at school in Frunze. I hope you don’t think that we, school children, didn’t do anything during the war! One day a week at school was a work day. We worked at the construction of a railroad spur. Military plants were evacuated to Frunze. Of course, we were silly. I remember competing who carried more soil on a barrow. Two girls, besides, we were 15-16 years old, carrying this heavy barrow curving under the heavy load. A man passing by said: ‘Girls, what are you doing? You better take two trips than carrying such heavy barrow!’ And then construction of the Chuyskiy channel! The builders were preparing the pit for concreting – this was going to be the Chuyskaya hydro power station. There was not enough workforce, and the construction management organized a Komsomol group of young people. We, school children, were sent to the construction of this channel for 10 days during vacations. We were to carry soil up the slope. I remember working with a teacher. She was probably about 5 years older than me. She, poor thing, was not used to this kind of work. And I got angry with her, it was hard for me to work with her! So, when we had the barrow loaded I was dragging it along with her. I thought, the quicker I got to the top, the easier it would be for me. Later I carried the barrow with a boy from the tenth form. He was pushing the barrow and me up the slope – this was better.

In 1944 my parents and I returned to Kiev, but we had no place to live. Kiev was liberated on 6 November 1943 and our house got burned on 5 November. It was hard. Though my father was an invalid of the war and had the right to receive a dwelling, he was not that kind of a person who knew how to get what was his due. The institute of Endocrinology helped us. When the institute received a building from the town authorities, we also got a little place there. There were two rooms where two families lived. In the late 1940s the institute restored a small house near the Victory Square. Director of the institute received two rooms in a communal apartment in this house, but he got another apartment in a short time, and let my father have these rooms.

My father worked at the Institute of Endocrinology, and my mother worked at the factory. They worked from morning till night, left home early in the morning and came back late at night. My mother also had to cook. There were no fridges. She cooked soup or borsch in the morning and left the pot in the corridor, in the darkest, and coolest spot accordingly, and our old neighbor fished for pieces of meat in it.

In the late 1940s – early 1950s almost all of my mother’s relatives went through our apartment. They were returning from evacuation and didn’t have a place to live. Lisa, her husband and child lived with us, then Genia, and Fania. Later they all received some kind of dwellings, but they continued to keep in touch and meet like they did before the war. My parents got along well. Though they didn’t observe Jewish traditions, they spoke Yiddish among themselves. I can say this was their native tongue. I understood what they were saying. I feel ashamed though, that I still cannot write or read in Yiddish. Maybe it’s my fault, maybe theirs. Even though my grandfather was a teacher in the cheder. Though we lived separately from my grandfather and grandmother.

In the early 1950s gas piping began to be installed in Kiev. My mother’s sister Genia lived in the center of the city, and they had gas supplies before it was arranged in other districts of Kiev. I remember her telling excitedly: ‘You take a pot off the gas stove and can put it right on a white tablecloth – and it won’t get dirty!’

When we returned to Kiev from the evacuation I entered a preparatory course at the Polytechnic College and concurrently I was finishing a secondary school. In 1945 I received my school certificate. We took exams upon finishing school and the results were accounted for during admission to colleges. I entered the Chemical Technological Faculty, department of paper and cellulose, of the Polytechnic College. I didn’t have any problems with admission. I was just lucky. It was quiet in 1945. Since I had finished a preparatory course, I was admitted to the college almost automatically. In this regard everything went well. I remember how we, students of the preparatory faculty had to work at making wood stocks near Kiev for a month. I have no idea, whose direction this was. We cut trees, sawed them and stored in the store metering boxes. The most ridiculous of this was that all students of the preparatory faculty were supposed to go there, but they didn’t actually. Those who stayed in college continued having classes and when we, the enthusiasts, returned, we had to catch up with those who were staying. However, I recall this time as a very romantic period. We lived in tents, baked potatoes in the open fire in the evenings, it was fun. Then it seemed there was going to be nothing bad in life, and the most scaring thing – the war – was in the past. I was the only Jew in my group and in college. Still, everybody treated me well and we still call each other and meet with my fellow students. I had Russian and Ukrainian friends. It took me a short time to catch up with my fellow students after this event with making the wood stocks. I cannot say that I had only excellent marks, but I wasn’t among the worst students. I liked to go to the cinema and theater and I particularly like the Russian Drama Theater. I often went there with my parents and friends. I read a lot. I read classics and modern Soviet literature.

After I finished the college in 1950 I got a job assignment to the Kamskiy cellulose and paper factory in Perm region Krasnokamsk town [over 3000 km from Kiev]. I worked there 7 years. I took part in public life. In Krasnokamsk I joined the party. It somehow happened there. I knew this was good for my career, but I actually didn’t have anything against the party. We were raised patriots and we piously believed in communism and its ideology.

The events in the early 1950s, the doctors’ plot [15] had no impact on me whatsoever. I was in Krasnokamsk and things were quiet there. Well, actually, there was chief engineer, a Jew, Rappoport, in 1952 they reduced him in his position appointing him production manager, and the former production manager was appointed chief engineer. I think they did it for a show to demonstrate that they responded to the events happening at the time. At meetings this new ‘chief engineer’ was sitting beside the new ‘production manager’ asking him one ach issue ‘What’s your opinion?’ Since Rappoport was more qualified, of course.

The echo of the doctors’ plot had its affect on my father at the institute of Endocrinology. My parents never told me what actually happened. I only know that there was a big problem, they had fabricated a case and my father didn’t work for a year and a half. Then he went to the pharmacy department where he had worked in the 1920s asking for help. They employed my father in the prescription department in a pharmacy. My father retired in 1970.

I liked working in Krasnokamsk very much. There were common nice people there. I made many friends. We had a good time together, went to the woods to pick berries and mushrooms, baked potatoes, sang songs to the guitar, but my mother rebelled and said: ‘That’s enough. A little bit of good at a time is enough. Resign and come to Kiev’. In 1957 I quit and returned to Kiev to my parents, but here I faced a problem: I couldn’t obtain a residential registration [16] in our apartment. I couldn’t get employed since I was not allowed a residential registration and couldn’t obtain this residential registration without having a job.

Somebody mentioned to me that a friend or a relative of my deceased grandfather lived in Boyarka near Kiev and I could get a residential registration to live in his house. We went to Boyarka and I had this registration there. We paid a monthly fee for this registration, but I still couldn’t find a job. I kept looking for a job for a year. Once my co-student’s mother came by, her husband worked in the Polytechnic College, he was chief of department of organic chemistry. The Soyuzreactiv office rented a facility on the territory of this department. They organized a laboratory of reagents and my friend’s father said to his wife: ‘Tell Maya if you happen to go past their house to come over here’. He introduced me to the future manager of this laboratory. The manager took me to supervisor of the Soyuzreactiv office and I became his first employee! I had absolutely nothing to do with organic synthesis: I had finished the chemical technological faculty, but I dealt with paper! I remember this supervisor taking my passport looking at my residential registration in Boyarka. He said: ‘So what, your Mom and Dad could not arrange a registration for you in their home?’ I said: ‘No, there was no permission!’ Basically, he employed me. At first I worked in the laboratory of reagents and when the factory of reagents was built, I went to work there.

My parents and I went on living in our apartment in Decabristov Street till in 1970, in summer during a terrible rain storm the Victory Square was flooded and there was water in our apartment 60 cm deep. I woke up hearing the water babbling in the room. I awakened my parents, they got up and their sofa sailed across the room. Then we received a three-bedroom apartment in Borschagovka (the most remote and the least prestigious district in Kiev) and lived there.

My mother retired in the late 1950s. She became a housewife. She was ill for a long time. I had to retired in 1982 due to my mother’s illness, or I would have continued to work. My mother died in 1983, but I never returned to work. My father’s sight got much worse when he grew older and he felt ill from his wounds, but he was a sociable man and had to do something. My father asked chairman of the Party veterans association to give him a task to do. Being an invalid of the war, my father could do his shopping for food in a special store for invalids of the war [in the USSR there was a network of special stores for veterans of the war, and veterans having a special certificate could do their shopping there. Once a month they could buy a food package including deficit products such as: mayonnaise, buckwheat, tinned fish, smoked sausage that were not available in ordinary stores]. Veterans of the Party also did their shopping there. Chairman gave my father the list of veterans, their phone numbers and authorized him to make phone calls to tell them when food packages were ready. My father could receive his package before everybody else being an invalid of the war, but since he was blind, I was his ‘secretary’. Father died in 1996.

I got married at the age of 59. My husband Yefim Karpinskiy, a Jew, was born in 1916. Before retirement he worked in the Institute of Electric Circuits. He was chief specialist in power supply network in the town. Yefim became a widower few years before we met. We had no wedding party, we just decided to register our marriage in a registry office and began to live in my apartment, in perfect harmony, and we never said a rude word to one another. I hardly knew anything about my husband’s family. We lived together for too little time, only a year and a half. He died from stroke in 1988. I didn’t remarry for two years, but I had a very good husband and I liked being married. I talked to my friend. Her husband had many friends. I said to her: ‘Perhaps, there is some product in no demand around?’ (laughs). The wife of my current husband, a Jew, Yefim Volodarskiy, had died. My friends introduced us to one another. She is now in Germany. When she writes me, she always reminds us who we owe for our happiness. I liked Yefim. He was a very sensible and educated man. He had worked as leading engineer at different plants. By the time we met, he was a pensioner. We had a lot of free time and we walked and went to theaters. We lived together for three years before we decided to get married. Thank God, we’ve been together for ten years already. We live in harmony and even merrily. Yefim has a wonderful sense of humor, he has a joke for each unpleasant event in life and then we stop brooding and begin to laugh. This helps very well in life. I wasn’t good at cooking before, but now I can cook gefilte fish and sweet and sour meat. It is for my husband. I try to cook something of Jewish cuisine every Friday. We don’t observe any other traditions. Every week my husband’s younger son Alexandr and his family visit us. They live nearby. My husband and I worry about them when they have problems and try to help, and share their joy when they tell us about their successes. We used to have guests go went out to see my husband’s colleagues and my colleagues. We got together on Soviet holidays, New Year and birthdays, but for the recent six years our life has quieted. We and our friends have grown older. My husband and I hardly go out, but we stroll around the house every day. We rarely read fiction. Yefim occasionally quotes a poem in Yiddish, he know Jewish literature wonderfully. We mainly read Ukrainian newspapers, like to watch news on TV and discuss this for sure. We occasionally play cards. I’ve never been abroad or considered emigration, and I would like to visit far away countries, but we cannot afford it. There is much interesting on TV, so we watch it. I wouldn’t want to depart for good. However bad it may be here, but it’s best at home. Who needs us elsewhere?

I didn’t quit the Party. When I was a pensioner, I continued to pay monthly fees. Some time in 1990 I guess, our, former already, Party unit secretary brought me my record book – the Party was dismissed. My membership was over, but I do not consider myself a real communist. Now I am aware that I had joined the Party since it was believed to be an outstanding deed, it was good and prestigious for a career. It was my father who was a real communist. He piously believed in the bright future for all workers and tried to do only good. At first I wasn’t quite enthusiastic about perestroika [17]. Everything seemed to be ruining. The first thought was – that’s it, I will not travel to the Caucasus since it’s a different country now. Then this confusion in the economy! But now – I don’t know, as long as the children will get used to the new system, as for us – as long as everything is fine with them!

Of course, I can feel that I belong to the Jewry. It’s bad that I didn’t know anything about our culture and traditions. I feel sorry for not having talked with my grandfather, my mother’s father, about the history and the Torah. I was too young, but I still remember how carefully my youngest aunt Lisa’s friends were listening to him. Now there are many Jewish organizations arranging interesting lectures about the Jewish people and traditions, and my husband and I can borrow books and read them with interest about our people from whom we’ve been apart for so many decades. Hesed provides assistance to us, giving food and providing medications, it’s sufficient assistance. Now, of course, we know more about our culture and holidays, but my husband and I do not celebrate them strictly following the rules, but we sometimes light candles on Friday and we know about holidays and are sure to give our grandchildren coins on Chanukkah.

GLOSSARY:

[1] Great Patriotic War: On 22nd June 1941 at 5 o’clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War. The German blitzkrieg, known as Operation Barbarossa, nearly succeeded in breaking the Soviet Union in the months that followed. Caught unprepared, the Soviet forces lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the German onslaught in the first weeks of the war. By November 1941 the German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city, and threatened Moscow itself. The war ended for the Soviet Union on 9th May 1945.

[2] Annexation of Eastern Poland: According to a secret clause in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact defining Soviet and German territorial spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union occupied Eastern Poland in September 1939. In early November the newly annexed lands were divided up between the Ukranian and the Belarusian Soviet Republics.

[3] Ispolkom: After the tsar’s abdication (March, 1917), power passed to a Provisional Government appointed by a temporary committee of the Duma, which proposed to share power to some extent with councils of workers and soldiers known as ‘soviets’. Following a brief and chaotic period of fairly democratic procedures, a mixed body of socialist intellectuals known as the Ispolkom secured the right to ‘represent’ the soviets. The democratic credentials of the soviets were highly imperfect to begin with: peasants - the overwhelming majority of the Russian population - had virtually no say, and soldiers were grossly over-represented. The Ispolkom’s assumption of power turned this highly imperfect democracy into an intellectuals’ oligarchy.

[4] Mandatory job assignment in the USSR: Graduates of higher educational institutions had to complete a mandatory 2-year job assignment issued by the institution from which they graduated. After finishing this assignment young people were allowed to get employment at their discretion in any town or organization.

[5] Rabfak: Educational institutions for young people without secondary education, specifically established by the Soviet power.

[6] Podol: The lower section of Kiev. It has always been viewed as the Jewish region of Kiev. In tsarist Russia Jews were only allowed to live in Podol, which was the poorest part of the city. Before World War II 90% of the Jews of Kiev lived there.

[7] Kulaks: In the Soviet Union the majority of wealthy peasants that refused to join collective farms and give their grain and property to Soviet power were called kulaks, declared enemies of the people and exterminated in the 1930s.

[8] Communal apartment: The Soviet power wanted to improve housing conditions by requisitioning ‘excess’ living space of wealthy families after the Revolution of 1917. Apartments were shared by several families with each family occupying one room and sharing the kitchen, toilet and bathroom with other tenants. Because of the chronic shortage of dwelling space in towns communal or shared apartments continued to exist for decades. Despite state programs for the construction of more houses and the liquidation of communal apartments, which began in the 1960s, shared apartments still exist today.

[9] Froebel Institute: F. W. A. Froebel (1783-1852), German educational theorist, developed the idea of raising children in kindergartens. In Russia the Froebel training institutions functioned from 1872-1917 The three-year training was intended for tutors of children in families and kindergartens.

[10] Famine in Ukraine: In 1920 a deliberate famine was introduced in the Ukraine causing the death of millions of people. It was arranged in order to suppress those protesting peasants who did not want to join the collective farms. There was another dreadful deliberate famine in 1930-1934 in the Ukraine. The authorities took away the last food products from the peasants. People were dying in the streets, whole villages became deserted. The authorities arranged this specifically to suppress the rebellious peasants who did not want to accept Soviet power and join collective farms.

[11] Molotov, V. P. (1890-1986): Statesman and member of the Communist Party leadership. From 1939, Minister of Foreign Affairs. On June 22, 1941 he announced the German attack on the USSR on the radio. He and Eden also worked out the percentages agreement after the war, about Soviet and western spheres of influence in the new Europe.

[12] Babi Yar: Babi Yar is the site of the first mass shooting of Jews that was carried out openly by fascists. On 29th and 30th September 1941 33,771 Jews were shot there by a special SS unit and Ukrainian militia men. During the Nazi occupation of Kiev between 1941 and 1943 over a 100,000 people were killed in Babi Yar, most of whom were Jewish. The Germans tried in vain to efface the traces of the mass grave in August 1943 and the Soviet public learnt about mass murder after World War II.

[13] Collective farm (in Russian kolkhoz): In the Soviet Union the policy of gradual and voluntary collectivization of agriculture was adopted in 1927 to encourage food production while freeing labor and capital for industrial development. In 1929, with only 4% of farms in kolkhozes, Stalin ordered the confiscation of peasants' land, tools, and animals; the kolkhoz replaced the family farm.

[14] Mestkom: Local trade-union committee.

[15] Doctors’ Plot: The Doctors’ Plot was an alleged conspiracy of a group of Moscow doctors to murder leading government and party officials. In January 1953, the Soviet press reported that nine doctors, six of whom were Jewish, had been arrested and confessed their guilt. As Stalin died in March 1953, the trial never took place. The official paper of the Party, the Pravda, later announced that the charges against the doctors were false and their confessions obtained by torture. This case was one of the worst anti-Semitic incidents during Stalin’s reign. In his secret speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 Khrushchev stated that Stalin wanted to use the Plot to purge the top Soviet leadership.

[16] Residence permit: The Soviet authorities restricted freedom of travel within the USSR through the residence permit and kept everybody’s whereabouts under control. Every individual in the USSR needed residential registration; this was a stamp in the passport giving the permanent address of the individual. It was impossible to find a job, or even to travel within the country, without such a stamp. In order to register at somebody else’s apartment one had to be a close relative and if each resident of the apartment had at least 8 square meters to themselves.

[17] Perestroika (Russian for restructuring): Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s, associated with the name of Soviet politician Mikhail Gorbachev. The term designated the attempts to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized, market-oriented economy. Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratize the Communist Party organization. By 1991, perestroika was declining and was soon eclipsed by the dissolution of the USSR.

Aron Rudiak
Ukraine
Ternopol
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: September 2003

Aron Rudiak is full of charm. He is a slim dressed to modern fashion man. His wife Lubov offers me a cup of coffee. I knew their age, but I was surprised to see that they don’t look it: they make a beautiful couple and have young shining eyes. They live in a big apartment in the very center of Ternopol. They have new modern furniture, music devices in their apartment and the latest design electric appliances in their kitchen. One can tell that they are wealthy. During our interview Lubov comes into the room every now and then sympathizing with her husband and his life story. Therefore, I give her an opportunity to talk about herself at the end of our interview. Meeting with this couple makes a good impression on me. I feel like seeing and talking to them again, so comfortable they make me.

My family came from Zhabokrich village, Kryzhopol district, Vinnitsa region [300 km from Kiev]. I have dim memories about Zhabokrich since I only lived there in my early childhood and when at school I visited my grandmother once or twice. I don’t have any information about the village before the revolution of 1917 [1]. I only remember it in the middle of 1930s. This was a picturesque village with a big park and a lake in the center. There was music playing and young people rowing, playing volleyball and football on the sports grounds in the park. We, kids, liked to lie in children’s playground. Zhabokrich was a village, but it was more like a Jewish town since Jews constituted 80% of the whole population. Like everywhere else within the Pale of Settlement [2] they lived in the center of the town and dealt in crafts and trade. Some had kitchen gardens and kept livestock. The rest of the population – they were Ukrainians, lived in the outskirts. They were farmers. I don’t remember a synagogue in the town, but I believe there must have been one since my paternal grandmother Chaya attended a synagogue.

My father’s parents Chaya and Aron Rudiak were born in Zhabokrich in 1860s. The family name of my ancestors sounds like a Ukrainian name and this shows how deeply intertwined were Ukrainians and Jews that had lived together for centuries. I don’t know what grandfather Aron was doing before the revolution of 1917. He had died long before I was born. All I know is that his family was poor. Grandmother Chaya lived in a small house with thatched roof. Most of Ukrainian population lived in such houses at that time. My grandmother had a kitchen garden and kept poultry and a cow. Grandmother spoke Yiddish at home and switched to Ukrainian when talking to her Ukrainian neighbors. She spoke Ukrainian with a strong Jewish accent. She was religious and didn’t work on Saturday. Her Ukrainian neighbor came to look after the cow and poultry on Saturday. I have dim memories about us, grandmother’s children visiting our grandmother on Friday and sitting on a small wooden coach. Grandmother lit candles to greet Saturday and gave us delicious fresh milk. By 1941 all children had left their home and only came to visit their old mother occasionally. When Germans came to the village our poor grandmother tried to leave the village, but it was hard for her to walk and she returned. Grandmother Chaya and other Jews in Zhabokrich were shot in late July 1941. My grandmother’s neighbors told us this story at the end of the war.

Grandmother Chaya had practically no education. Like many Jewish girls she didn’t study, but she knew her prayers and could read in Hebrew. She got married at a very young age. My grandparents had 14 children. Only five survived: the others died as infants and two or three perished during pogroms [3] during the Civil War [4]. I only know the name of my father’s favorite brother Menachem of those that perished. He was one year older than my father. My father was wounded when they were attacked by some bandits, but managed to escape. His brother Menachem died. I also knew my father’s three sisters: Chana, Rosa and Buzia and two brothers: Isaac and Yudko. All boys finished cheder and went to a primary school for few years, but girls didn’t study and were actually illiterate. When they grew up they gave up observing Jewish traditions.

The oldest of my father’s living sisters was Golda, born approximately in 1880s. She didn’t get any education. She was married. Her husband’s [family] name was Novak. Her husband died before I was born. I don’t know what caused his death. Golda and her four children lived in Zhabokrich . In early 1930s they moved to Odessa. Golda was a housewife and her children worked to support her. During the Great Patriotic War [5] Golda was in evacuation. After the war she returned to Odessa. She died in early 1960s. Her older son Lev, born in 1900s, his wife and son were in evacuation and lived in Odessa after the war. I don’t know when Lev died, but his son works as a construction engineer in Odessa. Golda also had three daughters: Chana, Rosa (her Jewish name was Reizl) and Buzia. Chana was married, but didn’t have children. She had a problem with giving birth to her first baby and could not have children afterward. However, she got pregnant again and during her second childbirth she lost her speech ability and it took her few years to resume it. In evacuation during the war Chana’s husband left her and she lived with her sister Rosa since then. Rosa’s husband David whose last name I don’t remember perished at the front in 1941. Rosa’s daughter got pregnant after the war having no husband and Rosa was so affected by this disgrace that she died from heart attack. Chana raised Rosa’s granddaughter that was illegitimate. The younger daughter Buzia didn’t have children. Chana and Buzia died in Odessa in the middle of 1970s.

My father’s sister Ghenia was born approximately two years before my father was born, approximately in 1895. Her husband Elia Gershgorn was younger than aunt Ghenia and for this reason my aunt always kept her age a secret. She didn’t have any education and was a housewife. Ghenia and her daughter Anna were in evacuation and Elia was at the front during the Great Patriotic War. He returned home, but died shortly after the war. Ghenia died in early 1950s. Their older son Aron studied in a military medical school and when the war began he went to the front with other cadets of this school. Aron worked in a field hospital during the war. After the war he finished a Medical College in Odessa and became a surgeon. He had a Moldavian wife. They had two children: a boy and a girl. Aron went to work in the north to earn money to buy an apartment. By a wicked twist of fate he died from appendicitis there in the middle of 1970s. He saved hundreds of lives, but there was nobody available when his life was at risk. I have no contact with his family. Aron’s sister Anna, born in 1928, married a Jewish man from Zhabokrich. After finishing Technological College of Flour Grinding Industry in Odessa they worked in a Baltic Republic, I don’t know where exactly. Anna died from kidney cancer when she was young.

My father’s brother Isaac, born in 1905, worked at Vapnyarka railway station near Kryzhopol in Vinnitsa region. About two weeks after the war began Isaac, his wife Malka, their children Betia, Rosa and Aron were evacuated from the town. After the war they lived in Zhuravlyovka station, in Vinnitsa region where Isaac died in a train accident in 1953. I didn’t grieve after him. The reason is that I couldn’t forgive Isaac that he didn’t pick grandmother Chaya when going in evacuation near Zhabokrich. It was an exaggerated attitude that young people often have. I have no information about Isaac’s children.

I don’t remember Yudko, my father’s youngest brother, ‘the little finger’ so much loved by grandmother. He went to the front in 1941 and disappeared.

My father Duvid Rudiak, born in 1897, finished cheder and a primary school, I guess, since he could read and write. My father worked at an agricultural cooperative that later became a kolkhoz [6] in the village.

As for my maternal grandmother Frieda, born in early 1880s, I didn’t know her. All I know is that she died at childbirth at the age of 33. I knew my grandfather Nuta Grievski very well. He was born in Zhabokrich in middle 1870s. Of my grandfather’s relatives I can dimly remember his brother Leiba who was a carpenter. Nuta worked in an agricultural cooperative like my father. I don’t know exactly how he earned his living before the revolution of 1917, but I think that he made his living as a carpenter. His family lived in a big wooden house that Nuta built himself. I don’t think they were poor.

My mother was the oldest child in her family. Her younger sisters Sonia and Ghenia only studied in a primary school for few years. They were workers at a wool factory in Odessa. Sonia, born in 1907, married Efim Balin, a Jewish man. He was production engineer at the wool fabric factory in Odessa. Efim perished in Odessa on the first days of the Great Patriotic War and Sonia refused to evacuate after he died. She and her two children: Yura, born in 1938, and a week’s old baby boy perished in the first days of evacuation in Odessa. Sonia’s younger sister Ghenia also perished because Sonia refused to evacuate. Ghenia’s husband Michael whose last name I don’t remember was at the front during the war. When he returned to Odessa he got to know that his wife and their two children Alexandr and Emma had perished. My mother’s younger brother’s (Grigori) wife also perished in Odessa. Grigori, born in 1915, perished at the front. His young wife that gave premature birth to a baby on 22 June 1941 caused by the stress also perished with her baby and her old father.

My mother Ruchlia, she was called Rachil at home – also a Jewish name sounding alike - was born in 1900. This was her actual date of birth, even though in her passport the date of birth was 1902. When my mother was to enter a grammar school in Odessa she was overage and her parents subtracted two years to make her admission possible. My mother was the only one in her family to finish a grammar school. After finishing school she returned home to Zhabokrich.

My parents knew each other since their childhood and decided to get married when they came of age. They got married around 1922. My mother’s family was rather religious and they had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah arranged by my mother’s distant relatives in Odessa [7].

In 1923 my older sister Frieda named after our grandmother was born and I was born on 13 November 1925. I was named Aron after my father’s father. I need to mention here that all first sons in my father sisters and brothers’ families were named Aron. I spent the first years of my childhood in grandfather Nuta’s house in Zhabokrich. One of my first childhood memories is of the children’s room with drawn curtains where my sister Frieda is lying with measles. I stayed in the same room with her since doctors commonly believed that if somebody in the family had an infectious disease the others had better had it, too. However, I didn’t contract measles from my sister, even though we were staying in the same room. I remember swinging in the park. My grandfather’s Leib made me sleighs and I skated down a hill in winter. There was a big veranda with stairs leading to it in my grandfather’s house. I often played there with my cousin brothers and sisters. I remember getting scared of a calf that probably wished to play with me. I hid in a puddle near the house with my head under the water. Everybody burst into laughing and my father got me out of the puddle and took me into the house to wash me. I also remember a small square near our house where there was a market once or twice a week. We liked going there after it closed to pick up corns, sunflowers and other leftovers.

I cannot remember any details of the Jewish life of our family. I remember that grandfather wore a kippah at home and a big hat to go out. I also remember that my parents attended a synagogue, but I don’t remember the synagogue in the village. I remember Chanukkah when all grandchildren came to grandmother Chaya. We received treatments of sweets and few coins as a gift. I don’t remember other holidays since I was too young.

In 1929 our family moved to Odessa. Our mother’s distant relatives gave us accommodation in a small dark room with no widows. As soon as we moved in I opened the door from where light could be seen. I saw a big brightly lighted room where the family of our relatives was sitting. A dame at the table said strictly ‘Boy, you can’t come in here!’ I was used to warm and affectionate attitude of my family and this comment hurt me. However, I got used to our small room where we lived for over seven years. This apartment was near the synagogue that our relatives attended in the very center of Odessa.

My father went to work as a fat loader at a buttery. My mother went to work as an assistant accountant at a garment factory. My sister Frieda studied in a Jewish school in Zhabokrich . Our parents submitted her documents to a Ukrainian school in Odessa. Children were admitted to schools based on their national origin and special commissions made inspections to identify any Jewish children in Ukrainian or Russian schools. Our parents decided to send my sister to a Ukrainian school. My mother instructed my sister to not react to any Jewish words that she might hear at school. We understood Yiddish. Our parents often switched to Yiddish at home. Once Frieda came home from school with tears in her eyes. She said that she incidentally answered a question in Yiddish and was afraid that they might send her to a Jewish school, but nothing happened. She remained in her school.

I hardly remember my kindergarten. I didn’t care about children’s ways of spending time. I liked counting and arithmetic that my sister was teaching me. I liked being at home and was glad to stay at any occasion, even when I fell ill and didn’t have to go to kindergarten. Once my father had to go to hospital with stomach ulcer. He was prepared to a surgery. Grandmother Chaya somehow got to know about it. She came to Odessa when I was at home. We went to my mother’s work and from there we went to the hospital. My grandmother had an appointment with the chief doctor and refused to give her permission to the surgery. She took our father to her home in Zhabokrich and a month later he returned looking healthy and strong. He had tests made and there was no ulcer identified. My father gave up smoking when staying in the village and I decided for myself that smoking was bad and never ever had one single cigarette.

In Odessa our parents didn’t celebrate holidays or observe traditions. My mother fasted at Yom Kippur while my father said that since he had to work hard physically he could allow himself to not fast. This was the only tradition mother observed. My father wasn’t a Komsomol [8] or Party member, but he was a real patriot and piously believed everything the Party or Government promised. Even famine in 1932-33 [Famine in Ukraine] [9] when there was a food coupon system, but it wasn’t always possible to receive bread per bread coupons didn’t shatter his belief in socialism and communism that our propaganda proclaimed. At that time my sister or I stood in long lines to get some bread. When a shop opened in the morning a crowd broke inside the shop and children climbed on heads to get to a counter. There was not enough bread in stores. I remember homeless children stealing bread, running away with it biting off big pieces and swallowing them. Once our mother paid a lot of money for a loaf of bread at the market. When she brought it home it turned out to be a baked in brick. Our mother took her few pieces of jewelry to a Torgsin store [10]. I hadn’t been there, but I know that one could buy food products for gold or hard currency. I didn’t suffer from hunger. I was a tiny boy and didn’t have a big appetite. I remember our mother bringing home a chicken in 1933 when the period of famine was almost over, but a celebration didn’t work out. My sister decided to cook chicken and burnt it. We were very upset: we hadn’t had chicken for years and looked forward to have a piece.

I went to school in 1933. At first I went to the school located in few blocks from our house, but then a new school was built in our yard and my mother brought my documents to this school. This was a Ukrainian school. There were Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Jewish, Bulgarian and Greek children in our school. Odessa is a multinational town. I never faced any national segregation or abuse at school. We didn’t care a bit about nationality. We were Soviet children. I became a pioneer at school and had some chores related mostly to helping other children to improve their studies. I had all excellent marks in the course of my studies. I was short, but I went in for track-and-field events, but I was mostly fond of mathematic. I managed to find mathematical dependences in everything: in biology and in everyday life.

My classmates and I were friends. We celebrated 1 May and October Revolution Day [11] in autumn. We went to parades and then walked in the town. At home my family had a festive dinner on these days. We sometimes visited my mother’s sisters that also celebrated Soviet holidays. As for Jewish holidays, I didn’t know any at that time. Grandfather Nuta living with his daughters taking turns to look after him celebrated Sabbath and went to synagogue on holidays. We didn’t have guests since we lived in such small room until 1937. In late 1937 my father received a one-room apartment. There was one big room and a kitchen in it. Since then guests began to visit us. In 1939 our father was injured at work: he had his both legs fractured and after he recovered he was appointed to a position of production engineer. There was not a word said about arrests of late 1930s [Great Terror] [12] in our house. Our father believed that everything happening in our country was correct and was not subject to discussion. Nobody of our relatives or acquaintances suffered.

In May 1941 I was awarded a second prize at the Odessa regional Olympiad in mathematic. I was supposed to receive my award in late June, but I never received it since the Great Patriotic War began. At that moment I was visiting my aunt Sonia. Since 14 June she had been staying in a maternity home where she gave birth to a boy on 15 June and I was staying at her home looking after my 3 or 4-year-old cousin brother Yuri. On 22 June I gave my cousin breakfast as usual and sat down to do my mathematic. In the after noon my father came. He was supposed to go on business trip on Friday and I was surprised to see him. He said ‘Aron, get ready to go home. A war began’. At that time Efim and Sonia and the baby came home from hospital and I could go home with my father without worrying about Yuri. My father and I took a tram home. Usually it took twenty minutes to get home, but this time it took us about two hours. There was air raid announced several times. People didn’t know what to do, but there were no bombs dropped yet. The enemy’s planes just flew in the sky ringing panic. At home I heard that the outskirts of Odessa were bombed and the radio announced that Kiev was bombed, too.

Efim Balin, Sonia’s husband, was an officer in a military unit near Odessa. He went to his unit, returned home a day or two later and then we went to see him off to the railway station where he was to take a train to go back to his unit. This was the last time we saw him. It turned out that he failed to get to his military unit. He must have perished during an air raid. We knew that Germans were dropping bombs on strategically important facilities: the harbor and big plants and during air raids we were trying to find shelter at some distance from those facilities.

About ten days after the war began my father’s brother Isaac arrived. He was evacuating with his family and for some reason came to Odessa. I don’t know how he failed to take grandmother Chaya with him: whether he was pressed for time, or he didn’t have a chance. Isaac told my father to pack and evacuate as soon as possible. My father had a ‘white card’ [this was a release from military service in the army issued by a medical commission that determined whether a man was fit for military service] due to his injury, but he said it was a disgrace to flee in evacuation rather than defend Odessa and the country from the enemy. He didn’t believe that the enemy would come to Odessa. Isaac tried to convince our parents to agree to send the children or at least my older sister with him, but our mother said we would be together whatever happened.

The first massive bombing occurred one moth after the war began. We children began to play war games forgetting about horrific reality. Children are children. During air raids we found shelter in a nearby trench. Our mother made us bags where she put dried bread, underwear and soap in case we lost each other. Many people carried such bags in the town. After this bombing there were bombings at night. We were getting used to them and didn’t even bother to hide. Our father didn’t even want to hear about evacuation. On 27 July 1941 he went to a military registry office. He was an invalid with his one leg shorter than another, but he volunteered and was recruited in the army. We went with him to the gathering point. When saying farewells our father kept saying that Odessa would not be occupied. Our mother didn’t even try to discourage him since she understood that he was so dedicated to defend his Motherland that there was no chance to talk him out of it.

Soon refugees from Bessarabia [13] began coming to the town. They slept in parks, gardens and even in the yards telling people about fascist atrocities on occupied territories. We felt worried and our mother also began to consider evacuation. There were battles near Odessa. Germans drowned a raid ship and the front was actually open for several days. The front was very near. It was strange to see the military going to the front by trams. Ghenia’s husband Michael was recruited on one of those days. He had a ‘white card’, but nobody cared about such things: they recruited everybody who was able to hold weapons. I remember a governmental appeal to residents of Odessa that said ‘Boiling water poured on occupants’ heads and a stone thrown on them shall help us to forge victory’. At the beginning of siege Kuban and Don Cossacks [14] came to the town riding their horses and beautiful uniforms. They carried their swords and posters ‘Kuban – Berlin’ and ‘Don – Berlin’. They were full of patriotism in their determination to defend their Motherland, but what could they do with their bare hands? Few survivors, wounded and bleeding came back to town soon. They had no horses or swords with them. A human being gets used to everything. We began to live a routinely life in siege. There were lines to buy fruit, vegetables, fish and watermelons. During air raids people hid in shelters and after it was over they returned to their lines. Our battleships were close to the shore shooting across the town and it might have made a beautiful sight for boys had it not been acute risk to life.

We spent most of the time with aunts Sonia or Ghenia – it was easier to be together. One day Michael came home. He was wounded in his jaw. He had his head bandaged and bloodstains on him. He told his wife to pack and evacuate with his hospital. There were 120 slightly wounded patients that were going to a rear hospital. Ghenia refused saying that she was staying with her sisters. Michael had to go since there was a bus waiting for him. He left. I kept telling my mother and aunts that we needed to evacuate. Boats transporting the wounded and evacuating people were sinking one after another. The ‘Lenin’ boat transporting all higher Party officials and elite – actors and scientists – drowned. There were only few survivors and the rest of them perished. Couriers from our district executive committee [Ispolkom] [15] were bringing us evacuation tickets almost every day, but our mother and her sisters were afraid of getting aboard ships. I insisted that we had to evacuate. I was convinced that we would manage all right. Finally, mother agreed and on 28th September she received two evacuation cards: one for herself and one for my sister. I didn’t need a document.

On 29 August early morning we packed our belongings and went to the harbor. I was carrying a bag with our biggest value; sewing machine ‘Singer’. There was a log line to get on board a ship. There were air raids and bombings, but nobody left the line. Grandfather Nuta and my mother’s sisters came to see us off. Sonia probably felt sorry that she refused to evacuate and her sisters, children and grandfather were staying because of her. She said they were evacuating with a next boat. People dropped their suitcases and bags in a huge net container that was loaded on the boat with a crane. The crane operator missed the boat several times dropping bags into the sea. We were among the last passengers boarding the boat and got on an upper deck. Grandfather came to the boat with us and our mother asked him to stay with us, but he said he couldn’t leave his daughters Sonia and Ghenia and Grigori’s wife with the baby behind and promised that they would leave Odessa on the next boat. We said our good byes. German planes began shooting at the boat, but our antiaircraft guns kept the enemy off. The ‘Dnepr’ boat was slowly moving away from the berth. In my thoughts I was saying ‘good-bye’ to my hometown and wondered whether I would ever see it again.

The boat was under shooting several times, but on 30 we successfully arrived at Novorossiysk 300 km to the east from Odessa. Few passengers formed a commission that released the luggage to others. We were glad that our luggage was not lost. On 4 September we boarded a freight train for cattle transportation heading to the east. It went across the Northern Caucasus, Penza, Kuibyshev, Cheliabinsk, Sverdlovsk [today Yekaterinburg] and few other towns until we arrived at Kustanai in Northern Kazakhstan, 2000 km from home. Kustanai was a regional town. I was used to living in a big and beautiful town and was surprised to see small houses made of saman – airbricks. They were cold houses and I slept in my winter coat. We arrived on 17 October. During our trip I wrote letters to my aunts telling them what they needed to take with them for the trip, but they never left Odessa. We didn’t have any information about my father. In late September 1941 we received a letter from him from Mariupol on the Azov Sea. He wrote he was sorry for having told us to stay in Odessa and that he wished we had evacuated. I guess he had had his share of grief and ordeals.

We were accommodated in a school building. Few days later chairmen of Kazakh kolkhozes came to select groups of people. They were wearing big fur hats and winter coats: it was already cold at this time of year in Northern Kazakhstan. Frieda had finished school with honors before the war. She entered the State Teachers’ College in Kustanai. I didn’t have any documents from school with me since my school had closed before we left. I only had an award of honor for finishing the eighth grade. I entered a Medical School with this honor. I attended classes and two or three days later I told my mother that I couldn’t study medicine since there was no mathematic or physics that I was fond of. The only word I learned in this school was ‘defecation’. I was admitted to the third year of Teachers’ School, but it was closed a month later and senior students including me were transferred to the college where Frieda studied. They formed a Natural Geographic Faculty of ten students: two guys and eight girls. We had wonderful lecturers that were professors from Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad colleges. My mother and sister rented an apartment and lodged a girl that studied in college. I went to live in a hostel. I passed my first exams with only excellent marks. I also worked in ‘Trudovik’ shop. We made gloves and foot wraps for the front and received food products for our work. I studied there during 1942. In late December recruitment of the young men, born in 1925, was announced. Being a disciplined young man I went to the recruitment office, although I didn’t get any summons. When they measured my height it turned out to be 149.5 cm while they only recruited men of at least 150 cm height. An officer making measurements wrote 150 cm in my certificate. When somebody mentioned to him that second-year students were subject to delay of recruitment he waved his hand and said ‘He will finish his studies after he returns from the front’. The shop where I worked gave me a winter jacket, a hat, fur boots and a vest. I gave these to my mother leaving only a vest for myself. After the medical examination we waited for another month: we stayed in the recruitment office overnight going home in the morning. On early morning 12 February we were woken by alarm, marched across the central street of the town and got on a freight train that headed to the north. We moved 700 km to the east from Tyumen where we were assigned to 2nd Aviation School of Tyumen. A doctor of the medical commission of the school didn’t approve me due to my height and complained of the doctor in Kustanai for having sent them such poorly weak fresh forces. Ten other recruits were disapproved. We were taken to a station from where we walked 25 km to Krivosyolki, [about 3000 km to the north-east from Kiev] village. I was assigned to accompany of gunmen of the 2nd reserve riflemen battalion. We were to take a 6-month training studying battles, attacks, defense from tanks, etc. I didn’t have any problems with my training. We got sufficient food. I didn’t eat much and even managed to send a parcel to my mother and sister in Kustanai. From my unit I mailed a search request about my father and received a response. It said that my father Duvid Rudiak disappeared near Mariupol in October 1941. He must have perished when fascist troops landed in Mariupol. I didn’t inform my mother or sister that father had perished, but I gave an oath to myself to take revenge for my father. Once, when we were lined up my commanding officer, a senior lieutenant, found my student’s record book. Commanding officer of our regiment called me to his office. He said that since I had education he wanted me to speak about fascist atrocities in front of the regiment. We were aware of mass shooting in occupied territories. I prepared a speech and spoke in front of my fellow comrades. I had to stand on a box to be seen from behind a stand, but I made a very good speech. In 1944 I became a member of the Communist Party. There were no special ceremonies, it became a routinely procedure, but I believed it to be my duty to be in the first rows of fighters for the victory over fascism. I received my Party membership card at a meeting few months later.

I requested to send me to the front several times. My cousin brother Aron wrote me from the front to try to be no fool, if possible, but I was a patriot and was eager to take revenge for my father. One day my commanding officer told me that I was to go back to my studies in college according to another order issued to confirm that students were to get a delay from service in the army. He asked me ‘Well, will you go back to college now or after the war?’ and I responded bravely ‘We need to beat fascists first’. After our training was over my commanding officer tried to convince me to stay at school. He said I was needed there and I agreed to stay and work in the regiment office.

My mother and sister returned to Odessa after it was liberated in 1944. They failed to get their apartment back, even though authorities were to support the needs of those whose relatives were at the front. Our neighbors – a Bulgarian family – took them to their apartment. They also told them that grandfather and my aunts with their children had perished in Odessa in late October. Fascists burnt several hundreds or a thousand Jews in a barrack.

In late 1944 I was offered to accompany a group of recruits, born in 1930, to Donetsk region. They were too young and their commandment decided to let them go home. I agreed to go with them under condition that I could visit my family in Odessa. On our way to Donetsk we changed 5 trains. From Donetsk I went to Odessa. Entrances to houses in Odessa were kept locked and when I knocked on the door and the concierge opened the door she didn’t recognize me. I grew up 20 cm in half a year. My mother didn’t recognize me either thinking that it was one of her nephews coming home. There was a lot of laughter, joy and tears when she finally acknowledged her son. It turned out that my mother and sister knew about my father, but didn’t want to let me know protecting me from grief. I stayed a week in Odessa, received my food ration and left it to my mother and sister: they became very thin during the war. I returned to my military unit. In summer 1945 I came to Odessa on leave.

I demobilized after the decree issued on 25 October 1945 for wounded veterans, specialists, teachers and 2nd-year and senior students were subject to demobilization. I arrived in early October and submitted my documents to Odessa Construction Engineering College. Rector of the College was telling me to take a year’s leave to take a rest, but I was eager to go back to studies. I was admitted and a month later I passed my half-yearly exams successfully. I had only the highest grades and could apply for Lenin’s stipend [the highest stipend in higher educational institutions in the USSR awarded to the best students for special merits. Maximum 10 students in each institution could be awarded this stipend], but it was awarded to a Ukrainian student that also had all highest marks. In late 1940s state anti-Semitism was at its height and struggle against cosmopolites began [campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’] [16]. A few Jewish professors were fired from our college. I even remember that one of them – Professor Trubianski – died from heart attack and his wife refused to accept assistance from the college. I finished my college with honors and had the right to take my post-graduate studies, but I didn’t get an offer. Probably it was due to my Jewish nationality. I was a proud guy and decided to ask nobody about it. I got a job assignment [Mandatory job assignment in the USSR] [17] in Ternopol, a regional town in Western Ukraine, and in September 1950 I got off the train in this small half-ruined town in 500 km from my hometown.

In the first years I was chief engineer at a maintenance construction company. I had a low salary. I received a one-room apartment [people could not own apartments, so they were “given” apartments by the government]. In 1951 when my first year at work was over, I went to a recreation center near Odessa on vacation. On my way back I visited my family in Odessa. I visited my relatives when I met a lovely Jewish girl. She was my wife to be. Her name was Lubov Bruches. I fell in love with her at first sight and took her home on that day. We began to correspond and sent photographs to one another. I saw her again on October holidays [October Revolution Day]. I came to Odessa and we met at a party. Lubov came to the party with somebody else, but left the party with me. We met again on New Year’s day and on 30 April 1952 I came to Odessa and proposed to her. We had a civil ceremony in the registry office and a small wedding dinner at Lubov parents’ home in the evening. Shortly after we got married Lubov finished a Pedagogical College in Odessa and joined me in Ternopol.

Lubov was born in Proskurov town [Khmelnitskiy at present] in 1929 in the Jewish family. Her family moved to Odessa. Lubov’s father worked at a confectionery. Her mother Edes Bruches [nee Levit], born in 1902, got a good education. She finished grammar school, could play the piano and knew French. Lubov’s mother was a housewife before the war raising her two daughters: Lubov and her older sister Maria. Lubov’s family wasn’t religious. They evacuated from Odessa in 1941. It turned out that we left Odessa on the same ‘Dnepr’ boat and they were in evacuation in Northern Kazakhstan. During the war Lubov’s mother was director of a children’s home and after they returned to Odessa she went to work at a children’s home. Her daughters followed into their mother’s steps: they studied languages and were intelligent people. My wife’s sister Maria married a Jewish man from Odessa in 1950. In late 1970 they moved to USA. Maria’s husband died a short time afterward and she was raising her daughter. They live in New York. We didn’t have any contacts with them for a long time and in late 1980s we began to receive letters from them. They write that they are doing well and are happy.

In 1953 our elder son Gennadi was born and in 1960 our son Yuri was born. Gennadi was born when Stalin died. I didn’t cry, but I was terribly concerned about the future of the country and was very sorry that Stalin died. I was a patriot like my father. Denunciation of Stalin’s cult in 1956 was like a bolt from the blue – it was hard to believe that we had lived under the power of tyrant for so many years.

We had a good life. I held a managerial position at work, but I wanted to go back to Odessa. When I told my boss that I was going to quit he told me to obtain our minister’s permission from Kiev. I didn’t go to Kiev, but I continued looking for a job. When I found a suitable job my management approved my choice since I was staying in Ternopol working in the same branch. In 1953 I went to work at a design institute with the salary three times my previous salary. It was a lot of money at that time and our life was improving. I found my work interesting. I was responsible for development and implementation of designs for restoration and reconstruction of the town, parks and gardens, buildings and even an artificial lake in the center of Ternopol. I worked as director of a design shop for many years and then – chief of Ternopol regional department of the design institute. I wasn’t promoted for a long time afterwards, after the first promotion, because I was a Jew. Nobody told me openly, but this was evident since there were no other reasons for not promoting me. My management knew about my skills and qualification. Once secretary of the town Party committee asked me to solve a problem for his son that about twenty people before me failed to resolve. It took me an instant to give him the right answer after I read the problem. However, they were in no hurry to promote me since I worked hard anyway. They were very well aware that Jews didn’t have many choices with getting an employment. I worked 43 years and retired in 1993. I didn’t participate in any public activities. I had to attend Party meetings and pay my monthly fees, though.

My wife worked as a teacher of the Russian language and literature in a school in the center of the town. Our children finished this school. There were only two Jewish teachers in the town and Lubov faced prejudiced attitudes. She wasn’t awarded the title of honored teacher for many years and when educational authorities were awarding medals at the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birthday in 1970 she didn’t get one. The wife of secretary of the regional Party committee was surprised to hear that my wife didn’t get a medal and when she asked her ‘Why?” my wife told her frankly ‘Because I am a Jew’. Soon she got an invitation to pick up her medal, but she insisted that they should award it at a public meeting. We live in a small town where she taught many children. For her kind heart and readiness to come to help at any moment people call her ‘Bureau of good services.’ We often had her pupils that had problems with their parents stay with us. Once Lubov’s friend left her husband and stayed with us for some time and children of our acquaintances that came to town to enter a college lived with us. We kept our door open. We had a difficult, but interesting life. We went to the cinema and Russian and Ukrainian Drama Theaters and never missed a performance of Kiev or Odessa theaters when they came on tours. We had many friends. Lubov’s friends were her colleagues and my friends – my colleagues at work. There were few Jews among them, but there were no anti-Semites for sure. We celebrated Soviet holidays together: October revolution Day and 1 May. We often had guests. Lubov is very hospitable. She likes cooking and having guests. Before our children got married we spent vacations together at recreation centers in the Crimea and Caucasus. When I bought a ‘Zhiguli’ [Lada] car we traveled by car. We often spent vacations in Odessa where my sister Frieda lived. Frieda married Lev Tsugel, who is Jewish, in 1946. He was a military officer. They lived in Odessa where Frieda worked as a teacher. Frieda and her family often visited us in Ternopol. Lev died in 1995 and in 2002 my sister passed away. They were buried at the Jewish section of the town cemetery in Odessa without any tradition observed. Her son Duvid named after our father lives in Odessa. He often calls and visits us. We cannot travel now due to poor health condition.

Lubov’s mother died in the middle of 1960s. My mother remarried very successfully in 1957. Her husband Iosif Poltorak, a Jew, was many years older than my mother. Iosif had four sons from the first marriage. One of them – Arkadi Poltorak - was senior researcher of the Institute of State and Law in Moscow. Iosif was a very intelligent and – a rare quality at the time – very religious man. He retired and held some important position in a synagogue. He had a tallit and tefillin and started every day with a prayer. When I visited my mother he told me the Jewish history and about Exodus. I celebrated Pesach and Rosh Hashanah with him several times. Unfortunately, I visited them rather rarely and cannot tell any details, but I know that he was very religious and observed Jewish traditions strictly. I respected his faith, but since I was a member of the Party I was far from religion, but my mother resumed observing Jewish traditions and followed them until the end of her life, she began to follow kashrut and on Saturday they went to the synagogue. My mother lit candles on Sabbath and prayed. She cooked traditional Jewish food on Sabbath. Iosif died in 1977. All members of the Jewish religious community of Odessa came to his funeral. They buried Iosif with prayers following all Jewish rules. My mother died 10 years later in 1987. She was buried near Iosif, but we didn’t follow any Jewish traditions at her funeral.

We have wonderful children. They both studied very well, but Yuri, the younger one, was particularly gifted. They were the only Jewish children in their class and if it hadn’t been for their mother working in this same school they would have faced open anti-Semitism. Only occasionally they felt that they were followed with wicked glances and they were called ‘zhyd’ [kike] a few times. Both sons made good careers. Gennadi finished Belgorod all-Union Tecnological College. He is a builder. Many Jews entered colleges in small Russian towns at that time. There was low competition that made it easier for a Jew to enter a college. He worked as construction engineer for many years.

Yuri finished Polytechnic College in Ternopol and post-graduate studies at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematic in Kiev State University. He defended his candidate’s dissertation and was awarded a title of candidate of physics and mathematic sciences [Soviet/ Russian doctorate degrees] [18].. He returned here and worked as a lecturer. He was also a member of the Scientific Council where applicants submitted their candidate’s dissertations. In 1993 he entered the Doctorate department in this College with competition of 14 applicants per one vacancy. He prepared a dissertation of doctor of science. He worked on many works, was invited to conferences in Poland, Lisbon in Portugal and Oxford. There are references to my son’s works in many scientific publications abroad. Both sons married Ukrainian girls. We are very happy with our daughters-in-law that came from very intelligent families.

Perestroika brought many changes. Our salaries devaluated rapidly and my sons didn’t receive salaries for months. We couldn’t afford any traveling that we were used to. We could hardly make ends meet with our earnings. In 1994 Yuri quit his job. He dealt in small businesses. He took the risk of selling his apartment to invest the money in business. He lived with his family in our apartment. Gennadi joined him in the course of time. Now they own a network of big pharmacies ‘Gedeon Richter’ in Ukraine. We can call it a family business. Gennadi’s wife Galia and Yuri’s wife Vera have medical education and are involved in this family business. Our children and their families are wealthy. They have luxurious apartments and cars and they can afford to give our grandchildren good education. We have four grandchildren: Gennadi’s children are Denis, born in 1987, and Natalia, born in 1989, and Yuri’s children are Tamara, born in 1988, and Alexandr, born in 1995. Our grandchildren are very gifted and they love us.

Of course, I feel upset that Yuri gave up his scientific work. A real scientist cannot abandon his science and Yuri finds time to write articles. He has publications abroad. I think our family has reached everything one could dream of. We’ve never considered moving to another country: Germany was out of the question. The wounds of the Great Patriotic War are still fresh in our memory. I’ve been attracted to Israel, but I’ve always been a patriot. I’ve given much to Ternopol that has become my hometown. I am a happy man. I’ve lived with the best woman ever in the surrounding of loving children and grandchildren. We are members of the Jewish community and often visit Hesed. My wife is a great cook. She is head of the national culinary club in Hesed. We haven’t become religious, but we began to celebrate Jewish holidays. What is interesting – our Ukrainian daughters-in-law Galia and Vera also enjoy celebrating Jewish holidays. Our children support us. We have a wonderful apartment and a dacha. We are fond of growing vegetables and flowers. I gave my car to my older son in 1990. Gennadi and Yuri have nice foreign made cars now. Few years ago our children bought us a trip to Cyprus. We often get together to celebrate Jewish holidays. Our children always cover all expenses. In 2002 we celebrated our ‘golden wedding’ in an expensive restaurant. Our beloved children and grandchildren were with us. ‘Of course, we are the lucky few: many people lost their savings at the beginning of perestroika. Independence of Ukraine is a complex issue. On one hand, Jews and other nations were given a start for development. On the other hand, we’ve lost a lot: a huge country where we grew up and our friends living in other countries, but we are happy regardless.

GLOSSARY:
[1] Russian Revolution of 1917: Revolution in which the tsarist regime was overthrown in the Russian Empire and, under Lenin, was replaced by the Bolshevik rule. The two phases of the Revolution were: February Revolution, which came about due to food and fuel shortages during WWI, and during which the tsar abdicated and a provisional government took over. The second phase took place in the form of a coup led by Lenin in October/November (October Revolution) and saw the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.
[2] Jewish Pale of Settlement: Certain provinces in the Russian Empire were designated for permanent Jewish residence and the Jewish population (apart from certain privileged families) was only allowed to live in these areas.
[3] Pogroms in Ukraine: In the 1920s there were many anti-Semitic gangs in Ukraine. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children.
[4] Civil War (1918-1920): The Civil War between the Reds (the Bolsheviks) and the Whites (the anti-Bolsheviks), which broke out in early 1918, ravaged Russia until 1920. The Whites represented all shades of anti-communist groups – Russian army units from World War I, led by anti-Bolshevik officers, by anti-Bolshevik volunteers and some Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Several of their leaders favored setting up a military dictatorship, but few were outspoken tsarists. Atrocities were committed throughout the Civil War by both sides. The Civil War ended with Bolshevik military victory, thanks to the lack of cooperation among the various White commanders and to the reorganization of the Red forces after Trotsky became commissar for war. It was won, however, only at the price of immense sacrifice; by 1920 Russia was ruined and devastated. In 1920 industrial production was reduced to 14% and agriculture to 50% as compared to 1913.
[5] Great Patriotic War: On 22nd June 1941 at 5 o’clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War. The German blitzkrieg, known as Operation Barbarossa, nearly succeeded in breaking the Soviet Union in the months that followed. Caught unprepared, the Soviet forces lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the German onslaught in the first weeks of the war. By November 1941 the German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city, and threatened Moscow itself. The war ended for the Soviet Union on 9th May 1945.
[6] Collective farm (in Russian kolkhoz): In the Soviet Union the policy of gradual and voluntary collectivization of agriculture was adopted in 1927 to encourage food production while freeing labor and capital for industrial development. In 1929, with only 4% of farms in kolkhozes, Stalin ordered the confiscation of peasants' land, tools, and animals; the kolkhoz replaced the family farm.
[7] Odessa: The Jewish community of Odessa was the second biggest Jewish community in Russia. According to the census of 1897 there were 138,935 Jews in Odessa, which was 34,41% of the local population. There were 7 big synagogues and 49 prayer houses in Odessa. There were cheders in 19 prayer houses.
[8] Komsomol: Communist youth political organization created in 1918. The task of the Komsomol was to spread of the ideas of communism and involve the worker and peasant youth in building the Soviet Union. The Komsomol also aimed at giving a communist upbringing by involving the worker youth in the political struggle, supplemented by theoretical education. The Komsomol was more popular than the Communist Party because with its aim of education people could accept uninitiated young proletarians, whereas party members had to have at least a minimal political qualification.

[9] Famine in Ukraine: In 1920 a deliberate famine was introduced in the Ukraine causing the death of millions of people. It was arranged in order to suppress those protesting peasants who did not want to join the collective farms. There was another dreadful deliberate famine in 1930-1934 in the Ukraine. The authorities took away the last food products from the peasants. People were dying in the streets, whole villages became deserted. The authorities arranged this specifically to suppress the rebellious peasants who did not want to accept Soviet power and join collective farms.
[10] Torgsin stores: Special retail stores, which were established in larger Russian cities in the 1920s with the purpose of selling goods to foreigners. Torgsins sold commodities that were in short supply for hard currency or exchanged them for gold and jewelry, accepting old coins as well. The real aim of this economic experiment that lasted for two years was to swindle out all gold and valuables from the population for the industrial development of the country.
[11] October Revolution Day: October 25 (according to the old calendar), 1917 went down in history as victory day for the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia. This day is the most significant date in the history of the USSR. Today the anniversary is celebrated as ‘Day of Accord and Reconciliation’ on November 7.
[12] Great Terror (1934-1938): During the Great Terror, or Great Purges, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik opponents in 1936-1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. The major targets of the Great Terror were communists. Over half of the people who were arrested were members of the party at the time of their arrest. The armed forces, the Communist Party, and the government in general were purged of all allegedly dissident persons; the victims were generally sentenced to death or to long terms of hard labor. Much of the purge was carried out in secret, and only a few cases were tried in public ‘show trials’. By the time the terror subsided in 1939, Stalin had managed to bring both the party and the public to a state of complete submission to his rule. Soviet society was so atomized and the people so fearful of reprisals that mass arrests were no longer necessary. Stalin ruled as absolute dictator of the Soviet Union until his death in March 1953.
[13] Bessarabia: Historical area between the Prut and Dnestr rivers, in the southern part of Odessa region. Bessarabia was part of Russia until the Revolution of 1917. In 1918 it declared itself an independent republic, and later it united with Romania. The Treaty of Paris (1920) recognized the union but the Soviet Union never accepted this. In 1940 Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the USSR. The two provinces had almost 4 million inhabitants, mostly Romanians. Although Romania reoccupied part of the territory during World War II the Romanian peace treaty of 1947 confirmed their belonging to the Soviet Union. Today it is part of Moldavia.
[14] A member of a people of southern European Russia and adjacent parts of Asia, noted as cavalrymen especially during tsarist times.
[15] Ispolkom: After the tsar’s abdication (March, 1917), power passed to a Provisional Government appointed by a temporary committee of the Duma, which proposed to share power to some extent with councils of workers and soldiers known as ‘soviets’. Following a brief and chaotic period of fairly democratic procedures, a mixed body of socialist intellectuals known as the Ispolkom secured the right to ‘represent’ the soviets. The democratic credentials of the soviets were highly imperfect to begin with: peasants - the overwhelming majority of the Russian population - had virtually no say, and soldiers were grossly over-represented. The Ispolkom’s assumption of power turned this highly imperfect democracy into an intellectuals’ oligarchy.
[16] Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’: The campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’, i.e. Jews, was initiated in articles in the central organs of the Communist Party in 1949. The campaign was directed primarily at the Jewish intelligentsia and it was the first public attack on Soviet Jews as Jews. ‘Cosmopolitans’ writers were accused of hating the Russian people, of supporting Zionism, etc. Many Yiddish writers as well as the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested in November 1948 on charges that they maintained ties with Zionism and with American ‘imperialism’. They were executed secretly in 1952. The anti-Semitic Doctors’ Plot was launched in January 1953. A wave of anti-Semitism spread through the USSR. Jews were removed from their positions, and rumors of an imminent mass deportation of Jews to the eastern part of the USSR began to spread. Stalin’s death in March 1953 put an end to the campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’.
[17] Mandatory job assignment in the USSR: Graduates of higher educational institutions had to complete a mandatory 2-year job assignment issued by the institution from which they graduated. After finishing this assignment young people were allowed to get employment at their discretion in any town or organization.
[18] Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees: Graduate school in the Soviet Union (aspirantura, or internatura for medical students), which usually took about 3 years and resulted in a dissertation. Students who passed were awarded a 'kandidat nauk' (lit. candidate of sciences) degree. If a person wanted to proceed with his or her research, the next step would be to apply for a doctorate degree (doktorantura). To be awarded a doctorate degree, the person had to be involved in the academia, publish consistently, and write an original dissertation. In the end he/she would be awarded a 'doctor nauk' (lit. doctor of sciences) degree.

Mikhail Leger
Mogilyov-Podolskiy
Ukraine
Date of interview: July 2004
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

Mikhail Leger and his wife Yelena live in a two-bedroom apartment in a 5-storied apartment house built in 1965. They keep their apartment clean and cozy. Their furniture is not new, but it’s been well-maintained. Mikhail still works in the design office at a plant, though he had reached the retirement age a while ago. Mikhail looks young for his age. He is of average height, thin and quick in his movements. He has thick dark wavy hair with few grey streaks. Mikhail is very vivid and energetic. He is charming and has a sense of humor. Mikhail willingly agreed to tell me about his family and his life. Mikhail and his wife Yelena are friendly and amiable. They make one feel as if you’ve known them for a number of years. Their daughter and her son also live in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. They visit their parents almost every day. Mikhail spends a lot of time with his grandson and knows all about his life and hobbies.

I didn’t know my father’s parents. My father’s family lived in the town of Ozarintsy Vinnitsa region not far from Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My grandfather’s name was Mihel Leger, and my grandmother’s first name was Gita. I don’t know my grandmother’s maiden name, or my grandparents’ date of birth. I guess they both came from Ozarintsy and were born around the 1850s. Ozarintsy was an old Jewish town. There were few synagogues and cheder schools and a Jewish cemetery in the town. There were hardly any newcomers in Ozarintsy, unless somebody brought a spouse from another village or town. There was a shochet in the town. Jews were all religious, and my father’s family was no exception.

I don’t know what my grandfather did for a living, but my grandmother was a housewife like all married women at the time. They had many children. My father Gilel Leger, born in 1902, was the youngest. Of all his numerous brothers and sisters I only knew his sisters Rosa – Reizl was her Jewish name, and Genia. The rest of them moved to America during the Civil War [1] escaping from pogroms [2], and looking for a better life. I have no information about them. All I know is that my father’s brother Shmil died young in the USA and I was named after him. My father corresponded with him before the war, when I was very young. We had a picture of my father’s brothers and sisters that they had sent us from the USA. Some of them moved to Brazil later. During the Soviet period they terminated their correspondence since it was not safe to have or correspond with relatives from abroad [3].

My father and his brothers must have been raised religious and must have finished a cheder school. My father could read and write in Hebrew. He knew prayers and Jewish traditions. My father’s mother tongue was Yiddish. My father must have got some secular education. He worked as an accountant after getting married. My father went to work, when he was young. He never told me about his youth.

My father’s both sisters married Jewish men from Mogilyov-Podolskiy, and moved to live with their husbands. My grandfather and grandmother and my father followed them to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Rosa’s husband Motl Voloshyn was a clerk in an office. Rosa was a housewife. Her only son Mikhail was born in 1925. His Jewish name was Mihel. My grandfather died in Mogilyov-Podolskiy in 1924. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery of the town according to the Jewish tradition. Mikhail was the first baby born after grandfather died. He was named after my grandfather. Genia husband’s name was Moisey Goldman. I don’t know what he did for the living. Genia was a housewife. They had two children: son Milia, also named after my grandfather, by the first letter of his name, he was born in 1926, and daughter Lidia, born in 1934. After my grandfather died grandmother went to live with Genia. Grandmother died in 1936. She was buried beside grandfather’s grave.

I don’t quite know what Mogilyov-Podolskiy was like at that time, but I don’t think it’s changed a lot since the old times. Vinnitsa region was within the Pale of Settlement [4], and there were many Jews living in its towns and settlements. Mogilyov-Podolskiy is a nice little town buried in verdure. It lies between the Dnestr River on one side and the limestone hills covered with woods – on the other. There were cemeteries on the hills: a Jewish, a Catholic and a town cemetery [Eastern Orthodox]. Bessarabia started on the opposite bank of the river [5]. Jews mostly settled down in the central part of the town. Their houses closely adjusted to one another. There were small backyards where only a little shed or a tiny vegetable garden could fit while in the suburbs residents had orchards, vegetable gardens and fields. They sold food products in the town. There were few markets: the biggest one in the center of the town where there was a shochet working. Jews only bought living poultry to take it to the shochet. Local farmers were well aware of Jewish traditions. On Friday morning they brought lots of poultry and fish to the market knowing that Jewish housewives would want to make chicken broth and gefilte fish for family dinners. Almost all Jewish families had their own suppliers of vegetables, dairy products and eggs. Before the revolution of 1917 [6] most Jews in Mogilyov-Podolskiy were craftsmen or store owners. After the revolution there were plants built in the town and many Jews went to work there. There was a Jewish community in the town. It supported a Jewish hospital, a Jewish children’s home and the needy Jews. After the revolution, when the Soviet regime began its struggle against religion, [7] the community stopped its activities.

There were Jewish pogroms before the revolution and during the Civil War. The power switched from the whites [8], to the reds [9], or various gangs [10]. And they all turned to Jews at the first turn demanding gold or money, or just humiliating, beating, injuring people. Mama told me such pogroms occurred every now and then, and they had to leave their home and look for shelter. Many people gave shelter to Jewish families, though if they had been discovered, those people might suffer a lot, but their kind attitude was stronger than fear. I don’t know any details, but I know that my parents’ families survived the pogroms.

Jews and non-Jews of Mogilyov-Podolskiy got along well and respected each other’s religion and traditions. There were few synagogues, a Christian church [He probably means the Russian-Orthodox Church as both, Catholic and Greek-Orthodox are, of course, Christian Churches too.], a Catholic cathedral and a Greek church in the town. There were cheder schools at the synagogues. There were few shochets in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. After the revolution all synagogues, but 2 were closed. One of these two synagogues, a small one-storied synagogue, was near where we lived. After the Great Patriotic War [11] it was closed for some time, but now it operates again. The second – a choral synagogue, was near the railway station. The Jewish school worked before WW2.

I remember my mother’s family well. My grandmother and grandfather were born in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My grandfather Duvid-Ariye Minkovetskiy was born in 1868. Grandmother Freida, nee Mandel, was born in 1866. I didn’t know any of my grandfather’s relatives, but my grandmother had a sister living in Ataki village on the opposite bank of the river. Before the revolution of 1917 Ataki and Mogilyov-Podolskiy belonged to the Russian Empire. After the revolution Mogilyov-Podolskiy was in the USSR, and Bessarabia was annexed to Romania. Mogilyov-Podolskiy was located on the border. The border between the USSR and Romania was the Dnestr River. There was a restricted entry to the town requiring a special access permit. Frontier guards patrolled the town and the river bank. The bridge that connected the two banks before 1917 was eliminated. There were no contacts between relatives and my grandmother and her sister were separated from each other. However, residents of Mogilyov-Podolskiy and Ataki found out the ways of communication. I remember my grandmother taking me to the bank of the river to bathe. She walked into the river, and her sister was on the opposite bank. My grandmother turned her back to the Romanian bank, so that the frontier guards could not understand, whom she was talking to, began talking loudly about what was new with all members of our family. Her sister talked in the same manner, as if not talking to anybody specifically. Only in 1940, when Romania yielded to the threatening ultimatum of the USSR and gave up Bessarabia, my grandmother and her sister met after a long time.

My mother’s family was miserably poor before the revolution. My grandmother and grandfather rented apartments moving from one place to another. My grandmother was a housewife, and grandfather was the breadwinner for the family. Before the revolution my grandfather dealt in farming. He rented a plot of land from a landlord to farm it. He gave half of his crops to the landlord and had another half at his disposal. After the revolution my grandfather went to work as an acquisition clerk in the supply office that made stocks of fruit and vegetables for Leningrad and Leningrad region. When I was small I liked visiting him at work where I was always given some fruit.

My grandfather was taller than average and thin. He had a small black beard with grey streaks. He wore black suits and a black hat. At home my grandfather wore a yarmulke. My grandmother was short and plump. She wore long black skirts and dark long-sleeved blouses. The only difference between her summer and winter clothes was the fabric, but not the design. My grandmother did not wear a wig, but she always covered her head with a dark kerchief. This was the traditional way the women of her time dressed while my mother and her generation were not so attached to this old tradition.

My grandmother and grandfather had many children, but most of them died in their infancy. Only three of them survived: mama’s older sister Rachil, born in the late 1890s, my mama Paya, born in 1903, and their younger brother Faivish, born in 1907. They spoke Yiddish at home, but also knew Ukrainian and Russian.

My mother’s family was religious. All children were raised religious. Uncle Faivish finished cheder. Mama and her older sister had a visiting teacher. They could read in Hebrew and read and write in Yiddish. They also received a secular education. They finished a 4-year Jewish school and studied in an 8-year Russian school.

Mama’s older sister Rachil married a Jewish man from Mogilyov-Podolskiy. She had a traditional Jewish wedding. Rachil moved to live with her husband. She was a housewife. Her husband Lazar Lerner was an accountant in an office. Their older daughter Bella was born in 1922 and son Abram – in 1932. Mama’s younger brother Faivish studied at the accounting course and then worked as an accountant in an office. He was single and lived with his parents.

Mama was eager to study. She studied at a course for junior medical personnel: attendants and medical nurses. Her dream was to enter a medical college, but this dream was not to come true. She studied and worked as an attendant and then medical nurse in the town hospital. Mama loved her job.

I don’t know how my parents met: whether there was a matchmaker or they met themselves somehow. Anyway, they got married in 1928. My parents had a traditional wedding with a chuppah and a rabbi. I kept my parents’ marriage certificate signed by the rabbi of the synagogue of Mogilyov-Podolskiy for a long time. It moldered in the course of time. Mama and papa rented a little house with one room, a small kitchen and a fore room on a hill in the suburb of Mogilyov-Podolskiy. I was born there in 1935. This house is still there, though many others in this neighborhood have been removed. I can see it from my window. They fetched water from a nearby well in the street. There was a plot of land near the house, about 10 square meters, and the lady allowed mama to make a small vegetable garden there. Mama liked growing dill, parsley and cucumbers, selecting seeds and watching her plants grow.

There was a Russian stove [12] where mama cooked in winter and it also heated the house. In summer mama only stoked the stove to bake bread. She cooked on a small stove on 3 legs. Mama baked bread for a whole week on Friday. It was delicious even when it grew stale. Electricity came to Mogilyov-Podolskiy in 1948. There were kerosene stoves used to light houses before.

My parents spoke Russian to me at home and only switched to Yiddish, when they didn’t want me to understand the subject of their discussion. My parents also spoke Yiddish to grandmother and grandfather.

Mama basically followed kashrut. We never ate pork. Mama bought a living chicken or duck and took it to the shochet to slaughter. She also bought kosher beef and veal from the shochet. Mama had a tray with twigged sides. She soaked meat in water for some time, placed it on this tray, salted the meat and placed the tray into a basin and the blood dipped into the basin. Mama made delicious food. We had gefilte fish on Sabbath and Jewish holidays, and on week days mama made plain food. I remember chicken broth with homemade noodles, cholent, carrot tsimes [13], puddings.

Even during the period of struggle against religion my father remained religious. He didn’t teach me to be religious, but he himself often read his book of prayers. On holidays and on death anniversaries of his parents my father went to the synagogue to recite the Kaddish.

We always celebrated Sabbath at home. Mama made food for Saturday on Friday. She always made cholent that I liked a lot. After finishing baking bread for a week and challot for Sabbath mama put a pot of cholent into the oven where she left it for 24 hours and when she took it out before Saturday dinner it was still hot. In the evening mama lit candles and prayed over them. I remember that mama always covered her face with her hands praying. Saturday was an ordinary working day during the Soviet regime, but mama tried to do no work whenever possible.

We celebrated Jewish holidays. My parents went to the synagogue on these days. They took me with them, when I was small. Before Pesach mama did a general clean up. She whitewashed the house on the outside and cleaned and polished everything inside. There was a Jewish bakery in the town. They baked matzah for Pesach and people made orders for as much matzah as they needed. I don’t remember whether there was bread in the house on Pesach, but surely there was matzah. Matzah was used to make many dishes and also, matzah flour was used to bake strudels and puddings. Mama cooked gefilte fish, chicken broth and puddings. She also made potato pancakes that she also baked in a pot in the Russian stove. She also made borscht for Pesach. Pesia, an old Jewish woman living near the synagogue, made marinated beets for sale. Housewives also bought beet was from her and added boiled potatoes, hard-boiled eggs and matzah to make borscht. It was delicious. I don’t remember whether we had special dishes or Pesach. We were poor. Mama koshered our casual utensils before Pesach putting burning hot stones into pans and casseroles and rinsing them with boiling water. I don’t remember whether my father conducted Seder. I was probably too young to remember.

I remember Yom Kippur well. This was a ceremonious day after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. They blew the shofar for a month at the synagogue and it was heard all over the town. On Rosh Hashanah we had apples cut into pieces and a saucer of homey on the table. We dipped apples in honey eating them to have a sweet year to come. However negative the Soviet authorities were about religion, all Jews came to the synagogue on Yom Kippur that came after Rosh Hashanah. There were people crowding in front of the small synagogue where my parents went. Those, who failed to come inside, were waiting outside for the prayer to be over. The fast lasted 24 hours. Children could have some food during fasting. The next dinner was to take place next day after the prayer was over. Children went to see their parents at the synagogue.

We didn’t make a sukkah on Sukkot since we lived in a Ukrainian neighborhood, but those Jewish families living in the center installed sukkahs in their yards. My grandmother and grandfather also had a sukkah and we visited them. On Simchat Torah my father often took me to the synagogue with him. I carried a scroll of the torah following my father. I had to be very careful since it was a great sin to drop the scroll.

On Chanukkah mama lit one more candle in the chanukkiyah every day. Our relatives and acquaintances visiting us gave me Chanukkah gelt and I always looked forward to this holiday. I spent this money on sugar candy and sunflower seeds.

I also remember Purim. Mama made triangle hamantashen. Mama made many pies to make shelakhmones and send it to relatives and friends.

Mama had to go to work and left me in my grandma’s care or occasionally she took me to my papa’s sister Genia, whose daughter was the same age with me. At 4 I went to the kindergarten near our house. My cousin Lidia Goldman, my father sister Genia Goldman’s daughter, also went to this kindergarten. Though Genia was a housewife, she still sent her daughter to the kindergarten: at that time children were customarily sent to nursery schools to adapt to communication with other children. I was to go to school in 1942.

I remember well the bright and sunny day on 22 June 1941. I remember my parents and mama’s brother Faivish, who came to see us in the morning, standing with tense faces by the black plate of the radio listening to something. Then my mother started crying and told me that the war began. It didn’t mean much to me. All I knew about the war was how we, boys, played the war. I went outside and heard the roar of the planes flying over the Dnestr from Bessarabia. The beginning of the war is associated for me with those planes flying in rows. There were so many planes that they almost covered the sky, and this looked scaring.

My mother’s brother Faivish and Genia’s husband Moisey Goldman went to the army on the first days of the war and so did Rosa’s son Mikhail Voloshyn. Few days later my father was recruited to the army. He went to the gathering point in Vinnitsa. My father’s sister Genia Goldman, her son Milia and daughter Lidia evacuated on the first days of the war. The rest of the family stayed in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Few days later the bombings began. My mother was pregnant. She decided that we should leave Mogilyov-Podolskiy for Vinnitsa from where we could take a train to evacuate. I remember that we rode a wagon to Chernivtsy in about 20 km from Mogilyov-Podolskiy, where we heard that German troops were already in Vinnitsa. We stayed in Chernivtsy where a local Jewish family gave us shelter. We lived in their attic. Few days later my father found us. What happened was – e managed to get to the gathering point, but it was already deserted. He returned home looking for us and somebody told him that we might be in Chernivtsy. My father stayed with us. The village was bombed and during one bombing mama started labor and had a still born baby girl.

Germans came to Chernivtsy in July 1941. I remember their first action against Jews well. Jews were hiding away. Germans captured 10 people, whoever they could find. They took them to the ridge across the river in the village, pushed them off the bridge shooting after them competing in the accuracy of shooting. They were just entertaining themselves. We didn’t see this, but we heard about it – the whole village was talking about it. People knew this was just a beginning. My father walked to Mogilyov-Podolskiy to find out what the situation was like there. He returned and said that we would be safer home. Few Jewish families got together, hired a wagon, loaded their luggage on it and older people and children sat on it to ride to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. This was a hard trip. We had to cross few villages where people abused and tried to rob us. When we arrived home we discovered thee was nothing left in the house: everything was gone while we were away. However, after we returned some neighbors brought back some of our belongings: a table, chairs and some household utilities.

When we returned home, we heard about what happened to mama’s younger brother Faivish. In July 1941 his military unit was retreating through Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Faivish requested a short leave to visit his family. He went to see his parents, but when it was time for him to go back, another air raid began. Faivish was deadly wounded. A military sanitary truck took him away. Some time later grandmother and grandfather received a notification that Faivish had disappeared. I think he died, but nobody took an effort to follow all procedures and notify his military unit. We don’t know where he died or was buried.

Soon Germans established a Jewish ghetto in the center of the town. It was surrounded with a high stone fence with barbed wire on top of it. The gate was guarded by Romanians. After the ghetto was arranged German troops left Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Vinnitsa region became the territory of Transnistria [14], the area of concentration camps and ghettos. It was divided into two zones: Romanian and German. Mogilyov-Podolskiy belonged to the Romanian zone of occupation. All Jews of Mogilyov-Podolskiy were taken to the ghetto. We could stay in our house since it was on the territory of the ghetto. Rosa’s house was aside from the ghetto and Rosa and her husband were forced to leave their house to go to the ghetto. They moved in with us. Grandmother and grandfather also could stay in their house. Their older daughter Rachil, her husband and their younger son also lived with them. Before the war her daughter Bella finished a secondary school and studied at the Engineering Construction College in Vinnitsa. At the beginning of the war Bella evacuated with her college to the Ural. The Ukrainian families whose houses happened to be within the boundaries of the ghetto were forced to move out. Every day groups of Jews from Bessarabia, and even Romania arrived at the ghetto. They were accommodated in Jewish houses. The husband of my grandmother’s sister living in Ataki found us and his family also moved into our house. Some other Jews from Ataki, my grandmother and mother’s acquaintances, told us that Germans killed my grandmother sister’s daughter and her husband, when they came to Ataki. Their only daughter Gita came to the ghetto with other Jews. Mama found Gita, who was 11 years old then and took her to live with us. Later some other of or distant relatives came o live with us. So, in autumn 1941 there were 15 tenants in our house. Our only room was like a fairy tale tower room stuffed with people. My father made a partial to divide it into two parts. In August 1942 another distant relative joined us. My father had distant relatives in the town of Yaryshev near Mogilyov-Podolskiy. There was also a ghetto in Yaryshev. In August 1942 Germans shot about 700 Jews – all inmates of the ghetto in Yaryshev – in a field near Yaryshev and their bodies were falling into a pit. My father’s relatives perished, but their 12-year old daughter Lisa managed to escape. She hid in the corn field nearby and then headed to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. She walked at night and took hiding during the day. In Mogilyov-Podolskiy she found our family and stayed with us. Romanian troops did not arrange mass shooting, but considering the conditions in the ghetto, it was easier to die from hunger and diseases that survive. When I think about it now, I don’t know how we survived. Local villagers brought food products in exchange of clothes and furniture. Since we hardly had anything valuable left, I have no idea how my parents managed to feed us.

Before the ghetto I didn’t know about what Jews were. There was no anti-Semitism before the war. I only discovered that I was a Jew in the ghetto. When they began to shoot Jews there were many talks of this kind and I asked mama: ‘Who invented those Jews?’ mama got confused and told me to ask my grandfather. My grandfather told me the history of Jews and said that Germans could kill us just for the fact that we were Jews’. Later mama often repeated this phrase of mine as a funny joke.

Yiddish was the main language of communication in the ghetto since this was the only language the Bessarabian and Romanian Jews could speak. I learned Yiddish in the ghetto. I couldn’t read and or write, but I spoke fluent Yiddish. Mama often read me Sholem Aleichem’s [15] books in Yiddish in the ghetto. I still have these books. After the war we also often spoke Yiddish at home.

In spring 1942 there was a big flood in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Such floods happened from time to time in the town. When ice begins to melt in the rives it dams it on turning points causing the flooding of nearby areas. Mama told me about the flood in 1932, when thee were even victims among the population. The flood was also terrible in 1942. The whole riverside and a number of houses in the town were flooded. Inmates of those flooded houses had to move into the houses on hills. My grandmother, grandfather, my mother’s older sister Rachil, her husband and son moved into our house as well. They stayed with us for about two weeks. When the water wet back, they moved back into their house. Shortly after this flood a terrible epidemic of enteric typhoid developed in the ghetto. Almost all inmates had lice, there was no soap, all those struck with the disease stayed in the houses where other inmates lived. There were no doctors or medications in the ghetto. There were ill relatives in our house. My mother and father had typhoid during the revolution in 1917 and had immunity against the disease. They were particularly worried about me, Rachil’s daughters and two girls living with us. We were sent to my grandmother and grandfather. Many inmates of the ghetto died. Rachil’s husband Lazar Lerner died and Rachil died soon after him. Our relatives from Ataki died. Mama managed to get some chloride of lime to disinfect the house and we, children, could come back. Mama took Rachil’s son Abram to live with us. Shortly after we left the house my grandfather Duvid-Ariye contracted typhoid and died. The Romanians allowed inmates of the ghetto to bury their dead outside the ghetto. Rachil, her husband, my grandfather and relatives from Ataki were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My father recited Kaddish over their graves. We installed a gravestone after the war. Mama took my grandmother to live with us. My grandmother never recovered after Faivish and grandfather’s death. She was very religious. There was a prayer house in the ghetto and my grandmother attended it regularly. Of course, this was kept a secret from the Romanians.

My mother heard that inmates of the ghetto could be inoculated against typhoid in the town hospital and took me there immediately. The children had to stay in hospital two weeks after inoculations. Many patients fell ill after inoculations, but I was lucky to escape the disease. Only recently we found out that actually these were not inoculations, but experiments on people. The German government paid compensation to those who were ‘inoculated’. But at that time people did not have this information. When the attack of typhus was over, it was followed by an epidemic of enteric fever. It was probably caused by contaminated potable water since the wells were never cleaned through the period of occupation. Mama fell ill with enteric fever and her condition was very hard. Fortunately, she recovered. Then there appeared an epidemic of relapsing fever, and there were many victims to it.

Mama believed I had to study and taught me to read, write and count. Many Jews deported from Romania and Moldavia knew German. Mama hired a school teacher from Bucharest to teach me German. I managed to learn the curriculum of almost 2 years of school in the ghetto.

In autumn 1942 inmates of the ghetto began to be deported to concentration camps: one of them was Pechora camp in Vinnitsa region called the ‘Dead loop’ [16], it was also called the ‘death camp’. There were hardly any survivors in this camp. Prisoners of the camp were forced to work hard and they hardly received any food. They stayed in earth huts and holes that they dug themselves. Those who were too exhausted to go to work were killed. At first Romanian guards made lists of groups of inmates to send them to Pechora, but later they just captured them during raids to move them to Pechora. When raids began adults assigned night watch to warn the others, if another raid began. We lived near a school where Romanians arranged a military storage in a shed in the yard. There were Romanian guards there, and during raids we ran to stay closer to this shed. We thought, if there were Romanians there, maybe the raid would not reach this area. Somehow we really managed to escape the raids.

We had no information about the war. There was no radio or newspapers in the ghetto. When adults got together, all they talked about was that we would be exterminated soon and the ghetto will be liquidated. This was terrible. I was just a child, but I can still remember the feeling of horror and despair that overwhelmed me, when they spoke in this manner. All inmates of the ghetto had this expectation of the end despite their age. Adults and children were sort of living our last days. Hungry and cold during a day, we waited for them to come and capture us at night… Every day and every night could be the last in life.

In March 1943 this expectation of the end was particularly acute. These were horrible days: Germans were retreating, and their columns were passing by our house. Jews feared going outside. They said Germans were going to eliminate the ghetto. On 18 March the Romanians started leaving. The ghetto was not guarded any longer, but nobody dared to leave it. There were German and Romanian troops in the streets that would kill any runaway. Nobody slept at night. Somebody knocked on the door, but we did not open. At dawn on 19 March we heard explosions. Then it became quiet. We stayed inside till we heard the Russian language. Mama went out and called us right away. We could see the rest of the town from the hill our house was on. We saw 3 Soviet tanks coming into the town. They stopped and the tank men showed up. People were coming closer to hug and thank them. They opened their field kitchen and cooked cereals with tinned meat. It had a magic and long-forgotten taste. We felt so happy. We knew that the war not over yet, but we were free. However, it was still dangerous to walk the streets for few days. A German sniper sat in the church in Ataki near Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Later people said that Germans even chained him there so that he could not escape. He kept shooting for 3 days till few Soviet soldiers swam across the Dnestr and killed him. Our relatives went to their homes. Gita returned to Ataki where she found some relatives that had survived. Lisa entered a technical school in Vinnitsa. Rachil’s daughter Bella visited us. Se went to her parents’ grave and then went back to her college in Vinnitsa. Her younger brother Abram went with her. 3 Soviet soldiers were accommodated in our house. The Soviet military restored the bridge across the Dnestr. The peaceful life began, but it did not last long. There were still air raids at nights and people were dying again. There was a railway station not far from our house on one side, and an oil terminal and a bridge on the other side. They were the targets the German bombers intended to hit. Germans dropped fire rockets on parachutes. They lighted the area with ominous red light. Then they dropped bombs. Our old house shook from explosions and the ceiling was falling down. Our family gathered in a bunch in the middle of the room. If we were to be killed, we wanted to be together. Someone told mama that it was best to hide under the table during shooting. Mama made me and grandmother go under the table during shootings. Sitting under the table, I was worried about my parents. The hardest bombing occurred on 7 July 1944. On this day Americans and Brits opened the second front. There was a meeting in the town. Mama went to the meeting and I stayed home with grandmother. It was getting dark, when we heard the familiar roar of German tanks. Then the hell came down. The house was jumping up and shaking from explosions, the plaster came down and the glass broke. When it was over our parents came home. Finally, the bombings were over and the peaceful life began. My father’s sister Genia and her daughter Lidia returned from evacuation. Her son Milia Goldman perished at the front in 1944 and so did her husband Moisey Goldman. Papa sister Rosa’s son Mikhail Voloshyn returned from the front in 1945.

In April 1943 classes at school began. Mama sent me to the 2nd form. Two months later summer vacations began at school. Since I missed the first form at school, I had to take few exams in autumn. I studied in summer and passed my exams successfully. I went to the 3rd form. There were three pupils of my age, born in 1935, in my class. The rest of our classmates were older. There were many Jewish children in my class. We were so used to speaking Yiddish in the ghetto that we communicated in Yiddish at school. Any children started their answer in Yiddish, if they were called to the blackboard. Our teachers asked us to speak Russian. I had no problem with this knowing both languages. There was no anti-Semitism at school. There were Jews among teachers and the majority of school children were Jewish.

There was famine in 1947. I was 12 and remember the feeling of hunger. I couldn’t stop thinking about food. All thoughts about food. In summer we broke into gardens eating unripe apples, apricots and pears. There were cards to receive bread every other day. It was hard to keep a portion of bread till the next day. Mama was taking the bread away, but I found it and cut little pieces from it.

In 1946 my sister Gusta (this name was written in her documents) was born. She was named Gita after my paternal grandmother. My father went to work in a construction office. Mama stayed home through the period of breastfeeding my sister. Later she went to work as a laboratory assistant at the sanitary station. We lived near the laboratory and in the evening all microscopes and reagents were taken to our house for the sake of safety. Mama showed me some specimens in the microscope and I liked watching them. Mama retired in 1983, when she turned 80.

My grandmother lived with us and watched that we observed Jewish traditions very closely. We strictly followed kashrut at home. My grandmother watched very closely that we used correctly dishes for meat and dairy products or tableware, accordingly. Only when she grew very old and could not be so watchful we allowed ourselves some liberties.

When grandmother was with us, we celebrated Sabbath at home. On Friday evening she lit candles. Grandmother had to prepare for the holiday. We didn’t have candle stands and it was difficult to buy candles. We used makeshift means: I removed the inside of a potato, we poured oil inside and placed a little wick in it and we got a candle. When grandmother lit candles and covered her face with her hands when praying she started crying thinking about deceased Faivish, grandfather, Rachil and her husband. Then we sat down to dinner. On Saturday my parents had to go to work, but my grandmother did no work at home. She read the prayer book.

We celebrated Jewish holidays after the war and I took part in celebrations, even though I was a pioneer [17], and a Komsomol member [18]. We were taught to be atheists at school. We knew there was no God and that religion was an opium for people. However, this was one thing, and my family traditions – another thing for me. My family always knew the dates of holidays: Pesach, Yom Kippur, Chanukkah. My grandmother was particularly watchful about observance of traditions. There was always matzah delivered for her before Pesach. I don’t know how strictly kosher this matzah was, but it was there. Some people baked matzah secretly: Soviet authorities had a negative attitude toward religion and religious people. Mama could not afford to buy matzah for all of us, but grandmother had sufficient matzah for Pesach. My grandmother and my parents always fasted on Yom Kippur, only when my grandmother grew too old and could not always look at the calendar, my parents did not tell her about the day of fasting. My grandmother lived a long life and died at the age of 95 in 1961. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery beside my grandfather’s grave according to all Jewish rules.

I studied well at school. I was particularly good at mathematics, physics and chemistry. I was not very good at social sciences, but I had good marks in them as well. We were raised patriots at school. I became a pioneer in the 4th form. I joined Komsomol at the age of 14. Since I was the youngest of my classmates, they joined Komsomol long before I did and I was desperately jealous about them being Komsomol members. I was very serious about getting prepared to admission to Komsomol: I read Lenin’s works [19], and was aware of all political events in the USSR and abroad. I was very proud to show my Komsomol membership card to my parents, when I obtained it.

In 1948 trials against cosmopolites [20] took place. It never occurred to me they were plotted against Jews. I sincerely believed that the Soviet people were denouncing the cosmopolites, who wanted to damage the USSR. My head was so stuffed with the Soviet propaganda that there was no space for doubts in it. I thought that this unfriendly attitude to Jews was justified: there were articles in newspapers about dishonest Jewish directors of stores, shop assistants, profiteers cheating honest people. Of course, my parents, acquaintances and I did not belong to them – I was good! Stalin was my idol and I loved him as much as I loved my own father. We had a framed photo of my father’s brothers and sisters who had moved to USA. I took out the photo and threw it out, and put the portrait of Stalin in this frame. My parents were skeptical about the situation, but they didn’t speak out in my presence. They must have understood that I was to live in this country and they did not want to overburden me with doubts or they were concerned that I might report in them. Who knows…

I remember another important event that occurred in 1948, when Israel was established. Our family was happy about it. We were happy that Jews finally had their own state. Gita from Ataki came to visit us. Before 1940, when Ataki belonged to Romania, Gita was a member of Maccabi, [20]a Jewish Children’s Zionist organization. She was a convinced Zionist and her thoughts never changed after Bessarabia was annexed to the USSR. Her husband also came from Ataki and was a Zionist. Gita talked a lot about Israel and how Jews were fighting for their land and how miraculously brave they were. Gita and her husband intended to move to Israel, but when trials against cosmopolites began, emigration was closed. Gita and her husband did not move to Israel until 1968.

I had my first doubts about the Soviet propaganda during the period of the ‘doctors’ plot’ [22]. I was sincerely indignant about somebody daring to infringe upon Stalin’s life. I was sure newspaper articles were true. It never occurred to me then that this was artificial enforcement of anti-Semitism. I realized this, when once I gave my Ukrainian friend, whom I had known since childhood, a sugar candy. He looked at me with dread: ‘You won’t poison me, will you?’ It was then that I thought that somebody made monsters of Jews, who were ready to poison and kill any person… I started taking a closer look at the events trying to figure out what the situation was about. People thought it was dangerous to deal with Jews – who could tell what they have in mind? Patients refused to visit Jewish doctors, or have a Jewish nurse making an injection saying there was poison in the syringe. It seems ridiculous from today’s standpoint, but then it was scaring. However, I never tied this to Stalin’s name. He remained an idol for me. It never occurred to me that he was to blame for anti-Semitism and that nothing at all could happen in the USSR without his knowledge.

In March 1953 there was another flood in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Our relatives and their children moved to our house on a hill. Again it was like in the ghetto, when a number of people crowded in our room. On 5 March, in the morning, we heard on the radio that Stalin died. Many people cried without trying to hide their tears. I tried to comfort myself thinking that we were all mortal and so was Stalin. He was an old man, but I loved him and believed in him. I had painful fear in my heart. I could not imagine my life without Stalin. When all doctors were rehabilitated later, I felt very sorry that Staling did not live long enough to know that we, Jews, are no poisoning people or rascals.

My illusions were done with, when Khrushchev [23] spoke on the 20th Congress [24] about the crimes of Stalin and his regime. I understood a lot more at the time and believed Khrushchev at once. However, I felt sorry to give up my childhood ideas about Stalin, our leader, the ‘father of people’…

In 1952 I finished school. I already knew that it didn’t matter where I wanted to study. What mattered was where I could be admitted, being a Jew. I grew up quickly and I understood that the routinely anti-Semitism in the USSR spread to the state level. Jews were not admitted to colleges and faced employment problems. Mama wanted me to become a doctor, but I had no hope to be admitted to a medical college. I had to look for a college with lower competition where Jews were admitted, however few of them. Jews had to find a college where they could be admitted rather than starting from choosing a profession. My cousin Mikhail Voloshyn had practical training in Moscow. He found a college with the lowest competition and suggested that I took exams to Moscow Auto mechanic College. I went to Moscow and passed exams, but failed the competition. I returned to Mogilyov-Podolskiy, and went to work as a draftsman at the plant named after Kirov. In 1953 my former schoolmate and I went t Ivanovo town in Russia where we took exams to the Technological College. I failed again. I’m ashamed to say that my examiners discovered that I had a crib and ordered me to leave the classroom. I went to the admission commission to have my documents back. Another Jewish guy from Georgia, who also failed, went there with me. The secretary had the list of our documents in her notebook. When she opened it, we saw the word ‘Jew’ written against our names while there were no notes against other names. The guy from Georgia asked the secretary why this was so and she began to explain that the others were all Russian and there was no need to make such notes. On my way back home I stopped in Moscow and passed exams to the Design Faculty of Moscow technical school of the Ministry of supplies. I stayed in Moscow to study in this school. I lived in the dormitory for 3 years. I studied well knowing that I had to be a high-skilled specialist. I only once heard anti-Semitic expressions from a guy who came to Moscow from a province. The rest of students told me he was a fool and I should ignore him. I finished this technical school in 1956 and had a job assignment [25] to a village in Kaluga region. The local authorities were not very happy to see me. There were hardly any specialists with a diploma. Even director of the enterprise where I was to work only had a certificate of lower secondary education. The local bosses were afraid that I could spoil their careers. One year and a half later I submitted a letter of resignation they approved my resignation, though I had to complete the mandatory term of job assignments of 3 years. I went back home. My parents lived in our prewar house. I went to work at the design office at the machine building plant named after Kirov. This is the biggest plant in the town. I still work there, even though I’ve stepped over the retirement age.

I met my future wife Yelena Kravets at the plant. She was a copy operator at the design office. Yelena was born in Yampol town Vinnitsa region in 1937. Her Jewish name is Leya. Her father Borukh Kravets went to the front during the Great Patriotic War. Yelena’s mother Klara Kravets decided it was dangerous to stay in Yampol and decided to go to Mogilyov-Podolskiy, where her mother and sister lived and took her daughter with her. They only reached Chernivtsy, when Germans already occupied it. In occupation they stayed in Chernivtsy. A Jewish family gave shelter to them. Yelena remembers no details, she was too small then. Chernivtsy was liberated one day before Mogilyov-Podolskiy, 18 March 1943. On 19 March Yelena’s mother perished during an air raid. Yelena was 5 years old, and some people took Yelena to their family. She stayed with them till her grandmother and her grandmother’s sister returned from evacuation. Yelena’s father perished at the front in 1944. Yelena lived with her grandmother in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. After finishing school she went to work as a copy operator at the plant. We got married in 1962. We had a civil ceremony in the registry office, and in the evening mama arranged a dinner for the family. We lived with my parents. My father installed a partial in the room and we lived there for few years. In 1965 the plant constructed an apartment house for its employees and my wife and I received a two-bedroom apartment. My parents also received an apartment in new house few years later. In 1965 our daughter was born. We named her Klara after Yelena’s mother. Yelena entered the extramural school of librarians in Soroki town in Moldavia. After finishing this school Yelena organized a technical library at the plant. She started from just one bookcase of books and in few years their number grew into few thousand books. Yelena became director of this library and worked there till she retired.

I’ve never joined the party. I never wanted to join the party and nobody ever put any pressure upon me. My wife and I celebrated Soviet holidays at home: 1 May, 7 November [26], Victory Day [27]. In the morning all employees went to parades and then we got together at somebody’s place and had parties. We drank and talked. On Jewish holidays my wife and I went to my parents. They still celebrated Jewish holidays. I don’t think there was the so-called Jewry at that time. Te synagogue was closed, and Yiddish was gradually squeezed out of our everyday life. However, we’ve never forgotten that we were Jews. Besides, non-Jews never allowed us to forget it.

I remember how we were concerned during the Six Day War 1967 [28] and the War of the Judgment Day [Yom Kippur War] [29], in October 1973. We felt victorious after the war was over. This was a bright demonstration that Jews were no dweebs unable to defend themselves. When the War of the Judgment Day began, there were rather concerning reports at first. The USSR was supporting Egypt with weapons and military specialists, and our mass media covered only one side of the war. Newspapers wrote that the Israeli army incurred great losses and that the victorious Egyptian army beat its enemies. We worried about Israel and about Gita and her husband, who moved to Israel in 1968. At night we listened to western radio programs that the USSR jammed: the Voice of America [Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were popular radio stations broadcasting Germany in Russian and other Eastern European languages. They were thoroughly jammed in the Soviet Union so that Soviet citizens couldn’t hear the truth about life in capitalist countries and actual state of things in their own country], and others. When I heard that Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula, I felt proud for my people. The Israeli army proved again that it can protect its own country.

When in the 1970s mass emigration to Israel began, I sympathized with those Jews, who decided to move to Israel and I supported them as much as I could. My father’s sisters Rosa and Genia and their families moved there. Rosa and her family settled down in Nathanya, and Genia’s family lived in Holon. My papa’s sisters have passed away, but we correspond with Rosa’s son Mikhail and Genia’s daughter Lidia. Mama’s sister Rachil’s daughter Bella and son Abram also moved there. I couldn’t even consider emigration: my father was deadly ill, and I could not leave him and my mother. My father died in 1972. We buried him in the Jewish cemetery as much according to the rules as was possible at that time. Religious old men came to wash my father. Then he was taken to the ritual hut in the cemetery. A rabbi recited a prayer over him. My father was buried in a coffin, but there was no bottom in this coffin. This was all we could at the time.

My sister Gita lived with parents. After finishing school she moved to Magnitogorsk in Russia [about 2500 km from Moscow], where she entered the Mining College. Our relative Lisa, the girl from Yaryshev, who miraculously survived and lived with us during the occupation, moved to Magnitogorsk after finishing the technical school and getting a job assignment there. She got married and stayed to live in the town. My sister lived with her family during her studies. After finishing the college Gita got a job assignment at the metallurgical plant in Gorky. When my father died I wrote my sister requesting her to come back home. She was reluctant to come back to Mogilyov-Podolskiy, but she did. She didn’t find a job in Mogilyov-Podolskiy and went to work at the metallurgical plant in Ataki. She lived with Mama. Gita was an industrious employee and was soon promoted to deputy director of the plant. Gita married Nikolay Korchmar, a Ukrainian man from Ataki. He and Gita are the same age. He is a driver. They have no children. After the breakup of the Soviet Union Moldavia and Ukraine gained independence. Gita could not live in one country and work in another any longer. She retired. She and her husband live in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. We often see each other. Mama died in 1990. She was buried beside my father’s grave, but it was a secular funeral.

When my daughter was at school, I noticed that her Jewish classmates had Jewish friends and Russian children had Russian friends. This was at the time of Brezhnev’s rule [30], when anti-Semitism became a part of our life. My wife and I wanted our daughter to enter a college in Vinnitsa, but we realized that she did not have a chance to enter a higher educational institution in Ukraine. Klara went to Moscow and successfully passed her exams to the Faculty of Industrial and Civil Construction of the Engineering and Construction College. After finishing it she got a job assignment in the Moscow region. Three years later she came back home and went to work at the construction department. In 1994 Klara married David Roif from Yampol. He was a veterinary. In 1995 their son Ilia, our only grandson, was born. Regretfully, my daughter’s marriage fell apart. She divorced her husband in 1998. David and his parents moved to Israel. Klara and her son live in Mogilyov-Podolskiy.

I‘ve been eager to move to Israel, but it was not to be. At first my wife and I waited till our daughter finished her studies. Our daughter did not want to move to Israel, and we were reluctant to leave her alone here. And now it is probably too late to start a new life.

When general secretary of the Communist party of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev [31] initiated perestroika [32], I felt very positive about it. He gave us hope for a better life. Of course later perestroika took a different direction than we expected. Most people faced problems: the prices went up and their salaries remained the same. However, I cannot say there was nothing good in perestroika. First of all, anti-Semitism receded and we felt it immediately. Perestroika bought freedom of speech and freedom of press. Citizens of the USSR were finally free to communicate with people living abroad, travel there or invite their friends here. Perestroika ended up in the breakup of the USSR. Many people think it was a disaster for us, but I do not agree here. I prefer living in the stand-alone and independent Ukraine to living in the huge empire that the Soviet Union was that the world was afraid of and hated. I think that the breakup of the USSR is a natural process: the history shows us that all empires fall sooner or later anyway. However, I never believed this would happen in my life. Now many people think it’s necessary to restore the Soviet Union, but I think that before we unite again all former SU republics need to learn to live on their own and prove their independence.

Of course, there are occurrences of anti-Semitism, but they mostly emerge from the people of my generation or older. I don’t think it shows up among young people. There is a Jewish life now. There is a lot of Jewish literature and as long as people wish to know things, they have to take an effort to educate themselves. Unfortunately, this came to us too late. The older generation knowing Jewish traditions joined a better world when we were Komsomol members and communists believing that religion was opium for people. Now those, for whom Jewish life was a natural way of life are gone. Young people are not interested, they live a different life and have different values. It’s a pity that the history of the Ukrainian Jewry is coming to an end before our eyes. In the past a rabbi from Zhytomir visited us on Sabbath and Jewish holidays to recite prayers, but he does it no longer due to financial problems. I understand that such activities can only be supported on contribution of Jews from other countries. I understand that this assistance cannot last forever. A community must be self-supporting to exist. We need everybody to become a part of it. If each member gave 10% of his income to the community, as the Torah says, the Jewry would not face this decay. When we receive matzah before Pesach, am ashamed to hear people saying that it is too thick or not crispy enough. If they earn things themselves they would have a better attitude toward things.

I took up Jewish traditions after my father died. Is death struck me. I felt lonely. Then my neighbor lady told me that I had to recite the Kaddish after my father. She wrote the Kaddish to me in Russian letters, and I, being 11 years old, read the Kaddish after my father and then after my mother. I did it at home. The synagogue reopened after perestroika. Every year on my parents’ death anniversaries I read the Kaddish after my parents, as the rules require. I also bring treatments and vodka to the synagogue. I also go to the synagogue once or more times a week. Of course, the services are not quite like I would think they might be. The prayers are read in Russian. I am sure God understands prayers in all languages, but I would rather they were read in Hebrew. Anyway, I am sure that we need a religious and a secular community. I am a member of the board of the Jewish community of the town and know how many problems we have. Most of Jews in Mogilyov-Podolskiy are old and ill people. They need food and medications. The community tries to provide whatever assistance it can. We have a box for contribution where people bring as much money as they can afford. Our compatriots, who visit the town every year on the day of its liberation from the occupants – they make the biggest contributions. Unfortunately, the middle generation of the people in their 40s stay aside. My daughter is very far from the Jewry, but I teach my grandson what it means to be a Jew. When we had a Jewish Sunday school, Ilia attended it willingly. The children were taught prayers and read books about the history of Jewish people. This school was closed due to the lack of funds. Ilia asks me questions and reads a lot. He’ll soon start attending the synagogue with me. I wish my parents came to his bar mitzvah.

Glossary:

[1] Civil War (1918-1920): The Civil War between the Reds (the Bolsheviks) and the Whites (the anti-Bolsheviks), which broke out in early 1918, ravaged Russia until 1920. The Whites represented all shades of anti-communist groups – Russian army units from World War I, led by anti-Bolshevik officers, by anti-Bolshevik volunteers and some Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Several of their leaders favored setting up a military dictatorship, but few were outspoken tsarists. Atrocities were committed throughout the Civil War by both sides. The Civil War ended with Bolshevik military victory, thanks to the lack of cooperation among the various White commanders and to the reorganization of the Red forces after Trotsky became commissar for war. It was won, however, only at the price of immense sacrifice; by 1920 Russia was ruined and devastated. In 1920 industrial production was reduced to 14% and agriculture to 50% as compared to 1913.

[2] Pogroms in Ukraine: In the 1920s there were many anti-Semitic gangs in Ukraine. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children.

[3] Keep in touch with relatives abroad: The authorities could arrest an individual corresponding with his/her relatives abroad and charge him/her with espionage, send them to concentration camp or even sentence them to death.

[4] Jewish Pale of Settlement: Certain provinces in the Russian Empire were designated for permanent Jewish residence and the Jewish population was only allowed to live in these areas. The Pale was first established by a decree by Catherine II in 1791. The regulation was in force until the Russian Revolution of 1917, although the limits of the Pale were modified several times. The Pale stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, and 94% of the total Jewish population of Russia, almost 5 million people, lived there. The overwhelming majority of the Jews lived in the towns and shtetls of the Pale. Certain privileged groups of Jews, such as certain merchants, university graduates and craftsmen working in certain branches, were granted to live outside the borders of the Pale of Settlement permanently.

[5] Bessarabia: Historical area between the Prut and Dnestr rivers, in the southern part of Odessa region. Bessarabia was part of Russia until the Revolution of 1917. In 1918 it declared itself an independent republic, and later it united with Romania. The Treaty of Paris (1920) recognized the union but the Soviet Union never accepted this. In 1940 Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the USSR. The two provinces had almost 4 million inhabitants, mostly Romanians. Although Romania reoccupied part of the territory during World War II the Romanian peace treaty of 1947 confirmed their belonging to the Soviet Union. Today it is part of Moldavia.

[6] Russian Revolution of 1917: Revolution in which the tsarist regime was overthrown in the Russian Empire and, under Lenin, was replaced by the Bolshevik rule. The two phases of the Revolution were: February Revolution, which came about due to food and fuel shortages during World War I, and during which the tsar abdicated and a provisional government took over. The second phase took place in the form of a coup led by Lenin in October/November (October Revolution) and saw the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

[7] Struggle against religion: The 1930s was a time of anti-religion struggle in the USSR. In those years it was not safe to go to synagogue or to church. Places of worship, statues of saints, etc. were removed; rabbis, Orthodox and Roman Catholic priests disappeared behind KGB walls.
[8] Whites (White Army): Counter-revolutionary armed forces that fought against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War. The White forces were very heterogeneous: They included monarchists and liberals - supporters of the Constituent Assembly and the tsar. Nationalist and anti-Semitic attitude was very common among rank-and-file members of the white movement, and expressed in both their propaganda material and in the organization of pogroms against Jews. White Army slogans were patriotic. The Whites were united by hatred towards the Bolsheviks and the desire to restore a ‘one and inseparable’ Russia. The main forces of the White Army were defeated by the Red Army at the end of 1920.

[9] Reds: Red (Soviet) Army supporting the Soviet authorities.

[10] Gangs: During the Russian Civil War there were all kinds of gangs in the Ukraine. Their members came from all the classes of former Russia, but most of them were peasants. Their leaders used political slogans to dress their criminal acts. These gangs were anti-Soviet and anti-Semitic. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children.

[11] Great Patriotic War: On 22nd June 1941 at 5 o’clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War. The German blitzkrieg, known as Operation Barbarossa, nearly succeeded in breaking the Soviet Union in the months that followed. Caught unprepared, the Soviet forces lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the German onslaught in the first weeks of the war. By November 1941 the German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city, and threatened Moscow itself. The war ended for the Soviet Union on 9th May 1945.

[12] Russian stove: Big stone stove stoked with wood. They were usually built in a corner of the kitchen and served to heat the house and cook food. It had a bench that made a comfortable bed for children and adults in wintertime.

[13] Tsimes: Stew made usually of carrots, parsnips, or plums with potatoes.

[14] Transnistria: Area situated between the Bug and Dniester rivers and the Black Sea. The term is derived from the Romanian name for the Dniester (Nistru) and was coined after the occupation of the area by German and Romanian troops in World War II. After its occupation Transnistria became a place for deported Romanian Jews. Systematic deportations began in September 1941. In the course of the next two months, all surviving Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina and a small part of the Jewish population of Old Romania were dispatched across the Dniester. This first wave of deportations reached almost 120,000 by mid-November 1941 when it was halted by Ion Antonescu, the Romanian dictator, upon intervention of the Council of Romanian Jewish Communities. Deportations resumed at the beginning of the summer of 1942, affecting close to 5,000 Jews. A third series of deportations from Old Romania took place in July 1942, affecting Jews who had evaded forced labor decrees, as well as their families, communist sympathizers and Bessarabian Jews who had been in Old Romania and Transylvania during the Soviet occupation. The most feared Transnistrian camps were Vapniarka, Ribnita, Berezovka, Tulcin and Iampol. Most of the Jews deported to camps in Transnistria died between 1941-1943 because of horrible living conditions, diseases and lack of food.

[15] Sholem Aleichem (pen name of Shalom Rabinovich (1859-1916): Yiddish author and humorist, a prolific writer of novels, stories, feuilletons, critical reviews, and poem in Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian. He also contributed regularly to Yiddish dailies and weeklies. In his writings he described the life of Jews in Russia, creating a gallery of bright characters. His creative work is an alloy of humor and lyricism, accurate psychological and details of everyday life. He founded a literary Yiddish annual called Di Yidishe Folksbibliotek (The Popular Jewish Library), with which he wanted to raise the despised Yiddish literature from its mean status and at the same time to fight authors of trash literature, who dragged Yiddish literature to the lowest popular level. The first volume was a turning point in the history of modern Yiddish literature. Sholem Aleichem died in New York in 1916. His popularity increased beyond the Yiddish-speaking public after his death. Some of his writings have been translated into most European languages and his plays and dramatic versions of his stories have been performed in many countries. The dramatic version of Tevye the Dairyman became an international hit as a musical (Fiddler on the Roof) in the 1960s.

[16] Pechora camp: On 11 November 1941 the civil governor of Transnistria issued the deportation of Jews. A camp for Jewish residents of Tulchin (3005 in total) was established in Pechora village Vinnytsya region in December 1941. This is known as the 'Dead Loop'. In total about 9000 people from various towns in Vinnytsya region were kept in the camp. They were accommodated in the former 2-storied recreation center building. There were up to 50 tenants in one room. No provisions were made for the most basic necessities of the inmates. Inmates hardly got any food and the building had no heating. About 2 500 Jews were taken away by Germans for forced labor. None of them returned, they all died from forced labor beyond their strength, lack of food, hunger and diseases. In March 1944 Soviet troops liberated the camp. There were 1550 survivors left in the camp.

[17] All-Union pioneer organization: a communist organization for teenagers between 10 and 15 years old (cf: boy-/ girlscouts in the US). The organization aimed at educating the young generation in accordance with the communist ideals, preparing pioneers to become members of the Komsomol and later the Communist Party. In the Soviet Union, all teenagers were pioneers.

[18] Komsomol: Communist youth political organization created in 1918. The task of the Komsomol was to spread of the ideas of communism and involve the worker and peasant youth in building the Soviet Union. The Komsomol also aimed at giving a communist upbringing by involving the worker youth in the political struggle, supplemented by theoretical education. The Komsomol was more popular than the Communist Party because with its aim of education people could accept uninitiated young proletarians, whereas party members had to have at least a minimal political qualification.

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

[20] Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’: The campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’, i.e. Jews, was initiated in articles in the central organs of the Communist Party in 1949. The campaign was directed primarily at the Jewish intelligentsia and it was the first public attack on Soviet Jews as Jews. ‘Cosmopolitans’ writers were accused of hating the Russian people, of supporting Zionism, etc. Many Yiddish writers as well as the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested in November 1948 on charges that they maintained ties with Zionism and with American ‘imperialism’. They were executed secretly in 1952. The anti-Semitic Doctors’ Plot was launched in January 1953. A wave of anti-Semitism spread through the USSR. Jews were removed from their positions, and rumors of an imminent mass deportation of Jews to the eastern part of the USSR began to spread. Stalin’s death in March 1953 put an end to the campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’.

[21] Maccabi World Union: International Jewish sports organization whose origins go back to the end of the 19th century. A growing number of young Eastern European Jews involved in Zionism felt that one essential prerequisite of the establishment of a national home in Palestine was the improvement of the physical condition and training of ghetto youth. In order to achieve this, gymnastics clubs were founded in many Eastern and Central European countries, which later came to be called Maccabi. The movement soon spread to more countries in Europe and to Palestine. The World Maccabi Union was formed in 1921. In less than two decades its membership was estimated at 200,000 with branches located in most countries of Europe and in Palestine, Australia, South America, South Africa, etc.

[22] Doctors’ Plot: The Doctors’ Plot was an alleged conspiracy of a group of Moscow doctors to murder leading government and party officials. In January 1953, the Soviet press reported that nine doctors, six of whom were Jewish, had been arrested and confessed their guilt. As Stalin died in March 1953, the trial never took place. The official paper of the Party, the Pravda, later announced that the charges against the doctors were false and their confessions obtained by torture. This case was one of the worst anti-Semitic incidents during Stalin’s reign. In his secret speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 Khrushchev stated that Stalin wanted to use the Plot to purge the top Soviet leadership.

[23] Khrushchev, Nikita (1894-1971): Soviet communist leader. After Stalin’s death in 1953, he became first secretary of the Central Committee, in effect the head of the Communist Party of the USSR. In 1956, during the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev took an unprecedented step and denounced Stalin and his methods. He was deposed as premier and party head in October 1964. In 1966 he was dropped from the Party's Central Committee.

[24] Twentieth Party Congress: At the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956 Khrushchev publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what had happened in the USSR during Stalin’s leadership.

[25] Mandatory job assignment in the USSR: Graduates of higher educational institutions had to complete a mandatory 2-year job assignment issued by the institution from which they graduated. After finishing this assignment young people were allowed to get employment at their discretion in any town or organization.

[26] October Revolution Day: October 25 (according to the old calendar), 1917 went down in history as victory day for the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia. This day is the most significant date in the history of the USSR. Today the anniversary is celebrated as ‘Day of Accord and Reconciliation’ on November 7.

[27] Victory Day in Russia (9th May): National holiday to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II and honor the Soviets who died in the war.
[28] Six-Day-War: The first strikes of the Six-Day-War happened on 5th June 1967 by the Israeli Air Force. The entire war only lasted 132 hours and 30 minutes. The fighting on the Egyptian side only lasted four days, while fighting on the Jordanian side lasted three. Despite the short length of the war, this was one of the most dramatic and devastating wars ever fought between Israel and all of the Arab nations. This war resulted in a depression that lasted for many years after it ended. The Six-Day-War increased tension between the Arab nations and the Western World because of the change in mentalities and political orientations of the Arab nations.
[29] Yom Kippur War: The Arab-Israeli War of 1973, also known as the Yom Kippur War or the Ramadan War, was a war between Israel on one side and Egypt and Syria on the other side. It was the fourth major military confrontation between Israel and the Arab states. The war lasted for three weeks: it started on 6th October 1973 and ended on 22nd October on the Syrian front and on 26th October on the Egyptian front.

[30] Brezhnev, Leonid, Ilyich (1906–1982) Soviet leader. He joined the Communist Party in 1931 and rose steadily in its hierarchy, becoming a secretary of the party’s central committee in 1952. In 1957, as protégé of Khrushchev, he became a member of the presidium (later politburo) of the central committee. He was chairman of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet, or titular head of state. Following Khrushchev’s fall from power in 1964, which Brezhnev helped to engineer, he was named first secretary of the Communist Party. Although sharing power with Kosygin, Brezhnev emerged as the chief figure in Soviet politics. In 1968, in support of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he enunciated the ‘Brezhnev doctrine,’ asserting that the USSR could intervene in the domestic affairs of any Soviet bloc nation if communist rule was threatened. While maintaining a tight rein in Eastern Europe, he favored closer relations with the Western powers, and he helped bring about a détente with the United States. In 1977 he assumed the presidency of the USSR. Under Gorbachev, Brezhnev’s regime was criticized for its corruption and failed economic policies.

[31] Gorbachev, Mikhail (1931- ): Soviet political leader. Gorbachev joined the Communist Party in 1952 and gradually moved up in the party hierarchy. In 1970 he was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, where he remained until 1990. In 1980 he joined the politburo, and in 1985 he was appointed general secretary of the party. In 1986 he embarked on a comprehensive program of political, economic, and social liberalization under the slogans of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The government released political prisoners, allowed increased emigration, attacked corruption, and encouraged the critical reexamination of Soviet history. The Congress of People’s Deputies, founded in 1989, voted to end the Communist Party’s control over the government and elected Gorbachev executive president. Gorbachev dissolved the Communist Party and granted the Baltic states independence. Following the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States in 1991, he resigned as president. Since 1992, Gorbachev has headed international organizations.

[32] Perestroika (Russian for restructuring): Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s, associated with the name of Soviet politician Mikhail Gorbachev. The term designated the attempts to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized, market-oriented economy. Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratize the Communist Party organization. By 1991, perestroika was declining and was soon eclipsed by the dissolution of the USSR.

Larisa SHYHMAN
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ludmila Ovcharenko
Date of interview: December 2003

Larisa Shyhman is a short woman always ready to smile. She has a short haircut, gray hair and wears trousers and a little sweater. She looks young for her years. She has quick moves and manages to do housework during our conversation. She talks laughing about things, even if they were far from fun. She puts in some Ukrainian words, though she speaks Russian. She lives in a two-bedroom apartment in a standard house built in the 1970s. She lets one room to a student. She has old furniture of the 1970s, but it’s a very clean and cozy place where she lives.

My paternal grandfather and grandmother lived in Pervaya or Vtoreaya Slobodka near Kiev, I am not quite sure where exactly. Now it’s in Darnitsa district of Kiev, but at that time it was on the outskirt of the city. Kiev was within the Pale of Settlement [1], but Jews, except doctors, lawyers and 1 or 2 guild merchants [2], were not allowed to reside in the town. My father father’s name was Haim Trahtenberg. He died before the revolution of 1917 [3] and I don’t know his date or place of birth or anything about his family. They said he was a construction contractor. My grandfather died young and my grandmother used to say: ‘One shouldn’t marry an ill man’. She said this to her children and grandchildren. I don’t know whether it was a traditional Jewish funeral. I think my grandfather was religious and observed all Jewish traditions since all children got Jewish names.

Grandmother Rosa (her Jewish name was Reiza) came from Grebenki, Kiev province, 50 km from Kiev. I don’t know when she was born. She was a beautiful woman and didn’t look like a Jew. I know little about her family. All I know is that she had few brothers. One of them moved to America before the revolution of 1917. He owned a factory. He was married and his only daughter died in an accident. My grandmother told me that before World War I [4], during pogroms [5] in Grebenki she kept her brothers in hiding in cells and she proudly walked in the streets, a beauty that she was, and everybody greeted her ‘Miss, Miss’. She didn’t fear anyone and nobody did her any harm. She sang Ukrainian songs beautifully and spoke Ukrainian and Yiddish. She didn’t know Russian. When I remember her, she spoke Yiddish little. There were Slavic members of the family and she spoke Ukrainian. I don’t know how my grandparents met and whether they had a Jewish wedding, but I believe they did since it couldn’t have been otherwise at the time. After the wedding my grandmother moved in with my grandfather in Slobodka. They had six children. My grandmother was a housewife. Their oldest son was Moisey and then in 1898 my father Lev was born, then came Isaac, Mikhail and Grigoriy and in 1915 their daughter Yelizaveta was born. Shortly after their daughter was born my grandfather died leaving my grandmother with six children to take care of. She went to work as a broker to be able to give education to her children. They finished a secondary school and some of them continued studies. She was a fighter and she raised all children all right. She never remarried. She probably didn’t want to, and, on the other hand, who would want to marry a widow with so many children? I think she was too busy to think about marriage, but she loved men and couldn’t bear girls.

Their family wasn’t religious and I don’t know why. They didn’t celebrate holidays or Saturday. The only Jewish sign was matzah that my grandmother’s brother sent them from America at Pesach, but my grandmother never showed her appreciation of it… There might be something wrong about her life after my grandfather died or it was something else, I don’t know; she never talked to me about it. Or perhaps, she was just too busy.

After the revolution, when the Pale of Settlement was annulled, the family moved to Lipki, an aristocratic neighborhood in Kiev. Only wealthier and intelligent families lived there before the revolution. During the revolution they were forced out of there and Party authorities and NKVD [6] bosses and department moved to Lipki. Only high-level Party and military bosses lived in Lipki. There was a huge apartment where we lived, but it was like a communal apartment [7]. I don’t know how my grandmother managed to move there with her family. Later my grandmother leased or sold two rooms, I wouldn’t tell… There was a Jewish family living there.

Moisey, the oldest son, everybody called him Masey, finished a Railroad College. He was an engineer. His wife Manya was a Jew; they didn’t have children. My father’s family was multinational: Jews, Russians, and Ukrainians… Such a mixture. Only Masey happened to have a Jewish wife and the rest of my aunts were Russian or Ukrainians. My Granny didn’t worry about that. Moisey died of some problems with kidneys before the Great Patriotic War [8].

Uncle Isaac had higher education. He was chief financial officer at a metallurgical plant in Konstantinovka Donetsk region where he lived before WWII. I don’t know anything about his first and second wives, but I knew his third wife Anastasia well. She looked after the children, he had two, before he married her. She was a very nice and kind lady. She died after the war… Isaac’s son Grisha was born in 1920 or 1921. He studied in a tank school from where he went to the front. They said he perished near Kiev in 1943… But I don’t know for sure. Their daughter Basia was 3 years my senior. She finished a college and in the late 1980s they moved to USA. They live there with their children and grandchildren. Basia has two daughters: Sopha and Faina. When Basia’s husband died in the 1970s, all Odessa came to his funeral. I don’t know who he was, but he was helping many people. He was rich. Basia died in America in 2003. I didn’t keep in touch with her. Asia, Isaac and his third wife Anastasia’s daughter, was born in 1937. She went to America with her daughters. She calls my sister Maya occasionally. Asia married a Russian man whose father was a colonel. They had a house in Odessa [9]. Isaac and his family moved to Odessa some time after the Great Patriotic War. Asia joined him after she divorced her husband in the 1970s. Her husband was a drunkard. He was very handy and smart, but he drank a lot. Asia has two children: daughter Nastia and son Igor. They are nice people and do well in life.

Uncle Mikhail was an NKVD officer. When arrests and purges [10] began in 1937 he started drinking and quit his job. He couldn’t bear it: they were arresting decent and intelligent people… He had many different women. He got married in 1937, but I don’t know whether it was his first marriage. His wife’s name was Murah. She was attractive and sewed well, but after my uncle died we hardly ever saw each other. I remember much better that my uncle had an affair. Her name was Nadezhda, but I don’t remember her last name. She lived in Moscow and visited him. He loved her a lot, but it didn’t work out. My mother said that Nadezhda was an illegal daughter of a prince or count and that her sisters lived in France where they left before the revolution of 1917 and she stayed. Her stepfather treated her like he would his own daughter. She was an intelligent and beautiful woman. Her father had a mansion in Khmelnitskiy. In the late 1920s Mikhail was NKVD chief in Khmelnitskiy and they met. She often visited us and my grandmother liked her a lot. She died in Moscow in the 1960s. Uncle Mikhail perished like a hero near Smolensk during the Great Patriotic War. His name is engraved on a gravestone there. My aunt went there to annual meetings at the invitation of a general…

My father’s third brother Grigoriy died young before the Great Patriotic War. He had testicle cancer. He worked as a joiner for my father. Grigoriy was single.

My father’s sister Yelizaveta finished school and worked at a sugar factory in Kagarlyk near Kiev. It was hard to find a job in Kiev. She graduated from University and worked as a librarian. She met her husband Zakhar Chechin, Russian, working in the library in the Aviation College. He became like a father to me later… They lived in a civilian marriage before the great Patriotic War and got married much later.

After finishing school my father went to work. During WWI he was a private at the front fighting against Germans… He also served in The Red Army during the revolution and Civil War [11]. This is the way he was. He was a communist and believed in all these ideas… As for my grandmother, she couldn’t care less about politics, so it was his own choice.

My mother’s parents came from Dymer near Kiev, in about 70 km, in Kiev region. My grandfather’s name was Solomon Lubalin (Jewish name Shlyoma). His friends called him Shlyomka. He was born in 1867. All I know about his family is that his brother, whose name I don’t remember, was a manufacturer and lived in Kiev before the revolution of 1917. He owned a small sugar factory. His children studied in grammar schools. My grandfather lived in Dymer. He was big, handsome, tall and broad-shouldered. He didn’t look like a Jew, perhaps, only his Jewish accent betrayed him. He spoke Ukrainian and Jewish. They said that during pogroms he pretended to be deaf and mute to conceal his accent. His friends plotted this disguise. They said: ‘You, Shlyoma, pretend that you are mute and we would talk for you’. So he was surviving. He had many friends in Dymer and they were Jewish and Ukrainian. They came to see him and sat at the table to have a shot of spirit, he used to drink spirit and smoked self-made cigarettes. I remember them sitting at the table recalling their youth. It even seems to me that my grandfather had more Ukrainian friends. In the past, at the time of Jewish towns, people didn’t have conflicts… There was no segregation, all were equal. However, my grandfather was wealthy and greedy. He was manager of a manor in Dymer and kept livestock at home: cows and goats…

I think my grandmother and grandfather had a religious wedding. My grandfather observed Jewish traditions all his life. I don’t know anything about my grandmother: she died young in the 1910s. She fell ill with throat tuberculosis. One of her sons contracted it and died, too. He was very the youngest. My grandfather had three children to raise. My mother was the oldest. She was born in 1902 or 1903, I don’t remember exactly, her sister Yevgenia was born in 1905, and then their brother Mikhail was born. Soon my grandfather remarried. His wife’s name was Lisa Vaisbuch. She wasn’t wicked, but she was indifferent, I would say. She didn’t care about her husband’s children. She had her own: Yevsey and Sasha. Uncle Yevsey was chief accountant, I don’t know where he worked. He was a nice person and he was also at the front… He kept a pig in the cellar. I remember this well.

My grandfather’s family observed all Jewish traditions. Since they didn’t force anybody I remember little. He had a seat at the synagogue, an expensive one. He didn’t wear anything special in everyday life and didn’t have payes. However, on holidays he put on special clothes and prayed. There was different food cooked, I am not sure whether it was kosher, but it was a traditional Jewish cuisine, that’s for sure

After the revolution of 1917 my grandfather’s family moved to Kiev. My grandfather sold his house and livestock and bought an apartment in the Podol [12]. It was a nice apartment with many rooms. After they moved my grandfather began to sell furs. His friends from Dymer who were hunters brought him furs.

My mother sister’s name was Yevgenia Solomonovna. For some reason my mother has the patronymic of Shlyomovna in her passport and my aunt is Solomonovna [the customary polite address in Russian is by first and second name. The latter (patronymic) consists of one’s father’s name and a suffix: –ovna for women and –ovich for men, i.e. if Ghita’s father’s name was Iosif, her patronymic is ‘Iosifovna’], I don’t know how this happened to be so. She finished a few grades at school and married her stepbrother Yasha, my grandfather second wife Lisa’s son. They never told me about their wedding, but I think it was a traditional Jewish wedding. My aunt was a housewife and she did it well. She lived to turn 80. They had a good life, but after the war things didn’t go well. Her husband returned from the front and worked as an accountant and some time later he happened to have cancer and died. Her son, my cousin brother Izia, two years younger than me, born in 1927, was a very handsome guy. After finishing a Silicate College he worked as an engineer. Izia died young in the late 1940s – throat cancer. Yevgenia’s grandson married a Russian girl from Ivanovo (today Russia) when he was in college. They died in a car accident in the late 1950s, very young. They went to visit her mother in Ivanovo traveling with their baby…

All I know about my mother’s brother Mikhail is that he worked as a joiner before the war. He got married shortly before the Great Patriotic War and went to the front. His baby was born afterward, but I don’t know exactly when… Mikhail perished at the front and we didn’t know where or how. We were not in touch with his family.

My mother’s name was Basheva Lubalina, she was usually called Sheva or Shura in the Russian manner [13]. She was born in 1902. Since my grandfather was so greedy my mother finished only two grades, probably then my grandmother died and her father didn’t want her to continue studies. So my mother had little education and worked as a seamstress.

I have no idea how my parents met, they never told me. They had a civil wedding. As I already mentioned, my father was an atheist and my mother didn’t seem to believe in anything living with my grandmother. When they got married my mother moved in with my father. My father was a joiner and my mother became a housewife. They had a good life. My father wasn’t tall, my mother was taller and somehow bigger than him… My father was thin and baldish. He was nice and cheerful. He danced well and he passed it to me. He was very honest and decent and my mother was kind, quiet and phlegmatic. One could tell at once that my father was he head of the family and my mother relied on him in everything.

I was born in Kiev in 1925. They named me Larisa and I didn’t have a Jewish name. Before the war we lived with grandmother Rosa, my father’s mother. We had a huge family: my uncles and their wives and my aunt with her husband… We lived in Pechersk in the very center of Kiev. Our apartment looked like a communal apartment: huge, just gorgeous. There was everything there, and what a kitchen… Everything was big, there was stucco molding, a fireplace and radiators… There were family gatherings in the kitchen on Sundays. There were long dinners, there was alcohol on the table and there were conversations. An interesting family, close. My parents and we lived in a big room. Uncle Moisey and his wife lived in a small room next door to ours. All different people, but we went along with all neighbors. I remember my birthday when I was a small girl, my mother didn’t have money to arrange a party, and she said we couldn’t celebrate, but then our neighbors came with their food and there was a party.

I went to kindergarten and everybody liked me. What a nice girl, they said. And I was funny. There were two sisters working as tutors in our kindergarten. Their last name was Volkonskiy. They were educated and cultured, those two sisters. They were older ladies and didn’t have any relatives. They liked me a lot and they asked my mother’s permission to take me to their home. Later they disappeared and nobody heard about them again.

On holidays we visited my mother’s father. I learned about Jewish traditions there, but I wasn’t interested, though I remember holidays. Of course, Chanukkah was children’s favorite holidays. We were given money… However greedy my grandfather was, he gave us money. I also remember him giving us nuts. Grandfather also wore something strange… We, children, what could we know? We laughed.

I have vague memories about famine in 1932-33 [14]. It wasn’t so bad in Kiev. Big town – they didn’t let it suffer that much. We weren’t wealthy and we didn’t have much. I remember that there wasn’t good food… When I went to a summer camp, had some bread with me. There were bread coupons… My parents had to save to buy a radio or a coat for my mother…

When I was small, my aunt Yelizaveta worked in NKVD library and later she went to work at the library in Aviation College. There was a cinema theater in the NKVD library and there were concerts. I always went there… I often ran to see my aunt. There was a canteen where they had nice food. My aunt didn’t have a children and she bought me food. I liked reading very much. My aunt had a wonderful collection of books. My aunt and her husband had a small apartment on the third floor and we lived on the second floor… She left her keys with us and I used to go there to read books.

I went to Russian school #86 [15] in Pechersk that used to be a grammar school before the revolution. There were naughty children in our class and so was I… We were friends. We used to fight with children from other streets, we used to do many things together. There was no national segregation. We were all friends. Nobody thought ‘Is he a Jew? Is he not? I think it started after the Great Patriotic War…

There was also a children’s club nearby. During its construction we used to call it a ‘chocolate house’. It’s still called so. It’s of chocolate color. They invited famous people like Petrovskiy [editor`s note: Petrovskiy, Grigoriy Ivanovich (1878-1958) – Soviet Party and state official. From 1919 – chairman of VCIK Ukraine. 1937-38 deputy chairman of the supreme Soviet of the USSR. From 1940 – deputy director of the Museum of Revolution of the USSR], he lived across the street from our home. He came to tell children about the Soviet regime and our army… There were many activities in the club and children could choose what they liked to do. Children were involved in many activities, they didn’t go loose like they do now. We also played outside, we played football and I was a goalkeeper. Well, it was different… I used to do modeling, drawing and embroidery. I hated circus and there were no interesting children’s programs.

We played football and teased the children of Kossior [16], who were always accompanied by two agents. Two agents escorted them to school and we teased them… We said, you are two little ones, they don’t allow you to be by yourselves… Many Party officials lived nearby. Kossior was a common man. He even gave us rides in his car… Later Khrushchev [17] lived in his house. Khrushchev’s daughter was a very nice lady… His mother often sat in the yard. Poor thing, she was lonely at home and she used to sit in the yard on her stool wearing a white kerchief, a Ukrainian woman. She watched children playing. And we were naughty…

It was fearful in 1937, wow… People were taken away. There were searches in our home: they were looking for gold in Jewish homes. We were an ordinary family, but they still searched, turning the whole apartment upside down. It felt terrible. My grandmother woke up and there were NKVD officers standing over her demanding gold. Later the situation was resolved, nobody was arrested… I think they didn’t since my uncle Mikhail was working in NKVD. But still, we got so scared then… All we had were these golden earrings with little emeralds – I always wear them: my aunt gave them to me as my wedding gift. Perhaps, my aunt had some jewelry, but just small ones, while there was a common belief that all Jews were rich… When there were so many common workers among Jews… For example, my husband’s father was a shoemaker. They were far from rich, they were poor… Only anti-Semites believed that there were no working Jews, there were only Jews in trade…’. They also used to say that Jews were ‘at the front in Tashkent’ [Editor’s note: Tashkent is a town in Middle Asia; it was the town where many people evacuated during the Great Patriotic War, including many Jewish families. Many people had an idea that all Jewish population was in evacuation rather than at the front and anti-Semites spoke about it in mocking tones] … How about my close ones? So many relatives perished at the front! But I think those ant-Semitic talks were inspired after the war… When I went to school the situation was all right: I finished 8 grades; I was a pioneer and then a Komsomol member [18] – this was mandatory at my time.

I believe that because Mikhail was a ChK officer, my grandmother managed to keep in touch with her brother in America [19]. Nobody asked any questions. He even wanted to have one of the children when his daughter died. My mother had two of us – on 1 April 1937 my sister Maya was born. But my parents didn’t give any of us to him: they didn’t know what was waiting ahead…

There were no discussions about the war in our houses and we only heard on the radio that a war began. At first there were talks that it wasn’t going to last long and there was nothing to be worried about, but in August, when it became clear that German troops were advancing, he decided to send my mother, Maya and me to uncle Isaac in Konstantinovka Donetsk region. When the war began, my father said from the beginning that all Jews had to leave their homes since Germans would have no mercy toward them. I don’t know how he knew… So, he took us to the station where we boarded a train. He said ‘I’ll be back soon’ and he left and the train departed and we never saw him again. It turned out that my father and uncle went to a military registry office to volunteer to the front and they were recruited to the army immediately. We only heard about it from letters when we arrived in Donbass… Since my father was a high-skilled joiner, he could have a delay from being sent to the front, but he volunteered there. At first, he was near Lubny and we received his letters from there, but then we were on the go again and there were no letters from him. Later we got to know from the archives that he perished in 100 km from Kiev, near Fastov, in 1943.

We didn’t stay long in Konstantinovka. There were air raids, it was horrific… The metallurgical plant where my uncle was working was evacuating to Siberia and we moved with it. When we left we saw how workers blasted the furnaces. When we were on the way my mother decided it was better to join my grandfather. He had left Kiev before us and went to a village in Krasnodar region. So, we changed our train for another one moving in that direction. There were combat actions in Rostov already and we just got into a frontline vicinity… Maya was only 4 years old. To get out of there the train made a detour, but it didn’t work that well and as a result, we got to the vicinity of Stalingrad (present Volgograd, today Russia), in a steppe. The frontline was nearing Stalingrad and we got in an air raid somewhere in the steppe. The others were running around and I stood still as if I grew roots where I was. I was standing by the train with my mouth open. I was gazing around. Nothing happened this time. My mother was sitting with Maya under her wide skirt… She found two shell splinters beside her afterward. How did it happen that she wasn’t even injured?

Later we went Astrakhan on a barge. It was cold, but we didn’t have any winter clothes. We left Kiev when it was summer. We were told that holding Germans back was a matter of one or two months… Maya was freezing and she fell ill with tuberculosis of her knee joint. We almost starved to death on the road: there was nothing to eat. Only once in a while we could get some boiled cereal…

In Astrakhan we were accommodated in a school building. Somehow teachers noticed our family among so many other people there. They took us to their teacher’s office and gave us some food. We could only have a bit at first to avoid stomach problems. Maya got warm, but there was something wrong about the way she looked. One could tell she was ill, but nobody knew what happened to her. We thought it resulted from her getting so very cold on the way there. The situation in this school was horrible: children were dying, there were so many coffins. Terrible. Then I fell ill with scarlet fever and was taken to hospital. 2-3 days later Maya fell ill with diphtheria. She was taken to another hospital. I had a good treatment. Chief of my department was a nice and sympathetic man. He gave us food to our heart’s content and I gathered it in a bag to give it to my mother. Since it was an infectious department and there was no communication allowed I threw this bag through a window. I even had my tea without sugar to send it to Maya to bring her to recovery… Later, when I recovered this chief of department didn’t want to let me go. He said: ‘Are you going back to this school? Stay here, at least, it is warm here”, but I was eager to be with my mother like all children…

When Maya recovered we were taken to a German settlement [20], in the Volga region. There was a Nemtsepovolzhskiy district in Saratov region with German and Ukrainian population. Those Ukrainian migrants moved to the Volga area during the reign of Yekaterina [21] or Soviet authorities deported some [22], as unreliable residents. The gave their villages names of Ukrainian towns: Kievka, Poltavka, Kharkovka…. So we lived in Kharkovka. Here was ‘ded Vasyl’ [‘ded’ literally means ‘old man’ in Russian]. When he saw us he said at once: ‘I am taking this family with me’. So it’s only in his home we recovered our feelings. I went to deliver water to fields. I had a strange horse looking like a camel. I also made haystacks and worked on a combine unit. All kinds of work I did. Ded Vasyl liked me a lot. I used to read him the Bible. He couldn’t read. It was a Bible or Testament, a huge book, I don’t remember exactly. He loved it when I was at home… He always sent me milk or something else. So we were all friends. My mother worked in a vegetable garden. Maya was already ill, but she went to kindergarten anyway.

In 1942 my aunt Yelizaveta found us there. Uncle Zakhar was mobilized and sent to Cheliabinsk and my aunt was with her Aviation College in Aktyubinsk, Kazakhstan, 2500 km from Kiev. She finally found us and we moved to where she was. She was afraid to see us miserable, starved and exhausted, but we were from a kolkhoz and looked well fed, pink and beautiful, round cheeks this big. The situation was worse in Aktyubinsk. My mother lived separately renting a small room from Kazakh people: terrible smell, dirt… Terrible… My granny and I lived with my aunt since there was no room for me where my mother was. Maya was taken to hospital immediately and they diagnosed her tuberculosis of the knee joint. They provided medical treatment for her, but they couldn’t bring her to final recovery and she became an invalid of group 3: she was lame. I became an apprentice at a power plant to obtain my card. What I did there? I cleaned it and came home all dirty with fuel oil, with only my teeth white… Looking terrible, dirty… Then my aunt employed me as a courier. Winters are severely cold in Aktyubinsk and I had my feet frostbitten the moment I started work. I only had rubber galoshes to wear. There was a school of radio operators opened in Aktyubinsk. I finished it and went to work as a radio operator in 1942. The Morse code and so on. I worked with planes, sending them to Tashkent (today Uzbekistan) where they had crews formed and then they returned, landed where we were and we sent them to the front. This was how I worked.

I also went to dance in a dance group in 1942-43. There was an aviation school teaching pilots. They were going directly to the front. There was an amateur performers’ club. I danced well. We gave concerts in hospitals. I looked like a girl, but I was a teenage girl and felt like seeing boys. All my friends had boyfriends and only I was alone. Later I had my admirers as well. One pilot wanted to take me to near Moscow area. He was stationed in Astafievo. Then political officer and everybody around were telling me: ‘Go ahead! What are you going to do here?’ Still I was concerned. It happened then that they abandoned girls after they took them away. I thought: ‘I will go with him and he would abandon me. What will I do?’ There was another pilot from Chkalov, a tall one. He flew a fighter plane. He also wanted to take me with him and I hided away when it was time for him to fly away… He was looking for me, but I didn’t want to fly away… I was merry and always smiled… a coquette…

In 1944, when Kiev was liberated, uncle Zakhar sent us an invitation from Cheliabinsk. They didn’t let me go since I was subject to the draft already. I had this status ever since and even had a uniform and three insignias when I was in Kiev. So, I didn’t have permission to go. My family left in haste: Maya was taken with plaster on her leg. Aunt Yelizaveta, Granny and Maya left for Kiev. My mother went to her father in Kuibyshev [Samara at present, today Russia] before (he moved there when the frontline advanced to Krasnodar region). She didn’t get along with grandmother. Daughter-in-law, you know. From Kuibyshev she went to Kiev. I stayed in Aktyubinsk alone. I seldom think about it. These are hard memories. I don’t like them. I felt so hurt, I didn’t even write letters. I worked. I saw so many horrible things… I still remember planes crashing into the mountains in the fog, but they didn’t cancel flight: it was a war. My aunt wrote me: ‘Request transfer to Kiev’. It wasn’t easy to obtain permission to come to Kiev.

One day in 1945 chief of the republic’s department arrived and I described this situation to him and he said: ‘You know, I cannot send you to Kiev, but I can arrange for you to go a bearing location school in Baku’, - location operators land planes, special training. So I agreed and went to Baku in Azerbaijan, 3500 km from Kiev where I finished this school. I was there on Victory Day on 9 May 1945. Everybody was so happy… Meanwhile my aunt addressed deputy chief of the department in Ukraine. He wrote a letter requesting my transfer to Kiev upon finishing school in Baku. I arrived in 1945 and went to work as a radio operator in Zhuliany airport. I worked there until retirement.

When my grandmother, mother and Maya arrived in Kiev, there were some ministers living in our apartment. They didn’t let anybody in. My grandmother received a room since uncle Mikhail was a hero of the war. She died in 1945-46. My mother and sister went to live with my mother’s father. My grandfather also lost his luxurious apartment in Podol. After the war he either bought or received a two-bedroom apartment in a one-storied building in Podol. I also moved there after I arrived from Baku. My grandmother and his wife lived in a bigger room and my mother, Maya and I lived in a small 13-square-meter room. He was not very happy about it and we even had to go to court to make him allow us to live there, but why talk about it…

‘Struggle against cosmopolites’ [23] didn’t have any impact on us. We were miserably poor. However, there was a search in my grandfather’s apartment one day n 1948. I was at work. They took away my grandfather’s furs. Those KGB officers probably knew that my father perished at the front. They saw how poor we were, so they put the best furs under my sister on the bed and told her to sit on the pillows. So it was. Even they felt sorry for us and left a portion of what they found during the search for us to be able to buy food after they left. They saw how greedy grandfather was. He picked on us even about little things. For example, my grandfather always hid away his clock and we didn’t have one at all. At 7 a.m. I ad to be in Kreschatik [Kreschatik is the main street of Kiev], from where there was a bus to the airport. So a janitor woke me up whistling from outside. I got up and walked to Kreschatik. Since it was still dark in winter a militiaman on duty escorted me there. He then even proposed to me, but I didn’t want him. When my sister was in a recreation center and there was plaster all over her body he never even sent her an apple… He had apples getting rotten under his pillow and he was far from poor.

Actually, I never faced anti-Semitism. My colleagues respected me at work. Only once, during the period of ‘doctors’ plot’ [24], one colleague used to talk about it whenever head of department came in and then repeated: ‘Do you see it now? Do you?’, but then another colleague said: ‘Just leave her alone’. And that was all. Well, Stalin’s death, the 20th Congress [25]. Yes, I can tell, it was a shock, but then it passed – there were other things to think about.

I didn’t continue my studies. I didn’t have a chance: Maya was ill and my mother had no education to get a job with a decent salary… she was so miserable after my father perished, everything went wrong and we were always hard up, but she wanted to get something nice for me to wear. I was young and was to find a fiancé and there was nothing for me to put on…

But I didn’t brood about things. I was cheerful and pretty. I danced in the ensemble of the Civil Air Fleet. We danced folk dances. Even Veryovka [26] wanted to take me to his group, they were just starting. He wanted to have me and Tania Belaya, he liked us a lot... I think we danced well. I shouldn’t boast, of course. I also danced solo… We gave concerts in the Harrison and in Aviation College… We performed a lot.

My husband’s name was Abram Shyhman. His Jewish name was Abram-Moishe. Everybody called him Misha: he chose this name for himself, but his family called him Abram. He was born in Kiev on 21 July 1926. He was one year and a half younger than me. His family was more religious than mine: they celebrated holidays and spoke Jewish at home… His father Samuel was a shoemaker and then he worked at a fish factory and storage facility. His mother Faina sewed at home. His parents lived with his sister Maria (5 years older than him), and they also celebrated holidays there. I remember we visited them at Pesach. However, I don’t know whether it was just a tribute to traditions for her. It seems to me, it was his mother who observed it all. Misha left home at 16. He wasn’t religious. He had other things to do. After finishing a college Maria worked as an economist. After the war she married Elia Zhernovskiy, a Jew. Her husband was wealthy. He was an economist and during the war he participated in combat actions. In 1948 their daughter Natalia was born, a veterinary, she lives in Kiev. In 1951 Pyotr was born. He is in America now.

Misha finished 2 grades in a Jewish school and then he went to an ordinary Ukrainian school. He finished the 10th grade during the war. His family was in evacuation in Fergana (today Uzbekistan) and he actually finished secondary school by correspondence. In Fergana he was recruited to the army. He was 16 years old. They gave him a rifle that was almost bigger than him. They say he was so thin that he could hardly hold this rifle… He was very smart and they decided he could serve where he was. He became a radio operator. He did so well at school that they made him a teacher in a school for radio operators in Fergana. Although he was still a boy, he was smart. After the war he got a transfer to the vicinity of Mukachevo in Ukraine where he stayed two years. So he served in the army 7 years since wartime was not included in the term of service. Then Misha moved to Kiev and became chief of the locator department. He also studied at the evening department in college. He finished Radio Faculty of Kiev Polytechnic College. He was very smart, indeed: mathematician, physicist and in general… He made 19 inventions, all of them practical.

We met at work. He was so serious and sound-minded and I teased him. Misha conducted our political classes. He lectured on political economy, politics and communism… He was a communist and believed in the party. He was devoted to its ideas. Just imagine: after working a night shift we were sleepy and he was telling us about communism… Khrushchev said then that we would build communism. I found it funny: we were hungry and cold, so who could speak about communism? But these political hours were mandatory. We began to meet in a strange way: he was seeing my friend, but then he decided to meet with me for some reason. I didn’t even think about him. Frankly, I didn’t want to get married. Why marry? I knew plots and danced in my group and always had enough admirers. I was afraid. I didn’t like housework, it wasn’t for me. I liked reading and going to theaters and cinema. My grandfather kept grumbling that I should get married. They even found a man for me, but I didn’t care. It was time for me, but I didn’t want to.

Then Rimma, my friend, began to see Misha. I always had many friends. We went to the cinema once. He took Rimma home and then he went home with me. And then it started. Actually, I had been seeing a pilot from Ashkhabad before. He wanted to take me with him. He flew there and was away for a long time and there came Misha. When he came back to take me with him a year and a half later, I was married and pregnant. I said: ‘You should have come earlier…’ But I loved him anyway. Misha was smart, and it was interesting to spend time with him. I was fond of astronomy and he told me interesting things about stars…Then we had a walk in Podol and were passing a civil registry office and he said: ‘Let’s go in’, and I said: ‘Let us’. So we registered our marriage. No parties, no traditions. We were poor. My aunt, when she heard about it, she ran out to buy me tights; mine was all patched. We got married in April 1954.

He came to live with us in our room with my sister, my mother: how I managed to get pregnant there I cannot imagine! Then on 8 December 1954 Leonid was born. So we lived in this tiny room. Misha’s department in the airport was closed and he was sent to work in design institute ‘Geophyspribor’. Misha also studied and we sent Leonid to a nursery school when he was three months old. I went back to work. Our parents couldn’t support us: my mother was poor and his parents were workers. Our first years of marital life were very hard.

In 1957 my grandfather died at the age of 90. He left a lot of money, but his wife took it all. The Jewish community made arrangements for his Jewish funeral in the Jewish cemetery.

Our life began to get better gradually. Misha was valued in ‘Geophyspribor’, he worked there for a long time. He was training instructor at first, it was something different and I don’t know any details. Then he got a transfer to a design office department. Misha earned well and received significant bonuses for implementation of his inventions. He was even awarded a silver medal for them. He was a joiner and then electronic equipment specialist. He made tools. When he had his both feet on the ground he wanted me to quit my job and stay at home, he said: ‘if you want to go back to work, I will help you with employment’. But his mother told me to keep my job since otherwise I would wear an apron and slippers for the rest of my life. I also wanted to stay at work. I liked my collective, I enjoyed it there and my colleagues liked and respected me. So after my second son Gennadiy was born on 17 March 1961 I returned to work at the airport.

My husband’s colleagues also treated him well and I don’t think he faced any oppression due to his nationality. My sons did well at school where they had many friends. We had a good life and never considered departing from this country. Even when our children began having problems with ‘line item #5’ [27] when entering colleges and getting job assignments [28], I didn’t think about it. We managed somehow.

My sister Maya finished 10 grades at school and didn’t continue her studies. She spent a lot of time in hospitals. She worked as furnace operator and salt loader and then she was a janitor, I don’t know. Her husband’s last name is Zhitnitskiy, they were introduced to one another being invalids. Her husband’s name was David, he was a Jew, everybody called him Dima. He was also an invalid of grade I. He served in the army in Lithuania and there was something I don’t know there: some combat action, I don’t know any details. To make a long story short, they took him home when he was paralyzed. He also had a rear disease: his liver generated silver. Doctors from Moscow tried to treat him and even an English professor. They actually brought him to recovery. His hands didn’t function, but they rescued him. Their son Vladimir was born in 1978. When Maya got pregnant there was a group of doctors watching her. Her husband died of cirrhosis in the 1980s, his liver failed him.

My mother died in 1976, she was buried in a town cemetery in Kiev, there were no traditions followed.

My older son Leonid took after his father, he is very smart. Gennadiy is also smart, but Leonid is smarter. He was very handsome, everybody said so. He was tall, my both sons are tall. Leonid had excellent marks and went to enter a college in Moscow. He wanted to be a theoretical physicist. There was the ‘fifth line item’ problem and it was hard for Jews to enter colleges. He passed his exams in physics and mathematic wonderfully , there were no marks, only plus marks. He got three plus marks in physics and three in mathematic. He even solved some problems in the same way as the teacher who was checking his test. However, he was not so successful with his composition… Misha didn’t mentioned it to him and I didn’t know either that it was better to make it short, but with no mistakes. His subjects was ‘Scientists all over the world’ and he got confused. Who knows correct spelling of those Japanese names? He got a ‘two’. And he returned home. We hastily submitted his documents to Kiev Polytechnic College. They wanted him to fail, of course. Here in Kiev. Anti-Semitism was not so strong in Moscow. He was so bright with his answers, particularly in physics, that one lecturer in the commission said: ‘That’s enough with torturing him’. There was a woman among them, nasty one, she pushed on him so hard that even her colleague couldn’t bear it longer. ‘That’s it’ – he said, - ‘What do you want from him?’ - They asked him so many additional questions! But he was good at physics and mathematic. He had to solve a problem at the exam (and maybe it was plotted so), and he found a mistake. He explained it in his test. As for Russian compositions, he got a ‘3’ again. But he entered a Power Faculty. What of it? He finished it and wrote the best diploma. They said he should go to production industry right away, but the ‘fifth item’ and – they refused to employ Leonid. Assistant dean went to ask for him and to tell them how smart he was, but ‘he was a Jew’ and they didn’t accept him. So he got a job where a 10-grade schoolgirl could cope. He was so distressed. This killed him morally. His wife Ludmila, they finished the college together and got married when they were students, she wasn’t a Jew, was sent to work at the device manufacturing plant ‘Communist’. Ludmila’s last name was Vetrova: her mother is Ukrainian and her father is Russian. They have a good life together. In the long run my husband employed my son Leonid. He is an electronic equipment specialist. On 15 September 1985 my first grandson Valentin, Leonid’s son, was born.

Gennadiy is a redhead. There were no redheads in our family, but he is one… He is very nice. He is an ocean of charms. Always cheerful and smiling. He studied in Moscow College of Oil and Gas named after Gubkin. It was easier for him to enter college: he had a red diploma of technical school and skipped exams. He laughed: ‘If I had to take exams, I would fail Russian for sure’. His wife Olga studied with him. She is so smart… She is also half Ukrainian and half Russian. We learned a lesson from Leonid’s employment experience and Misha requested his acquaintances all over the Soviet Union, abroad and in Czechoslovakia to help Gennadiy with employment in Moscow. He managed to get a job and stay in Moscow. Olga’s father had an apartment there. Her father was a professor and was a dean in Metallurgical College in Volgograd. Her mother was also a metallurgist and received a special pension for her accomplishments. They also had an apartment in Volgograd and two children besides our Olga.

On 13 March 1986 Gennadiy and Olga’s son Stanislav was born. I decided to go to Moscow: Gennadiy asked me to help them with the baby. Olga’s parents were busy with their vegetable gardens in Volgograd. So I bought tickets for late April. On 26 April there was an explosion in Chernobyl [29], so I went to stand in line to buy vodka. There were problems with it in Moscow when during perestroika [30] they introduced prohibition and one could pay for things with vodka.

Well, though they didn’t inform people about this explosion, my husband worked with isotopes and had special devices. At first, it was clear in Kiev, but then, when I was standing in this line, the radiation moved in our direction. Misha went to look for me to tell me to stay at home, but I was not there. Then I left Kiev. I had tickets and it was easier for me, but there were crowds of people who wanted to take their children away from Kiev. My husband went to Chernobyl soon. They sent people there, but he went on his own will. He said that when this unit exploded older people had to go there. They had lived their life and young people should stay away. He went there on 30 April. I was in Moscow and didn’t know about it. Misha went there with his devices to measure radiation. Miners were following him. He instructed them where they could walk, where they had to run or step over… Of course, he was exposed to a big dose. And in 1992 he died having melanoma of the skin. Before he died he didn’t function, even his speech organs… So I am alone…

Gennadiy and Olga moved to Israel. Olga said they had to go and shortly after Stanislav was born in 1990 they managed to leave. They lived in Ramat Gan and now in Forsaba near Tel Aviv. I visited them in 1994. They had a wonderful life there. And they are doing well now. As long as one has a good job there life is all right. Olga worked in a hairdresser’s first. Gennadiy hauled garbage and was a janitor while learning Ivrit. Their specialty was digital electronics and they are in demand. If Gennadiy had spoken at least English he would have got a job immediately. Now he’s got a job of his specialty. Olga works as a programmer. She has no language problems, while Gennadiy does since even his Russian writing has never been good. I didn’t want to leave Kiev. My sister was there and Leonid with his family. But Olga’s parents went there: they sold of left everything back. Their second daughter and son followed them later. There are many Russians, more than Jews, there now…

My sister Maya moved to Germany in 2001. Her son wanted to go there. My daughter-in-law Ludmila, who was eager to move to Germany, started it all… She was getting information and documents for the whole family, but she never finished it. She died young. They prescribed her too many antibiotics and her white haematocytes stopped functioning. She didn’t want to die, poor thing. She was a nice lady and housewife…

We obtained permission to move to Germany two weeks after Ludmila died. I didn’t want to go. Maya had a stroke three days before departure and was taken to hospital: can you imagine? It was probably too stressful for her. Then they had to have their documents reissued. They sold their apartment and left. Of course, she didn’t have a chance here. How expensive medications are here and misery and terrible attitudes… They have wonderful conditions there. She receives a pension for her invalidity. Her son doesn’t work. He takes care of her since she is an invalid. He lives with a German woman, but they haven’t registered their marriage as yet.

Leonid remarried. She is a good woman, they work together. My grandson Valentin entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematic in Kiev Polytechnic College. He passed his entrance exams well, his tuition is free of charge and he receives a stipend. Leonid is an electronic engineer and is doing well... But this is not what he wanted to be: theoretical physicist…

Gennadiy’s family celebrate all holidays and observe traditions. Their older son Stanislav was circumcised after they arrived and so was their younger son, born there on 15 February 2000. They named him Gavrila after Olga’s grandfather who was chief mechanic. There this name sounds like Gabriel. Stanislav’s name is Sosl in Ivrit.

After the break up of the Soviet Union [31] my life hardly changed, I was already a pensioner. I read and watch TV. I have many friends and we often get together, sort of a ‘club for those who are over 30’. We laugh a lot, they respect me well. We celebrate Jewish and other holidays. I get along well with them. I don’t care about nationality whatsoever. I have a small pension, but I can manage. I don’t go out much. They come from Hesed to help me around. I am optimistic and how can one be otherwise? Life is short!

GLOSSARY:

[1] Jewish Pale of Settlement: Certain provinces in the Russian Empire were designated for permanent Jewish residence and the Jewish population was only allowed to live in these areas. The Pale was first established by a decree by Catherine II in 1791. The regulation was in force until the Russian Revolution of 1917, although the limits of the Pale were modified several times. The Pale stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, and 94% of the total Jewish population of Russia, almost 5 million people, lived there. The overwhelming majority of the Jews lived in the towns and shtetls of the Pale. Certain privileged groups of Jews, such as certain merchants, university graduates and craftsmen working in certain branches, were granted to live outside the borders of the Pale of Settlement permanently.

[2] Guild I: In tsarist Russia merchants belonged to Guild I, II or III. Merchants of Guild I were allowed to trade with foreign merchants, while the others were allowed to trade only within Russia.

[3] Russian Revolution of 1917: Revolution in which the tsarist regime was overthrown in the Russian Empire and, under Lenin, was replaced by the Bolshevik rule. The two phases of the Revolution were: February Revolution, which came about due to food and fuel shortages during WWI, and during which the tsar abdicated and a provisional government took over. The second phase took place in the form of a coup led by Lenin in October/November (October Revolution) and saw the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

[4] World War I: World War I, military conflict, from August 1914 to November 1918, that involved many of the countries of Europe as well the United States and other nations throughout the world. World War I was one of the most violent and destructive wars in European history. Of the 65 million men who were mobilized, more than 10 million were killed and more than 20 million wounded. The term World War I did not come into general use until a second worldwide conflict broke out in 1939 (World War II). Before that year, the war was known as the Great War or the World War.

[5] Pogroms in Ukraine: In the 1920s there were many anti-Semitic gangs in Ukraine. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children.

[6] NKVD: People’s Committee of Internal Affairs; it took over from the GPU, the state security agency, in 1934.

[7] Communal apartment: The Soviet power wanted to improve housing conditions by requisitioning ‘excess’ living space of wealthy families after the Revolution of 1917. Apartments were shared by several families with each family occupying one room and sharing the kitchen, toilet and bathroom with other tenants. Because of the chronic shortage of dwelling space in towns shared apartments continued to exist for decades. Despite state programs for the construction of more houses and the liquidation of shared apartments, which began in the 1960s, shared apartments still exist today.

[8] Great Patriotic War: On 22nd June 1941 at 5 o’clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War. The German blitzkrieg, known as Operation Barbarossa, nearly succeeded in breaking the Soviet Union in the months that followed. Caught unprepared, the Soviet forces lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the German onslaught in the first weeks of the war. By November 1941 the German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city, and threatened Moscow itself. The war ended for the Soviet Union on 9th May 1945.

[9] Odessa: The Jewish community of Odessa was the second biggest Jewish community in Russia. According to the census of 1897 there were 138,935 Jews in Odessa, which was 34,41% of the local population. There were 7 big synagogues and 49 prayer houses in Odessa. There were heders in 19 prayer houses.

[10] Great Terror (1934-1938): During the Great Terror, or Great Purges, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik opponents in 1936-1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. The major targets of the Great Terror were communists. Over half of the people who were arrested were members of the party at the time of their arrest. The armed forces, the Communist Party, and the government in general were purged of all allegedly dissident persons; the victims were generally sentenced to death or to long terms of hard labor. Much of the purge was carried out in secret, and only a few cases were tried in public ‘show trials’. By the time the terror subsided in 1939, Stalin had managed to bring both the Party and the public to a state of complete submission to his rule. Soviet society was so atomized and the people so fearful of reprisals that mass arrests were no longer necessary. Stalin ruled as absolute dictator of the Soviet Union until his death in March 1953.

[11] Civil War (1918-1920): The Civil War between the Reds (the Bolsheviks) and the Whites (the anti-Bolsheviks), which broke out in early 1918, ravaged Russia until 1920. The Whites represented all shades of anti-communist groups – Russian army units from World War I, led by anti-Bolshevik officers, by anti-Bolshevik volunteers and some Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Several of their leaders favored setting up a military dictatorship, but few were outspoken tsarists. Atrocities were committed throughout the Civil War by both sides. The Civil War ended with Bolshevik military victory, thanks to the lack of cooperation among the various White commanders and to the reorganization of the Red forces after Trotsky became commissar for war. It was won, however, only at the price of immense sacrifice; by 1920 Russia was ruined and devastated. In 1920 industrial production was reduced to 14% and agriculture to 50% as compared to 1913.

[12] Podol: The lower section of Kiev. It has always been viewed as the Jewish region of Kiev. In tsarist Russia Jews were only allowed to live in Podol, which was the poorest part of the city. Before World War II 90% of the Jews of Kiev lived there.

[13] Common name: Russified or Russian first names used by Jews in everyday life and adopted in official documents. The Russification of first names was one of the manifestations of the assimilation of Russian Jews at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. In some cases only the spelling and pronunciation of Jewish names was russified (e.g. Isaac instead of Yitskhak; Boris instead of Borukh), while in other cases traditional Jewish names were replaced by similarly sounding Russian names (e.g. Eugenia instead of Ghita; Yury instead of Yuda). When state anti-Semitism intensified in the USSR at the end of the 1940s, most Jewish parents stopped giving their children traditional Jewish names to avoid discrimination.

[14] Famine in Ukraine: In 1920 a deliberate famine was introduced in the Ukraine causing the death of millions of people. It was arranged in order to suppress those protesting peasants who did not want to join the collective farms. There was another dreadful deliberate famine in 1930-1934 in the Ukraine. The authorities took away the last food products from the peasants. People were dying in the streets, whole villages became deserted. The authorities arranged this specifically to suppress the rebellious peasants who did not want to accept Soviet power and join collective farms.

[15] In the USSR schools had numbers and not names. It was part of the policy of the state. They were all state schools and were all supposed to be identical.

[16] Kossior, Stanislav (1889-1938): One of the founders of the Communist Party in Ukraine and General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1928-1938. He was arrested in the course of The Great Purges of 1936-38, known popularly as the Yezhovshchina (after NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov who conducted them), and executed.

[17] Khrushchev, Nikita (1894-1971): Soviet communist leader. After Stalin’s death in 1953, he became first secretary of the Central Committee, in effect the head of the Communist Party of the USSR. In 1956, during the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev took an unprecedented step and denounced Stalin and his methods. He was deposed as premier and party head in October 1964. In 1966 he was dropped from the Party's Central Committee.

[18] Komsomol: Communist youth political organization created in 1918. The task of the Komsomol was to spread of the ideas of communism and involve the worker and peasant youth in building the Soviet Union. The Komsomol also aimed at giving a communist upbringing by involving the worker youth in the political struggle, supplemented by theoretical education. The Komsomol was more popular than the Communist Party because with its aim of education people could accept uninitiated young proletarians, whereas party members had to have at least a minimal political qualification.

[19] Keep in touch with relatives abroad: The authorities could arrest an individual corresponding with his/her relatives abroad and charge him/her with espionage, send them to concentration camp or even sentence them to death.

[20] German colonists: Ancestors of German peasants, who were invited by Empress Catherine II in the 18th century to settle in Russia.

[21] Catherine the Great (1729-1796): Empress of Russia. She rose to the throne after the murder of her husband Peter III and reigned for 34 year. Catherine read widely, especially Voltaire and Montesquieu, and informed herself of Russian conditions. She started to formulate a new enlightened code of law. Catherine reorganized (1775) the provincial administration to increase the central government's control over rural areas. This reform established a system of provinces, subdivided into districts, that endured until 1917. In 1785, Catherine issued a charter that made the gentry of each district and province a legal body with the right to petition the throne, freed nobles from taxation and state service and made their status hereditary, and gave them absolute control over their lands and peasants. Catherine increased Russian control over the Baltic provinces and Ukraine. She secured the largest portion in successive partitions of Poland among Russia, Prussia, and Austria.

[22] Forced deportation to Siberia: Stalin introduced the deportation of Middle Asian people, like the Crimean Tatars and the Chechens, to Siberia. Without warning, people were thrown out of their houses and into vehicles at night. The majority of them died on the way of starvation, cold and illnesses.

[23] Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’: The campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’, i.e. Jews, was initiated in articles in the central organs of the Communist Party in 1949. The campaign was directed primarily at the Jewish intelligentsia and it was the first public attack on Soviet Jews as Jews. ‘Cosmopolitans’ writers were accused of hating the Russian people, of supporting Zionism, etc. Many Yiddish writers as well as the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested in November 1948 on charges that they maintained ties with Zionism and with American ‘imperialism’. They were executed secretly in 1952. The anti-Semitic Doctors’ Plot was launched in January 1953. A wave of anti-Semitism spread through the USSR. Jews were removed from their positions, and rumors of an imminent mass deportation of Jews to the eastern part of the USSR began to spread. Stalin’s death in March 1953 put an end to the campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’.

[24] Doctors’ Plot: The Doctors’ Plot was an alleged conspiracy of a group of Moscow doctors to murder leading government and party officials. In January 1953, the Soviet press reported that nine doctors, six of whom were Jewish, had been arrested and confessed their guilt. As Stalin died in March 1953, the trial never took place. The official paper of the Party, the Pravda, later announced that the charges against the doctors were false and their confessions obtained by torture. This case was one of the worst anti-Semitic incidents during Stalin’s reign. In his secret speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 Khrushchev stated that Stalin wanted to use the Plot to purge the top Soviet leadership.

[25] At the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956 Khrushchev publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what had happened in the USSR during Stalin’s leadership.

[26] Veryovka – Grigoriy Gurievich Veryovka (1895 – 1964): a famous Ukrainian Soviet composer, conductor.

[27] Item 5: This was the nationality factor, which was included on all job application forms, Jews, who were considered a separate nationality in the Soviet Union, were not favored in this respect from the end of World War WII until the late 1980s.

[28] Mandatory job assignment in the USSR: Graduates of higher educational institutions had to complete a mandatory 2-year job assignment issued by the institution from which they graduated. After finishing this assignment young people were allowed to get employment at their discretion in any town or organization.

[29] Official statistics in the USSR kept silent about the consequences of Chernobyl power plant disaster, especially the number of dying from oncological diseases. The doctors had a classified direction to show in the documents that a patient died from other than onclological disease.

[30] Perestroika: Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s. Perestroika [restructuring] was the term attached to the attempts (1985–91) by Mikhail Gorbachev to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized market-oriented economy. Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratise the Communist party organization. By 1991, perestroika was on the wane, and after the failed August Coup of 1991 was eclipsed by the dramatic changes in the constitution of the union.

[31] Breakup of the USSR: Yeltsin in 1991 signed a deal with Russia's neighbours that formalized the break up of the Soviet Union. The USSR was replaced by the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

EMILIA KOTLIAR
Russia
Moscow
Interviewer: Svetlana Bogdanova
Date of interview: August 2003

Emilia Kotliar is a quiet considerate lady with big hazel eyes. She is a little taller than average and she combs her dark hair back.
She has a very friendly expression of her face and dresses decently.

She lives alone in a 2-bedroom apartment in the southwest of Moscow. She has no close relatives left.  She recently had a surgery on her broken femoral neck. She moves slowly with a stick.
She is a member of the writer’ association and writes children’s poems published in a number of popular magazines and her own books of poems. 

Her apartment needs to be repaired.
Her apartment is furnished modestly, but it is clean.

Once a week the Jewish public charity fund ‘A Hand of help’ sends her a charwoman who cleans her apartment and another volunteer does shopping for her. 
There are many icons and pictures on biblical and Testament subjects on the walls.

Emilia Kotliar lived through a very hard period of life associated with professional failures and her mother’s lethal disease.
At the recommendation of archpriest Alexandr Men’ she adopted Christianity in 1988, but she identifies herself as a Jew, anyway. 

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

My family came from Vasilkov [30 km from Kiev], a small town in Ukraine. The majority of population in Vasilkov was Jewish, but there were also Ukrainian residents in it. I visited it when I was very small and I don’t remember anything.

Unfortunately, I know little about my father’s family. My father died young, when I was only 9.  My paternal grandfather’s name was Efraim Kotliar. His family led a patriarchal way of life. They were respected people in the town. My grandfather was wealthy. He owned a business. He was a glasscutter and made frames. There were 8 children in the family and all had higher education. All of his sons, and there were 5 of them, used to help my grandfather in his shop. My father Peisach Kotliar was the only son who didn’t help his father in the shop. He was an idol in the family being talented and having all excellent marks at school. My grandfather used to say: ‘I don’t need your sawdust, I need your marks’. My father studied in a realschule 1. Its students got a good technical and mathematical education. I don’t know for sure, but I think my grandfather had a house having his business. My grandfather was a merry man. The family sang very well. My father’s younger brother Yasha had a particularly strong and beautiful voice. When the family got together they sang sitting at the table.  They sang Ukrainian and Jewish folk songs. 

My father’s brother Yakov studied with my father in Moscow College of Light Industry and I’ve known uncle Yasha since childhood. I didn’t see my father’s other brothers and don’t know what happened to them. My father’s mother Mendel Kotliar had a meek character. She was bringing quietude, order and peace into the houses and demanded that her children made no mess of it.  She was a housewife.
Their house was always clean and cozy. My grandmother taught the girls to do craftwork, sew and embroider. There was a custom in their family: whatever problems one had they had to wipe their shoes on a welcome rug and smile. They had to leave all their problems on the porch. There was a cheerful atmosphere at home. They loved each other very much and respected parents in the family.  Undoubtedly, they observed all Jewish traditions in the past times.  There was a synagogue and a Jewish community in Vasilkov. Unfortunately, I don’t know how religious my father’s parents were or how they observed Jewish traditions. I know that their older daughter Feiga after finishing a college in Sverdlovsk moved my grandfather and grandmother to live with her in Sverdlovsk in the Ural in about 1000 km from Moscow shortly before the Great Patriotic War 2. My grandmother died in 1942 and my grandfather died in 1943 in Sverdlovsk and there they were buried.

I know more about my mother’s family. In her older age my mother tried to write about her town and her family, but she never got to finish it. She fell ill and asked me to finish her notes for her. Following her will I wrote a poem ‘A gorgeous town’ and dedicated it to the memory of my mother Anna Vaisman. This book was published by ‘Mozhaysk-Terra’ Ltd. in 2001 in 1000 copies.

My maternal great grandfather’s name was Vigdor. Regretfully, I don’t know his last name. He lived in Vasilkov and was a very bright person. He was a melamed. Besides, he was involved in various public activities. His wife died young leaving him with 6 children. He never remarried. His older daughter Leya, my grandmother, became a housewife. Vigdor taught Talmud in cheder. Studying Talmud was his favorite pastime. He was very fond of it. Vigdor was the authority of his community. He was very smart and his neighbors often addressed him with their problems, when there was a dispute, or they wanted to share heritage or had routinely problems. Grandfather judged them objectively. He studied Talmud ‘for the development of brains’ and read religious books. At his old age he worked at a slaughterhouse where he issued receipts for one kopeck. This was a slaughterhouse that belonged to the synagogue where they slaughtered poultry in accordance with kashrut rules. He was sitting behind his counter having coins and receipts in front of him and a Talmud on his lap. Women even felt hurt that he didn’t look at them issuing those receipts. He was plunged into his book.  In 1920 white guard officers 3 during a pogrom 4 killed him. When they were shooting him, he was an old man with one leg. Something had happened to his leg and he had it amputated without anesthesia. Assistant doctors didn’t have any anesthesia means in this small town where he lived. He walked with crutches and they shot the man with crutches. I dedicated a poem to him: (translation by the line)

In the eleventh year

Reb Vigdor got in trouble.

He went to ‘elections’

In the neighboring ‘capital’,

Caught cold and was taken to hospital.

Gangrene developed.

Assistant doctors

Cut off his leg like a log without anesthesia.

Reb Vigdor clutched his teeth and kept silent.

Being a strong old man.

He came back to his village on crutches

And took to his usual activities,

As if nothing had happened.

The old reb

Like all Jews in town,

Was dreaming about his own plot of land,

About bread.

In the seventeenth he advised

his former pupils

to join the Bolsheviks

They would give them land!

A Talmud scholar, philosopher,

Connoisseur of Jewish laws,

He failed to discern

Who Bolsheviks were,

Since it’s this was with God: white is white,

Black is black

Yes is yes and no is no!

Could he imagine,

That God’s covenants were nothing for Bolsheviks?

That was the thing:

They didn’t hesitate,

With cheating people or the God

…In the twentieth

the white guard during a pogrom

shot reb Vigdor

by the wall of his house.

My maternal grandfather Isaac Vaisman was an extraordinarily kind and nice person. Grandfather Isaac had an artistic personality. He carved trays, cups and vases from wood.  My mother told me they were amazingly beautiful. Everybody laughed at him and he used to do this work in hiding. My grandmother Leya had no confidence in his work. Why make them, those unpractical things?  She told him off for his hobby and occasionally threw his works into a stove.  Grandmother Leya adored her father Vigdor, though she had a hard childhood. She grew up having no mother and was responsible for the housework and raising her younger sisters and brothers. 

Grandmother Leya!

What burden fell on your shoulders

What sorrow was awaiting!

From the age of thirteen

With a widower of a father

You had to raise

Five brothers and sisters!

You replaced their mother to them.

Vigdor, Leya’s father was a genuine

Local Talmud scholar.

His daughter respected him infinitely

And pleased him in every way.

Dreaming to marry

Another scientist like her father,

Fond of Talmud.

But her father couldn’t support

A ‘golden son-in-law’

And poor Leya

Had to lock her heart .

A ‘golden son-in-law’ was one involved only in spiritual activities studying the Talmud and his wife’s family was to provide for him. Since my great grandfather was very poor he couldn’t support this kind of a son-in-law and Leya had to marry Isaac Vaisman, my grandfather, who was as poor as she was.  This happened approximately in 1900. Of course, they had a traditional wedding and it couldn’t have been otherwise at that time. Grandfather Isaac was meek and kind. I almost shrink thinking about my grandfather. He was the best person in the family. He was very patient and his wife scolded him.  She didn’t quite respect him for his being quiet and meek and was up in the clouds, though he did everything about the house. He was very handy. I don’t know what he did before the revolution of 1917 5, but afterward he worked as a janitor in a kolkhoz 6.

The name of my second great grandfather, my grandfather Isaac’s father, was Leib.  All I know about him is that he made a sukkah at Sukkot and installed a table and a trestle bed in it, dropped grass on the floor and compacted it, put flowers on the table and lived there until night frosts. He was very handy. My great grandfather Vigdor was more a philosopher while my great grandfather Leib was an earthly man. He was a craftsman. He was also shot in 1918 or 1922. A bandit from a passing gang 7 shot a bullet on the run. He was about 70 years old. His wife, my great grandmother died young of some disease and I don’t even know the name of. My great grandfather Leib remarried. His second wife was very nice. I know little about them. People didn’t talk about themselves in the past. There is a saying ‘Every bush has its acoustics’. Everything was forbidden.

My great grandfather Leib

Was a poor man

In a small distant town.

His little house

Was all patched,

Like a dress.

His house was called

‘Leib’s palace’!

a samovar and a mattress with holes,

Iron cast in a Russian stove 8

And candles in the 7-candle stand…

He got married in the same coat,

In which he came into this world!

Grandmother Leya and grandfather Isaac settled down in Stavishche town near Vasilkov after their wedding. Before the revolution of 1917 grandmother Leya owned a store selling her products on credit for peanuts. She sold salt, matches, soap and herring. Villagers from a neighboring village liked doing shopping in Leya’s store. She even sold on credit to those who didn’t pay back their old debts. When Jewish pogroms began Ukrainian families gave shelter to Leya’s family and rescued her children.  At their old age my grandmother and grandfather worked in a kolkhoz.  My grandfather was a janitor and my grandmother worked in a kolkhoz canteen. They lived in a small clay house. I visited there. There was a living room and a table covered with a fancy white tablecloth, a mirror and scarlet ribbon along the table serving as a decoration. There was a bed for guests in the living room. My grandparents slept in a corner in the kitchen. There was a Russian stove in the house. They fetched water from a well. They had a cow. There was a manger that dried up in the sun. It glittered and looked nice and I said I wanted to sleep in it and asked my grandmother to put a sheet there for me. 

Grandmother Leya and grandfather Isaac had 8 children. Four children died in infancy and four survived. Grandmother Leya was very much attached to her father Vigdor and often left her home to visit him. Can you imagine what it was like when she came back home? When she returned the house was a mess and the children were hungry. She would have cuffed one in his nap and kick another.  Shortly before the Great Patriotic War my mother’s younger sister Sophia Goloborodko took my grandfather and grandmother to live with her family in Uman  [180 km from Kiev]. Grandfather Isaac died there in 1943 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery. After the war grandmother Leya lived in Uman. She died in 1950 and was buried in the Jewish sector of the town cemetery in Uman.  

My mother grew up in a very poor family. She was the oldest of all children. She had to do a lot of work. To tell the truth, her family wasn’t quite like a family. Grandmother Leya spent all her time with her father Vigdor and my mother had to do the housework. My mother was very proud and had a character. She had more problems than anybody else. When they punished her and told her to ask forgiveness she was stubborn and never asked pardons and thus, set her mother in opposition. The situation in the family was hard.  My mother had congenital glaucoma, but nobody knew about it and nobody intended to know.  She needed at least glasses, but she didn’t even get these. My mother was not supposed to do some work like sewing or standing by a fireplace, but they thought she just didn’t want to do this work. She was made to clean the farmyard and she worked there with my grandfather.  So, frankly speaking, she had a hard childhood. And I think that when all this revolutionary agitation began she got interested in it and joined Komsomol 9 to somehow get distracted from home and her crazy family. Later my mother joined the party. 

My mother had brothers David Vaisman and Shakhna Vaisman and sister Sophia Goloborodko. David had a higher education and lived in Leningrad [present St. Petersburg, today Russia]. He worked as a shipbuilder. During the Great Patriotic War he stayed in Leningrad and survived in its siege 10. He almost starved to death and showed no signs of life. He was taken to a morgue where he recovered his consciousness. The aftereffects of this siege had an impact on his health. He was sickly and died in Leningrad in 1950. He was buried in Leningrad. He had a family: wife Anna and sons Alexei and Isaac. David, his wife and children were not religious. Shakhna was born in 1910 and had a secondary technical education. He lived in Kadievka, Ukraine, in about 900 km from Moscow. He worked in the system of mine management. His wife Rosa was Jewish. They had a son named Leonid and a daughter named Yelizaveta.  His family wasn’t religious. Shakhna died in 1989 and was buried in Kadievka. Sophia was born in 1912. She lived in Uman, Ukraine. She had primary education. She was a housewife. She had four children: three daughters – Anna, Larisa and Lubov and son Vladimir. Her husband Goloborodko, whose surname I don’t know, was a Jew. None of them was religious. Sophia moved grandmother Leya and grandfather Isaac to live with her in Uman. Sophia died  in 1959 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Uman.  My mother kept in touch with her brothers and sister. She corresponded with them and they visited us in Moscow. She had the closes relationships with her brother Shakhna. 

My father was a middle child in his family. He finished a realschule with honors. My father wasn’t a member of the Communist Party, though he sympathized with the revolutionary movement. He spoke at a meeting. I don’t know what Party he spoke for, but I believe it was an incidental matter since it wasn’t what he really was up to. My mother and father gave up observing Jewish traditions and religion when they were young. This was the way it was at that time: the Revolution of 1917, when everything was breaking up and crashing, the routinely way of life was replaced with something different when new authorities were building up different ideology, propagating and forcing communism and atheism into people’s minds. Besides, I don’t think they would have found jobs had they remained religious. Soviet authorities did not appreciate religiosity and struggled against it 11 in every possible way. If my father had come to his plant with his kippah on and a beard and had begun to pray, can you imagine what it would have been like? Same with my mother. Although her grandfather was a Talmud scholar and she accompanied grandfather to the synagogue every day carrying his tallit for him she didn’t see anything beautiful in the life of her family regardless those traditional ceremonies. She didn’t see that it was a good life and therefore, she didn’t quite accept it. My parents and their brothers and sisters did not just nominally give up religion, they actually parted with it. Young people joined the revolution and began to study. They had nothing to lose. Most Jews were so poor that it could not be worse for them.  Many finished cheder, but few could afford to go to yeshivah. Not all of them were smart enough to go into theoretical studies of the Talmud.  Becoming a melamed? How many did a small town need? Two at the most. The rest of them had to take to trade or patching jackets or sewing? There were no vacancies in this little town and even skilled craftsmen earned little. Other towns also had their own coopers, tailors and tradesmen. Therefore, they rushed into revolution. A road to new life opened to them.

My mother and father met in Vasilkov. After finishing the realschule my father couldn’t find a job near home. He found a job in Kazan’, about 720 km east of Moscow, my mother joined him there and they got married. My father worked as technical manager in a leather factory. It was a small factory. Then the factory sent my father to study at the College of light industry. My mother didn’t tell me anything about my father: how they met or what kind of person my father was. She was very withdrawn and stern and she was not good at sentimental talk. It probably had to do with her severe childhood years. 

Growing up

I was born in Kazan’, Russia, in 1925. In Kazan’ my mother worked in zhensoviet (women's council) [editor’s note: Women’s councils – departments, included in Party organs at the direction of the party Central Committee in 1918. Their members were women activists and their tasks included ideological work with women industrial employees and peasants with the aim of their socialist education. Reorganized in 1929] with education of Tatar women. They didn’t know Russian and were taught in likbez 12 schools. We rented an apartment with three big rooms in a private house. There was a small kitchen. There was a real big stove with oven forks, wood and cast iron pots. Water was delivered to houses in barrels. There was a cellar with huge bottle green pieces of ice in it. There was food stored on them. The cellar was a very tempting place: there was sour cream in ceramic pots, milk and pelmeni dumplings. It was a very delicious cellar. My father was sent to study in Moscow in 1931 and our family followed him there: my mother, I and our nanny. The nurse was with us since I turned 2 and stayed 14 years. 

My father entered Moscow College of Light Industry. My mother also entered this college after finishing a rabfak 13 school.  We didn’t have a place to live and our nanny went to work for other people. We lived out of town. I liked it there. There was a wooden house, so mysterious, in the woods.  There were pine trees. We rented this “izba” hut, but then my mother was accommodated in a hostel and so was my father. They lived in different rooms on different floors and since children were not allowed to stay in hostels there were always problems with my presence there. My mother lived with some girls in her room and I was with them. Later I went to a kindergarten. Children could stay there overnight, but it turned out, this was not for me. I was withering away there. Nobody actually looked after me or how I ate there. Our family was poor. Then my parents got another room and there was a student girl living there with us. She was a stranger living with us. I remember my father asking her: ‘Sonia, I need to get dressed. Turn away, please’.  We lived in this room until 1938. In 1934, before my father defended his diploma, they convinced him to go to Irkutsk [4120 km east of Moscow] to become production manager of a big plant. Of course, an ill-advised step. He should have defended his diploma and besides, the climate in Irkutsk was very bad, but he went there. We were going to follow him. We started packing our miserable belongings, when all of a sudden we received a cable that he died. He only lived there 3 months. And there is still no clue to this mysterious story. We didn’t understand whether he was ill or what he had. My father’s brother Yasha went to his funeral. My father was buried in a town cemetery. They never told me anything about it. My mother got severely ill and didn’t tell me anything later: she didn’t remember. And a long time afterward I asked my father’s brothers about my father’s belongings or letters. There was nothing left. Well, this was a strange and tragic story. After my father died we were told to move out of this room, but we didn’t have a place to go. They threatened to call militia. Four years later my mother received a room in a communal apartment 14 in Moscow where we lived until 1966.

Some time later after my father died my mother entered the History Department of Moscow University. My mother liked history much. At first her co-students who were young girls, gave her a hostile reception since she was a mature woman already. I was 9 years old then. Those girls sniffed and chuckled about me, but then my mother somehow happened to become a head student of her course. They called her ‘our Mom’. She was awarded a Stalin’s stipend [Editor’s note: Stalin’s stipend was awarded to most advanced college and university students].  Shortly after my father died our nanny returned to us. My mother received a stipend and nanny had her pension and I was given minor monthly allowances after my father’s death.  We were hard up, but we didn’t lead secluded life. We received guests, especially when we lived in the hostel our door was always open. My mother was tight-lipped to talk about herself, but she was very sociable otherwise. She had many friends when a student and later she made friends with her colleagues and I had many school friends. We were very close with the family of Shakhna Vaisman, my mother’s younger brother. His family lived in Kadievka [1100 km south of Moscow]. He worked in the coal industry. He visited us in Moscow with his son Lyonia and daughter Sima and we visited them in Kadievka. Shakhna’s son Lyonia served in the army and once he came to see us in Moscow. Handsome and tall and his military uniform was so becoming. My mother’s younger sister Sophia with her numerous family and grandmother Leya lived in Uman. We met very rarely. There is nobody left in Uman. Sophia and her younger son Vladimir died. Sophia died in 1959 and Vladimir died in 1973. Their graves are in Uman. Sophia’s three daughters Anna, Luba and Larisa moved to Germany in 1990 and live in Portenschmiede.

I went to school in 1932. I went to a preparatory “zero” class. I finished this zero and 3 primary forms in this district school and then my mother sent me to the 4th form at the preparatory department of Central Music School at Moscow Conservatory. My initial audition went well and they admitted me to their piano class, but then it turned out that my hands were not technical enough. Later I understood that it had something to do with my vestibular apparatus. For example, I can dance waltz step turning to one side, but cannot change to another. My hands were not quick enough. Therefore, I didn’t do quite well at school. After the war I didn’t go back to this music school. They also got general education in this school. It was an amazing and unique school, a cradle of talented and gifted children. Leonid Kogan [Editor’s note: Leonid Kogan – (1924 – 1982) a virtuoso Jewish violinist and professor, graduate of Moscow Conservatory, laureate of several international contests and Lenin’s Award] was in my school. Later he became an outstanding musician of world class. There were many talented children, but only few came all the way up. It took colossal work, luck and skills to go up. They became schoolteachers or worked in orchestras. Many became ordinary musicians. The boy I shared my desk with became my friend. We went home together after school and went to the zoo. It was friendship of two children.

There were many Jews. Everywhere. It was some sort of a ‘Jewish Zoo’.  There were 18 children in my class, but only 12 attended classes regularly. Some were ill and others had other reasons. It was the end of the 1930s 15. This was the period of arrests of their fathers and there were children of ‘enemies of the people’ 16 in my class. Their fathers were in jail or had been executed, but they didn’t have a status of turncoats in the class. They studied like everybody else and we were all equal. I would like to say that this music school added a lot to my spiritual education, even though I didn’t feel quite comfortable there since I was sort of backward. I often went to the Bolshoy Theater 17 and to concerts at the conservatory, we were given free tickets. Besides, I studied with talented children and enjoyed talking to them. There were no conflicts in our class and children behaved themselves. They just didn’t have time for fooling around. In the morning we had music classes and studied theory and at 2 our general classes began. Therefore, there was a good atmosphere in class and we had nice teachers who were selected by special requirements.

I didn’t join Komsomol. Here is what happened. It’s not that I was some hero or something. I was sickly and at the time when my classmates joined Komsomol I was ill.  Nobody asked me about it or mentioned it afterward and I wasn’t quite eager to touch upon this subject. I was an active pioneer at my previous school. I was very interested in pioneer movement and believed it was something interesting. Once I went to a pioneer meeting. So I came there and listened. One speaks looking into his notes, then another one does the same – how dull.  So by the time I returned home I stopped being an active pioneer. Something broke up in me. I wasn’t interested in public movements since then.  My mother believed in communist slogans and tried to convert me to her views, but she failed. I was passive and somewhat deferred. Maybe it was because I was often ill. Besides, it was something not for me. She started a few times when I was an adult: ‘Why don’t you join the Party? Life would be easier for you. You have an antisocial position.’ But she understood that if somebody didn’t want something, then it didn’t make sense to force this person.  So it all went past me.

I didn’t face any anti-Semitism before the war and my mother didn’t either. There were many Jews at the university where my mother studied.

Then my school sent me to the best and biggest pioneer camp ‘Artek’ in the Crimea [1200 km south of Moscow] on the shore of the Black Sea.  I liked this camp very much. It was a model camp and lots of funds were allocated in it. There was good food and we had beautiful uniforms, there ere interesting children and at the end of our term we had a party around a big fire. There was a Kabardinian boy in the camp and he was a symbol of Artek. Kabardinians are backward mountainous people. Even now only few of them have education and it was symbolic that their boy came to this wonderful camp. We even sang song about him in Artek. During holidays he rode a horse and it was beautiful. We also arranged amateur concerts and sang songs. There was a piano in the camp. We sang pioneer and other songs. Some children sang, some danced and it was nice and joyful. I sat at the seashore gathering seashells. I brought home a suitcase full of seashells.

During the war

I had no idea that there was to be a war and was quite indifferent about a treaty between the USSR and Germany 18. Only my nanny Anna Dormidontovna spoke in agitated manner turning to Stalin’s portrait. I need to mention here that there was a portrait of Stalin in every family. ‘What are you doing, what are you doing? Why are you shipping them all our wheat and giving them our bread?’ (She meant fascists). The nanny stayed with us until the war and during the war she left us. I have no memories about the days when the war began. I remember that later, standing round a corner I thought: ‘What if I catch a spy?’ I was stupid and didn’t understand anything. And I thought: ‘What is it like when bombs begin falling all of a sudden I wonder.’ I didn’t know a thing about the war and what we were up to. I understood that something terrible happened, but I didn’t apply it to myself.  Nothing was going to happen to me and my life could not be terrible. 

We took hiding in the basement and bombshells to find shelter from bombs. There were many people hiding in metro. The University where my mother studied evacuated to Sverdlovsk, about 1400 km east of Moscow and my mother and I went there, too. We didn’t find any suitable accommodation in Sverdlovsk and my mother quit University and decided to go with me to the vicinity of Alapayevsk about 138 km north of Sverdlovsk, to Kostino village where my mother was teaching history.  My mother rented a corner in a village hut. Life was terrible there. There was only hunger. I didn’t go to school since there was only a 7-year school in the village and I was to study in the 9th form. I was hanging around there. There was a woman in evacuation in this village. She worked in a club before the war. She was a nice and tactful woman of about 60 years of age. She gathered young people into something like a drama club and we performed in surrounding villages. We didn’t get anything for it, but we were at least busy. People called us ‘artists’. There was no entertainment in villages. There was a radio near the library in the village and there was no electricity. Our performances were like holidays for them. People had a very hard life in the kolkhoz. They worked hard and worked a lot for almost nothing. Our landlady had 7 boys. Can you imagine what it took to provide food for them?  The oldest was 12. He didn’t go to school since he had to work in the kolkhoz. The only food we had were potatoes in jackets. And I remember an episode. My mother and I are eating when there appears a little face with begging eyes. This was one of our landlady’s sons. So what were we to do? We gave him a potato. Older children never begged, probably their mother told them not to, but younger ones always asked for food. It was hard to see this. Alapayevsk was a town near Sverdlovsk where members of the czar’s family were killed, including czarina’s sister Yelizaveta Fyodorovna, but in those years nobody knew about it, this was concealed. It was an industrial town. There were many steel casting and military plants in it. We stayed in Alapayevsk for a year, but I didn’t go to school. I was too weak from hunger. We rented a hallway in an overcrowded apartment. My mother taught history in a vocational school. I worked as a tutor in a kindergarten for about 8 months. In 1943 we returned home. As soon as victory was won in Stalingrad we could go to Moscow. There was nobody in our room, but it was looted and ravaged. They even stole our piano. Later my mother found this piano at our neighbors’ and they returned it. Moscow was military and there were newspaper strips on windows and bulbs were painted dark blue. We arrived and right away got under bombing. We also waited for news from the front every day. This was the most important thing for us. I remember my mother and I having 10 potatoes. They lasted 10 days: we had one half potato each per day. We boiled it and cut into halves and this made our meal. Nobody could help us. My mother’s relatives also had a hard life.  My grandmother Leya’s sister Maria Rudnik lived in Moscow. She had 7 children. They had a miserable life. We kept in touch with her at the time, but what could she do for us when she was starving, too?

My father’s brothers Israel and Volf perished at the front. My father’s cousin brother Aizenberg, unfortunately, I don’t remember his name, was a singer and had a very good voice. He perished in one of death camps. 

When we returned to Moscow, my mother defended her diploma and went to teach at school. My mother graduated from University brilliantly and was offered to start her postgraduate studies, but she had problems with her eyes. I told her: ‘Mother, you won’t be able to read this pile of books’. She could not write much. When she wrote me letters later it took me a while to guess what she wrote about. With her handwriting she couldn’t write articles or reports. She went to teach history in school # 12 [In the USSR schools had numbers and not names. It was part of the policy of the state. They were all state schools and were all supposed to be identical], where children of 3rd-rate chiefs studied. They were capricious and spoiled children. One came to the second class, another one came to the third, but they liked my mother’s classes. They gave her pictures on historical subjects, she managed to arouse their interest in history. She worked there until 1948 and then her eyes got worse and she retired. She was allowed to retire due to her poor sight. Then she went to lecture in the association of blind people. I went to work as a tutor in a kindergarten. I couldn’t continue my studies in my music school due to my hand defects. My hands turned out to lack technicality. I had finished the 9th form of district school #9 in Moscow. I didn’t like it in this school after my previous school at the Conservatory. It was like farce. Most teachers were in evacuation or at the front.  Our teachers had low qualifications and it was ridiculous how they conducted their lessons and I kept thinking about our wonderful teachers at the Central Music School. My mother knew my opinions and agreed that I should become a tutor in a kindergarten. I worked there 4 years. It was hard work, but I managed and children were good to me.  I couldn’t work as a music teacher at school due to my hands. There were 37 children in my group. It was a big group and besides, children of the war, they were problem children. Many didn’t have fathers, they had dramatic living conditions and they were all hungry. They were nervous and excitable children. In general, they made a hard company. While working in the kindergarten I finished a pedagogical school with honors and entered a Pedagogical College without taking entrance exams. I was only allowed to not take entrance exams at the Preschool Department. I wanted to go to the Philological Faculty, but I just wasn’t strong enough to take exams there. I finished my college with honors. I worked a mandatory term 19 in the kindergarten and then couldn’t find a job for a long time until I managed to become a preschool education teacher at the Pedagogical School. I began writing poems. At first I didn’t think much of it, but then I caught myself sitting at an exam at school putting down my lines instead of listening to a student. This shouldn’t be! I met young poets and we became friends and they told me that I had to quit school immediately. ‘Or, you will always remain a teacher and will never become a poet’. I left school, though we didn’t have anything at home.  I found a job in a publishing house with low payment. I was to write responses to beginners of poets. In 1958 my first book was published and I received a small fee for it. So I lived. My mother didn’t talk me out of it. She understood this was my cup of tea. I enjoyed writing poems tremendously, though it wasn’t easy, hard to find a word I needed, on the whole, it was hard work. Soon young poets began to get invitations to recite poems at schools and in libraries. I communicated with young poets in the poet section in the house of literature workers or in a café there. I wasn’t a member of the Union of writers, but they allowed me to the house of literature workers. We recited our poems to one another there.  I didn’t finish Literature College. There was a literature association ‘Magistral’ [‘highway’ in Russian] where I attended classes and took my entrance into literature. Igor Levin, a wonderful pedagog, conducted classes. We recited our poems and criticized each other. It was a good school. Levin invited best poets of the time to our sittings and they shared their views with us, recited their poems and listened to ours. I learned a lot at those classes. In 1961 I entered the Union of Writers. It was difficult to become a member of this Union at the time. I only had one book issued and I needed recommendations. S. Marshak 20 gave me one.  Somehow they admitted me, though my poems left much to be desired and unusual and people felt stunned. Then I began to have my books published.  I had 6 books for adults and 15 children’s books. I also translated 10 children’s books. My publishing house gave me books for translation. I met famous poets to be in ‘Magistral’ like Bulat Okudjava [a famous Russian bard (1924-1997)]. We were closely acquainted for a lifetime. It was hard to have books published, not only for me, but for all. Some people were against my books. There were spokes in my wheels and there were other things, but I had a wonderful editor: Victor Faigelson. He worked in the poetry section of ‘Soviet writer’ publishing house. He came to work there upon graduation from University. He adored poetry and poets and frankly speaking, he supported me. How? For example, it was very important to have not a piece read by a person who might have wanted to drown me. I had no idea who was going to read my poems, but he found ways to have a nicer person read my poems.  Reading and issuance of statement took a long time and then I was nervous about what they wrote about my poems since if proofreader wrote a few negative sentences that meant that a book was canceled.  Then one had to worry about having his book included in planning of publications. Even if they did include it, they might revise their plans. These were all nerves. Then there might be small edition, since my book might have been in little demand. If it hadn’t been for this editor I wouldn’t probably have had one book issued. My latest book is ‘Gorgeous Town’. It wasn’t published for a long time and I received an official note that the editorial portfolio was full and they were not going to publish my book. I was going to take it from there, when Faigelson all of a sudden read this paper and then said to me: ‘You go home and take a rest and don’t show up here’. I left and then my book was published some time later. So this was the way Victor Faigelson was. He supported all talented people.

After the war

After the war I faced anti-Semitism in everyday life. In 1948 mass persecution of Jews began. Being a Jew I was very concerned about it. Murder of Mikhoels 21, cosmopolitism 22 and ‘doctors’ plot’ 23. I happened to meet a boy, medical Professor Yegorov. His father was arrested during the period of ‘doctors’ plot’. He and his family were very worried. Many acquaintances turned away from his family then. One acquaintance of mine hanged himself at that period. His uncle was arrested under this case and he was hunted down. There was anti-Semitism among members of the house of literature workers. Not always evident and open, but there it was. One renowned poet was a militant anti-Semite and didn’t conceal it. Everybody knew him and avoided him. Routinely anti-Semitism was at its height and our co-tenants in our communal apartment tormented us. We used to have no conflicts before when all of a sudden our neighbors began to shout into a telephone receiver: ‘There are Jews living here’.  Of course, this was badgering against us. Other co-tenants didn’t interfere and kept silent, and my mother and I were distressed. Our neighbor used to polish his boots by our door grumbling: ‘Jews, Jews’. My mother and I lived in this communal apartment until 1960 and then the union of Writers gave me a one-bedroom apartment in the center of Moscow. 10 years later, in 1976, I received this apartment. The Union of Writers gave me this apartment since it’s impossible to write poems when there is another person in the room.

When in 1953 Stalin died, I was very upset. I thought it was going to be worse without him. I believed in his wisdom. I understood so little. One acquaintance said: ‘Better, Emilia. It’s going to be better’. I didn’t believe him, but later everything fell in its place. I remember Stalin’s funeral. I almost died in the crowd. I didn’t go there by myself, our college obliged us to go. There were no excuses accepted. My mother didn’t know. I wasn’t at home a whole night.  What could she think? And we could hardly get out of the crowd. We were on the edge of death. Denouncements of the 20th Congress 24 were a shock for me. My mother was happy that the truth found its way. My mother had different outlooks since she was a historian, but she didn’t share her opinions with me. 

When I began writing poems and then became a member of the Union of Writers my life changed. I got very interesting friends who were poets. Later they became renowned poets in the country. I can name Victor Bokov, Bulat Okudjava and others. They visited us on New Year, my birthday or my mother’s and we often celebrated on of my friend’s birthday at our place. We had joyful and noisy parties. I spent vacations in houses of creativity of the Union of Writers, mainly in the vicinity of Moscow and made new friends there.  My mother lectured in the association of blind people. She had friends there and they also visited us. Since I was plunged into my creative work my mother cared about our simple life at home. 

It happened so that I never got a family of my own. My mother was my only close person. My mother was ill for a long time before she died. She was bedridden for 10 months. I attended to her and my friends were helping me. I wasn’t alone. I wouldn’t have managed it alone. My mother died in 1993. I buried her in the Khovanskoye town cemetery in Moscow. There was no Jewish sector in this cemetery. I had a very hard period before my mother died: both in my creative work and because of my mother’s illness. My life was always hard, but it was particularly miserable during that period. My mother’s hopeless disease and I had no support. Besides, I had no luck. I wrote little and didn’t have anything published at all. I didn’t know where to apply myself and what to do with myself. We had very little money to live on. I received rare and low royalties and a health pension, or I would rather say, poor health pension. I needed money for my mother’s medical treatment. And then I met archpriest Aleksandr Men’ [Editor’s note: Aleksandr Men’ (1935-1990) Fr Alexander Men’ served as a priest in the Russian Orthodox church for thirty years. His legacy includes an Orthodox University, a Charity Group at the Russian Children's Hospital, and a Youth Missionary School. Fr Alexander is sometimes referred to as the architect of Christian renewal in Russia. He was a prolific writer, whose books cover all areas of religious thought, capped by a multi-volume study of world religions. On September 9, 1990 he was murdered. Fr Alexander's murder was never solved] and adopted Christianity. He was such a bright and light person that I followed him.

My parents gave up Judaism and didn’t give me religious education, and I had a craving for religion.   Perhaps, I took after my great grandfather Vigdor in this respect. There was a hollowness in my heart. I was a very credulous simpleton in my childhood and youth.  They told me at school that religion was a tale of uneducated old women. Teachers said this at school and chucked all religion out of my soul. I wasn’t religious at school and at 30 I became an atheist. However, I wasn’t an active atheist, I was passive. I couldn’t resist general moods. 

I heard about father Alexandr Men’ for the first time from my close friend Tamara Zhirmunskaya, a Jew and a poetess. She had stresses at home and was distressed about the situation. Alexandr Men’ whose spiritual daughter she had been for 10 years actually put together splinters of her soul. He busied himself with her like he would have with pieces of a broken cup and brought her to her feet. After I heard her story I realized that I had to see him. This was in 1988.

One Sunday my friend and I went to his church out of town. At the beginning everything was a surprise for me. It was a small wooden church. There was a crowd of people, there was no room to move.  Almost all of them came from Moscow. They were mainly intellectuals. Students, college lecturers. Many Jews. It was a fancy service and I felt like part of a stunning performance. His every move, each word, the sound of his voice, his oration imbued all. He was shining. There were strong fluids of light and kindness coming to people from him. I met a person who was convinced that Christ existed and I believed him.

Afterward I attended his lecture ‘Spiritual perestroika’ in the house of literature workers. I was shy and I went behind the curtains and said: ‘I do need to talk to you’ and he gave me his address. It was easy to address him. There were always people around him. He was very democratic. He didn’t even have arrogance inside. Although he knew his value he valued others. The following Sunday I went to the address he gave me and there was another service. There was confession. I waited till he talked with all others. They actually tortured him with their questions. He didn’t refuse one person. He listened to people and helped them to resolve their everyday issues. I waited till he finished talking with them and in 10 minutes I told him about my sorrow and problems. He replied: ‘I understand, I understand’. He was sitting in a small old arm-chair when he jumped to me like a tiger, recited a prayer and laid his hands on me. It felt so good.  They said he had healing hands and I can confirm it.  He said I had to cross myself very quickly and attend confession at least every three weeks. Then I had a feeling of faith. I began to write spiritual poems. I was different. Yes, a miracle happened to me. My life changed. I had lived with a quarter of my heart before, but then it became free and I started breathing.  And all of sudden poems came like from space, generously.  I wrote a book of poems. I started attending a temple and I made friends and they are still my friends. I stopped being alone. At first I was afraid of the thought that I was a Jew and Orthodoxy was religion of Russians and I didn’t go to church for a long time. I didn’t know that Alexandr Men’ was a Jew. And only after I got to know that he was a Jew I felt at ease and began to cross myself. Alexandr Men’ fully acknowledged his belonging to Jewish people and even believed it to be an undeserved Gift of the Lord. He highly valued his being a Jew and was proud of it. ‘Kinship with prophets, apostles, Virgin Mary and Christ is a great honor and great responsibility as a member of the Lord’s people,’ he said. In his opinion, a Christian Jew was still a Jew.  He didn’t baptize me. I was baptized after my mother died. During two years of her illness I couldn’t leave her and after she died Father Alexandr was not among the living any longer. In September 1990 he was murdered with one hit of an axe on his head on the way to church. I couldn’t understand how one could  raise his hand on a priest. This was horrible and it was a loss for me. 13 years passed, but they haven’t discovered the truth about this crime. Who plotted and committed it and will this murder ever be disclosed?  Father Alexandr belonged to the group clergy whose spreading influence was viewed by communists and their police as a threat to their power. For KGB and anti-Semites Alexandr Men’ was a suspicious figure. I think that they or the latter or together they murdered Alexandr Men’ to make him silent. Perhaps, the axe, this weapon of murder, was a symbol. They shook their axes fighting against Jews during pogroms.  Father Alexandr was concerned about increasing xenophobia in Russia. He saw a grain of Russian fascism in it. KGB authorities manipulated these fascists.

I stayed in hospitals 9 times in my life. Every time it was terrible. Last time in May 2002 I broke neck of femur on my left leg. I had limped slightly on my leg and had severe trombophlebitis. I sat on my bed 17 without moving, and even slept sitting. I thought it was trombophlebitis, but it was a fracture with displacement. I didn’t even fall I just sat on a bench somehow incautiously and then I fell from my bed and it led to displacement. I was alone, but members of our community helped me. Other patients in my ward were jealous about me. Their relatives didn’t visit them as often as my friends. I had a surgery. It was free of charge, but as it is customary in this or other hospitals I gave my doctor 100$ [Editor’s note: it is not uncommon to give small gifts or money, usually dollars, to doctors in Russia unofficially, in return for good treatment. Doctors usually expect such expressions of gratitude. This practice has always been especially widespread in bigger cities]. He was a nice doctor. I didn’t think that such skilled doctor would do this surgery on me, but he was on duty when I came to hospital and he started talking to me. I had health problems, and my heart was poor and I had diabetes and lots of other things. He said: ‘And what shall we do with you?’ I said ’Surgery’ ‘What if you remain on the table?’ I said: ‘It’s also a way out’. So he did this surgery on me. It was well done. They inserted an artificial joint. Staying in our hospitals is a great ordeal. I don’t like recalling this hospital. For example, if you need a night pot or want a wash you have to pay each time. I had 150 rubles [$6 at the time] in my drawer, an attendant saw money and took it looking as if she was doing me a great favor.  But there was nothing else to do. I was helpless and couldn’t rise from my bed. Those attendants were like gangsters and doctors were good specialists. They watched my health condition and my heart constantly. There were 8 patients in my ward and all were bedridden and helpless. One might even have died there at night if the door had been closed and nobody would have noticed. At night there was one attendant for 70 patients in the hospital. What could she do? Besides, her salary was very low and there were not many willing to take this job. It’s hard and low paid work. Now I can walk in my apartment, go downstairs to pick my mail, but my walking radius is limited.

I had big hopes for perestroika 25. It was like some fresh wind blowing. I do not watch TV now, but when I watched it, Duma meetings and speeches of various politicians I had hopes for something better. As for Gorbachev 26, I do not blame him. He raised the ‘iron curtain’ 27. This stupid Cold War that swallowed all our money and brought our state to ruin. It became easier to breathe and I got to know more.  It was always hard to be published. For different reasons. In the past it was a state monopoly and only literature officials, absolutely ignorant and uneducated, could decide to publish or forbid a book, whether it complied with moral and ethical standards of a Soviet citizen or not, there was censure and ideological commission and a book also needed to be included in publication plan.  Now one can publish anything, but it is a matter of money, which I don’t have. My savings were gone during default in 1990. Besides, I am old and cannot go around and ‘legs feed a wolf’, they say. There were many democratic slogans during perestroika and they seemed to have a meaning. I was glad about it and had hopes. But unfortunately, these events happened at my old age and illnesses when I couldn’t be an active member of society any longer. I don’t care that some people became rich and I am almost a beggar. I won’t get rich regardless of regime. I don’t need it. I have moderate demands and don’t need extra riches, they are a burden and do not contribute to creativity.

So who am I? A Jewish woman in blood turned to Christianity. Of course, I am a Jew. Jews were my ancestors. I am interested in their life, history and traditions. I think I am genetically linked to Jewry.  I don’t know why, but I am touched by Jewish folk songs and dances. If I had healthy legs, probably hearing Jewish music I would start dancing. I like Ukrainian and Russian songs, but listening to them, I do not have this anxious feeling that overwhelms me when listening to Jewish songs.  I didn’t get any religious education and was raised in a family of atheists, but I cannot say that my linking with Jewish people is merely ethnic or determined by a stamp in my passport. This is not the only reason why I feel my connection to Jewish people. If in the past religion in Russia was determined by nationality, now it’s not so. Not all Russian become Christian and the word Jew is not a synonym of a follower of Judaism. Though I adopted Orthodoxy, I’ve identified myself as a Jew.  I don’t attend a Jewish community since I haven’t left my home since I fractured my leg. When I asked the Hand of Help for help a curator visited me and when she saw icons on the walls she was struck dumb and didn’t know what to do at first, but then she decided to include me in the patronage list after talking to her management.

Gossary:

Tsyliya Spivak      
Kherson
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: September 2003

Tsyliya Spivak is not tall. She is a round lady with a short haircut making her look younger and independent. She lives in a big three-bedroom apartment in a 1970 house in a new district in Kherson. Tsyliya has a nice suit with trousers on. She looks well-groomed having her beautiful hands manicured and a touch of lipstick on her  lips. She has shrewd eyes with a splashing smile in them and it seems that if it were not for her grief after her husband who died recently there would be plenty of humor in her story. Tsyliya’s apartment is nicely furnished with quite modern furniture.  She has a Japanese TV set and a nice stove and microwave oven in the kitchen. Everything glitters with cleanness and careful maintenance, including the hostess radiating contentment and wealth.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

My mother came from a big Jewish family living in Sednevo town in Chernigov province, 200 km from Kiev. I’ve never been to Sednevo, but my mother told me that it was like any other small Jewish town. There was a synagogue in the town. Jews commonly dealt in crafts and trade. My mother’s father Borukh Kaplan, my grandfather, was a tradesman. My grandfather was born in 1860 and received a traditional Jewish education: he finished cheder and a primary Jewish school and took to trading business. My grandmother Tsyvah, who was 12 years younger than my grandfather, was a housewife and looked after the children.  Sometimes she helped my grandfather in the store in the house where the family lived. They didn’t have any other employees working for them in the store. They were selling haberdashery and household goods in their little store and Ukrainian customers of my grandfather from surrounding villages often came by my grandfather’s store to buy what they needed. My grandfather got along well with Ukrainians, but it didn’t help during the Civil War 1 when pogroms 2 and persecution of the Jewish population began. Our family, my mother in particular, suffered a lot from a pogrom made by a passing gang. My grandfather’s house and store were robbed and my grandfather was almost beaten to death and my grandfather decided to move to another place. In 1919 his big family moved to Chernigov [regional center in the north of Ukraine, 220 km from Kiev] after selling their remaining belongings.

In Chernigov my grandfather bought a small two-bedroom apartment in a private house where they lived until before the Great Patriotic War 3. My grandmother and grandfather were very religious people. My grandfather started every day with a prayer with his tefillin and tallit on and a kippah covering his head. He wore a cap to go out in autumn time and in winter he wore a fur hat. My grandmother always wore a kerchief or a lace shawl on holidays. They ate kosher food and celebrated Sabbath. The whole family got together on big religious Jewish holidays.

There were 12 children born to the family, but before the Great Patriotic War there were seven of them left. The rest of the children died in infancy and I don’t know their names. The oldest was my mother Nehama, born in 1895. Then came her sisters, one or two years younger than she: Bodana, Zelda, Sarrah and Sima and brothers Ziama and Yakov. It would be hard for me to tell their exact dates of birth and their sequence. Considering that the children only got primary education I can tell that the family of my grandfather Kaplan wasn’t wealthy. His sons studied in cheder and his daughters mainly studied with a visiting teacher at home: there was no Jewish school in Sednevo. Although all of the children received religious education the flow of time had its impact on them: after the revolution of 1917 4 they only celebrated holidays as tribute to Jewish traditions, but they gave up their faith following the trend of their time.

I shall start from my mother’s brothers. Ziama, approximately born in 1900, also dealt in trade. Before the revolution he was helping my grandfather and afterward he worked in a store. Ziama had a Jewish wife. Her name was Lisa and she was a housewife.  Ziama and Lisa had two children: Boris, born in 1927, and Fania, born in 1932. During the Great Patriotic War Ziama was recruited to the army and perished at the front and Lisa and her children, our family and all sisters were in evacuation in Orsk in the Urals (today Russia), 3500 km from Kiev. They returned to Chernigov at the same time after the war. We were all poor after the war, but Lisa really lived in poverty. Shortly after he returned Boris fell ill and died of cancer in the early 1950s and Lisa lived a year or two longer.  After Fania returned to Chernigov my mother’s sister Zelda who got married and left to the Far East with her husband, took her with them.  Zelda actually raised Fania and helped her to enter a Pedagogical College. Fania married a Russian guy. Her surname is Kokina. She lives with her husband and daughter who has grown-up children in Tver, Russia.

My mother’s second brother Yakov was about eight years younger than Ziama. He worked as a tinsmith foreman in ‘Metallprom’ shop. Yakov had a wife named Basia and three sons: Mark, born in 1935, Vadim, born in 1937, and Felix, born in 1939. When the Great Patriotic War began, Yakov was on military training in a frontier harrison. He was wounded during the first bombardment and sent to the rear. After his stay in hospital he was demobilized and joined his family in evacuation.  After Chernigov was liberated Yakov and his family returned home, but some time later they moved to Odessa 5 where my mother’s sister Sarrah lived at that time. Yakov died in the 1970s. Mark and his family live in Munich, Germany, Vadim lives in Moscow and Felix lives in Odessa.  They finished Odessa Polytechnic College and have families, but we, regretfully, do not keep in touch.

Bodana was one or two years younger than my mother. Bodana was far from good looking and as a result she grew up uncultivated and unsociable. Young men avoided her and she didn’t marry for a long time. She gave up any hopes for personal life of a happy life as a woman. About 1938 a Jewish man came to work in the shop where Yakov worked. His name was Semyon Siganevich. For a long time he  was working in this shop, but then he was put to jail for some misdemeanor and stayed in a camp for a few years. While he was serving his sentenced his wife divorced him and remarried and when Semyon returned he had nowhere to lay his head. Uncle Yakov said to him: ‘I will introduce you to my sister Bodana. She isn’t much to go for, but who knows…’ So they met and got married shortly afterward. They got along well and Semyon grew fond of plain Bodana and she returned his feelings. In 1940 43-year old Bodana gave birth to their daughter Fania and Fania’s parents just adored her. When the Great Patriotic War began Semyon was one of the first to go the war. He perished shortly afterward. Bodana and Fania were in evacuation in Orsk with us. After returning to Chernigov Bodana never remarried. She lived with grandmother Tsyvah after the war. Grandmother died in 1960, and Bodana died in 1980. Fania repeated her mother’s fate and didn’t get married for a long time. Around 1975 she visited us in Kherson and met my husband’s brother Yefim Spivak. They got married and Yefim moved to Fania in Chernigov.  Their daughter Victoria was born there.  A few years ago Victoria moved to Germany and then Fania and Yefim joined them there.

My mother’s second sister Sarrah was born around 1910. Sarrah was such a beauty that people stared at her in the streets. She finished an accounting course and worked as an assistant accountant.  Sarrah married a Party official. His name was Ziama Aronov. Before the Great Patriotic War he was second secretary of the regional Communist Party committee. Sarrah and Ziama had a son named Alik. When the Great Patriotic War began Aronov was ordered to stay in Chernigov to organize a partisan unit. Sarrah and Alik evacuated to Orsk with the rest of the family. Many men were seeking Sarrah’s attention. Lev Troyanskiy, a man from Odessa, was very much in love with her, but Sarrah was faithful to her husband. Only after she returned to Chernigov and got to know for certain that Aronov had perished she agreed to marry Troyanskiy. Lev took her to Odessa. In Odessa Sarrah’s daughter Larisa was born. Alik served in the Navy and then finished a college. Larisa also got a higher education. Lev Troyanskiy died in the early 1990s and then his family moved to Germany. Alik and Larisa live in Munich. Sarrah died in 1998 in Munich.

My mother’s sister Zelda was much younger than my mother and Bodana. She was born around 1915. Zelda didn’t have a good education, but she was a Komsomol 6 member, trade union activist and held rather high public posts. Before the war Zelda met with Yakov Lifshitz, a nice Jewish guy. They loved each other very much, but they argued about some little thing and separated.  Zelda married another Jewish guy to spite Yakov. His name was Yakov Shulman. They had a son named Roman. Zelda’s husband Yakov perished at the front. After finishing his college Yakov Lifshitz was sent to work at a military plant in Komsomolsk-on-the-Amur  [over 7000 km from Kiev] in the Far East. After the war he found Zelda and convinced her to marry him. Yakov took Zelda and Roman to Komsomolsk-on-the-Amur. Besides Roman Zelda and Yakov raised Ziama’s daughter Fania and then my mother younger sister’s daughter Irina. After finishing school Roman entered Odessa Polytechnic College and after finishing it he received a job assignment to Kishinev. Aunt Zelda and her husband followed him there. Zelda died in 1982. Yakov didn’t remarry for a long time, but then he got married and moved to Israel. Roman and his family also live there.

My mother’s youngest sister Sima was born in 1917 when my grandmother was way in her forties. Sima loved my mother dearly and even sat on her lap during my mother’s wedding. Sima finished a 7-year school. She married Boris Shpektorov, a Jewish guy, and they had two daughters: Larisa and Irina. Boris perished at the front. Sima didn’t remarry. She died in 1998. Her older daughter Larisa finished a technical school and worked as an accountant. Larisa was married to Gennadiy Klyuchnikov, a Russian man. Her husband has passed away and her two sons moved elsewhere. Yevgeniy lives in Germany and Igor lives somewhere in Donetsk region. Larisa is alone in Chernigov. Zelda was raising her sister Irina. Irina and Fania finished a college in the Far East.  Irina, her husband Yuri Sarayev, he is Russian, and their children Zoya and Boris live in Arsenyevo town in Primorskiy region, Russia.

My mother Nehama Kaplan was the oldest of the sisters. My mother was almost as beautiful as her sister Sarrah. In 1918 my mother married Zachariy Kogan, a Jewish man. He came from Strezhalovka village. Regardless of hunger, devastation and pogroms they had a real Jewish wedding with a chuppah, music and feasting. My mother and her husband settled down in Grimaylov village with her husband’s distant relatives. Their son Aron was born there. During a Denikin troop attack 7 Zachariy was killed before his wife and son’s eyes and Denikin soldiers raped my mother.  My mother kept an official paper saying: ‘This is issued by Grimaylov district executive committee to Nehama Boruchovna Kogan, resident of Chernigov town, to confirm that her husband Zachariy Gershevich Kogan resided in Strizhalovka village before 1917 dealing in farming. However, in 1919 during Denikin invasion to Ukraine, the above mentioned Zachariy Gershkovich was killed by Denikin troops in Grimaylov town and his property was looted. However, his wife and children escaped from Denikin troops and now they don’t have means to… Chairman of the village council…Signature’. Behind those few words there is a huge personal tragedy of my mother. She hardly ever talked about it. I know that after this happened my mother lived with grandmother and grandfather for almost ten years. She had a physical and moral trauma and it took her a long time to recover. She didn’t work. She did housework, raised her son and looked after her younger sisters. My mother hardly ever went out or socialized with others. Her only joy was her sonny Aron. However life went on. Matchmakers began to look for a match for my mother: he was not too young, but mature, and he might be as well a widower. So my parents met.

My father Mothel Rozhavskiy was 7 years older than my mother. He came from Gorodnya town in Chernigov province. My paternal grandfather Moishe, born in the 1850s died before I was born in the early 1920s. I don’t know what he was doing for a living, either. I have dim memories about my grandmother: a short meager old lady wearing a kerchief.  I don’t remember her name, though. My grandmother died in the late 1930s at the age of almost 90. There were 14 children in the family. I knew my father’s sisters Dvoira Kirpichnikova, Lisa Karasik and Etah. I saw them several times when we visited grandmother in Gorodnya in the 1930s. They had big families, but I don’t remember any of their children.

My father had a traditional Jewish education: cheder and Jewish primary school. My father was recruited to the czarist army during WWI 8 and was in captivity. He got married after he returned to Russia. I don’t know his first wife’s name. In 1920  his son Irma and in 1922 his daughter Minna were born. After the daughter was born my father’s wife fell ill. I don’t know exactly what disease caused her death. In 1924 my father became a widower. He was raising his children daring not to bring them a stepmother.  Only my mother with her love and kindness to children raised my father’s trust. In 1929 my parents got married. They didn’t have a wedding since none of them was religious. My father knew about my mother’s tragedy, of course, and was tactful and sympathetic with her.  My parents registered their marriage in the registry office and had a small wedding dinner at home inviting only relatives to it.  For some time after the wedding my parents lived in Bragin town in the neighboring Gomel region in Belarus. My father worked as a storekeeper at a mill. However, my mother was missing Chernigov where her parents and sisters lived and in early 1930, shortly before I was born, my parents moved to Chernigov. 

Here on 19 March 1930 I came into this world. I remember our apartment in a one-storied building in the very center of Chernigov. It was a nice apartment: one big room and a smaller room. There was my parents’ big bed in the big room, an oval table and a big cared cupboard. We, children, slept in a smaller room. There were iron beds with feather mattresses and heaps of pillows. There was electric lighting, but there was no gas. There were heating stoves in each room and one in the kitchen. My mother cooked on a primus stove 9 – they were ‘hissing’ in every kitchen then. Our neighbors were Russian: they were the Uspenskiy family. They were our parents’ friends and Maria Sergeyevna often invited me to a meal. Like all children, I didn’t quite like to eat at home and my mother took my breakfast to our neighbors and I enjoyed having breakfast there. 

We had neighbors of various nationalities: Jewish, Ukrainian, Russian and Byelorussian. We were on very friendly terms. One of my first childhood memories is associated with summertime when housewives made jam. Primus stoves were too small for making jam. There was a huge pan placed on bricks and fire made underneath. Housewives took turns to make jam. They were stirring their jam and all children lined up with their saucers and spoons to try the foam generated by boiling jam.

Of course, I cannot remember famine in 1932-33 10. However, I know that only thanks to my father working at the mill our family and my grandmother and grandfather survived. My father received monthly rationed food that we shared with grandmother, grandfather and my mother’s sisters. My stepbrothers and sister became friends and my father loved my mother she seemed to have forgotten her sorrow and thawed out. In summer 1934 another disaster struck our family. Aron and Irma went to bathe in the Desna River, got in a whirlpool and sank. There were many people on the beach and rescuers arrived right away. They took both of them onto the bank, but …they only managed to resuscitate Irma, but Aron, my mother’s joy and her favorite, died. My mother withdrew into herself for several years again. She even had to send me to the kindergarten because she couldn’t keep the house and look after me. I remember when I went to the kindergarten alone walking over a bridge over a small river. Once I was late: there was a film shooting in Chernigov and I stayed there gazing at horse riders wearing felt cloaks with their swords galloping over the bridge. I forgot where I was going and what I was to do. Then when they finally discovered me my mother came in tears.  Since then I never attended a kindergarten and my mother always kept an eye on me. She never let me come close to the water and I never learned to swim. 

Growing up

Perhaps, my mother loved me more than other children, but she also treated my stepbrother Irma and stepsister Minna like her own children. We were hard up and even though we were living in the center of the town, my mother bought a cow. The cow was in a shed in our yard and all our neighbors’ children took turns to take it to the pasture.  My mother sold milk and was saving money dreaming of sending Irma and Minna and then me to college. Once two calves were born and a correspondent of a Chernigov newspaper came to our yard to interview my mother. He also took a photograph of her as if the birth of these two calves was her own accomplishment. Nevertheless, I was very proud of my mother showing people this newspaper with a picture of her. 

My father wasn’t a member of the Communist Party, but like all Soviet people felt delighted reading about achievements of the Soviet regime: about the first 5-year periods 11, construction of socialism and communism and was a real patriot.  We celebrated 1 May and 7 November 12 at home. I looked forward to parades. I was dressed up, had ribbons in my little plaits and my father took me to the central square. There was often a common table set under the lime trees in the yard. There was a record player on a stool and adults and children danced to the music and sang songs: old romances and Ukrainian songs and new Soviet songs. Generally speaking, we had an absolutely Soviet family. Our parents spoke Russian in our presence and only occasionally they exchanged a few Jewish phrases when they wanted to keep the subject of discussion a secret from us.  However, I understood many words in Yiddish since my grandmother spoke Yiddish to my mother and her sisters and the sisters also talked in Yiddish. 

We didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays at home, but at Rosh Hashanah, Pesach and Chanukkah we were due to visit grandfather and grandmother and the whole family got together. I had no idea what kind of holidays these were or why they were celebrated.  All I remember is that children were given money at Chanukkah and there were sweet doughnuts and potato pancakes and sweet pancakes. The most plentiful was celebration of Pesach. There was gefilte fish, chicken, jellied meat and sweet tsimes. My grandfather conducted seder and one of the boys posed questions.  I didn’t find it interesting.  Sometimes we visited grandmother on Friday before Sabbath.  We sat down at the table that was set for dinner. My grandmother lit candles and started reciting a prayer and I couldn’t wait until it was time to have something delicious. My grandmother saved something that each of her grandchildren liked for Friday: for some it was a cookie or candy and for me she  put a slice of herring or something pickled onto my plate.  

In 1938 Irma finished school with a ‘golden medal,’ i.e. with all excellent grades. My mother kept her word. She had been saving money for her children’s education for a long time. Irma moved to Leningrad where he entered the Industrial College. Later, in 1940 Minna entered this same college.

In 1938, when Irma finished school I entered the first grade of the school where he studied. This Russian school was quite at a distance from home, but this was the best school in Chernigov. My classmates were of various nationalities, but our teachers treated us nicely. I studied well. In 1940 grandfather Borukh died. I wasn’t taken to his funeral, but my aunts told me that it was a Jewish funeral.

During the war

In June 1941 I finished the third grade and my mother was going to send me to my father’s sisters in Gorodnya for the summer. We were supposed to depart in the end of June, but on 22 June Molotov 13 spoke on the radio and we got to know that the Great Patriotic War began. None of my family seemed to know or even assume that there was a possibility of the war. It was quiet in Chernigov at first. There was no panic. The war seemed to be far away, but all men including my mother’s sisters were recruited to the army on the first days of the war.  My father was beyond his recruitment age and he stayed with us. Besides, my father was very ill. He had stomach aches and suffered from aftereffects of his past tuberculosis. My father didn’t want to leave home. He believed that we didn’t have to panic, that Germans were a civilized nation and were not going to harm Jews. He judged Germans from the time of his captivity during WWI. However, my mother didn’t want to stay in any circumstances. Some sixth sense, her instinct of self-preservation was forcing her to evacuation and she actually raised the rest of the family. It was hard to leave: people were storming into trains and our numerous family with the children and my old grandmother it was more than we could manage. My father made some arrangements with villagers and in the middle of August they brought a wagon to our house. We loaded our simple luggage and headed to Novgorod-Severskiy. My grandmother, Sima with her two children and Bodana and Fania were in the wagon with us.  Sarrah and Alik, Zelda and Lisa with their children were on another wagon. So this bunch of us reached Novgorod-Severskiy, an old town located in the very north of Chernigov region. It was like quite an adventure for us, children, and we didn’t understand why our mothers were crying. It was so interesting to be traveling to other places on a wagon.  In Novgorod-Severskiy we boarded a boat with thousands of other refugees. It brought us to a railway station. The boat was stuffed with refugees. Old people were lying on some dunnage. Children were crying and my brothers and sisters and I began to realize that the war wasn’t just the most interesting adventure. At the railway station we boarded a freight train and departed.  We changed trains several times and at the station Navlya of Kursk region (today Russia) we were kept for a few days. We could hear distant explosions: Kursk was bombed. When the train arrived at the platform the boarding only lasted about twenty minutes: people were throwing children and luggage through windows inside. There was crying and screaming. On the adjusting track a train with warriors heading to the front stopped. I shall never forget this picture: children screaming, mothers and old women crying and serious faces of young guys with guns going to fight the fascists.

We managed to board one railcar. We were heading to the Urals. The train moved slowly letting military and sanitary trains pass. At bigger stations we jumped off with pots where they gave us soup or cooked cereals or just boiling water. We managed to exchange some food at stations. On the road my father either fell ill or ate something tainted, or it was acute condition of his chronic disease. At Mukhnatin station of Tambov region, 2000 km from home my father, mother and I got off the train. My father was sent to a hospital immediately and my mother rented a room from a Russian old man. My mother went to the hospital every day and cried at nights. On 28 October 1941 my father died. My mother, our landlord and I buried him in the local cemetery. My mother seemed to have no tears left so much distress she went through in her life. As for me, it was the first death of my dear one. After my father’s funeral I had a high fever and probably this helped my mother to hold on: she had to bring me to recovery. The old man tried to convince us to stay in Mukhnatin, but as soon as I recovered we left for Orsk where our family was.

We arrived at Orsk, a small town in Chkalovsk (present Orenburg) region. There was a fortress in the town where a harrison deployed. Local population resided in private houses for the most part.  Our family lived on the outskirts near a power plant and bakery factory. This was a district of employees of these enterprises. 

All of our relatives rented a small room in a private house. We slept on the floor side by side.  My mother and I were the last to arrive and the only sport left for us was near the door. We slept with our clothes on and wrapped in everything we could find: blankets, coats or fur coats. But we still woke up in the morning covered with hoar frost. It was end of November and when we came it was severe winter in the Urals already.  My mother, her sisters and aunt Lisa went to work at the bakery. They worked in the dried bread shop drying bread for the front.  My mother always over fulfilled the standard quantity 20-25%. Everybody worked for the front, for the Victory! For her outstanding performance my mother received a package of dried bread that did help us to survive. It didn’t matter that there was pain in my mother’s fingers and they were bleeding, she continued to work hard.  This was my mother’s first job and in evacuation in 1942 she became a trade union member.  This is the only document we have confirming that we were in evacuation. 

I went to the 4th form of a local school. Although I was almost 3 months late I caught up with other children soon and received all excellent marks. There were far too many children in classes due to many children in evacuation, including Jewish children. We had no problems associated with our nationality and in general, we never gave this subject a thought.  We were all victims: some children had already received death certificates, some had their fathers missing and others were still in action. I was also an orphan. Teachers had particularly warm attitude toward us, orphaned children of the war. It was a hungry life, particularly for those who were used to high calorie meat food. As for me, what we received at school was quite sufficient. We were provided thin soup with green leaves of sorrel and nettle and probably there was a piece of potato in it. A little spoon of plant oil was added into each bowl. I enjoyed having my soup and at home I had my mother’s dried bread. My mother also received bread in stores per bread coupons. I didn’t have to stand in lines. So we basically were trying to survive. After classes my friends and I went to the hospital. This was a holy mission for us to support the wounded. We helped nurses, took out patients’ bed pans, changed bed sheets and gave food to the patients. But the most important thing was that seeing us brought a warm spark into their eyes and they smiled. I read them poems by Pushkin 14, Lermontov 15. Occasionally we made them a concert in the biggest ward. So I think I made my contribution into the common cause of victory.

My brother Irma volunteered to the front on the first days of the Great Patriotic War. His division lasted only few weeks suffering great casualties. Irma was one of the unfortunate: he was severely wounded and it resulted in gangrene. Irma went to hospital where doctors rescued his life and his leg. The only thing was that he became lame. In 1942 Irma was released from the hospital. He found us and joined us in Orsk.  It was a happy reunion since  we survived and sad at the same time when Irma heard about his father’s death. Seeing our routines and our living on the floor Irma went to the town executive committee and being a veteran of the war the managed to arrange for another accommodation for us. My mother and I got a lodging in a small room adjusting to another room three-bedroom apartment in 20, Komsomolskaya Street. There was an old woman living in this next room and an evacuated family from Stalingrad (present Volgograd, today Russia). Then Irma went to study. His college evacuated to Tashkent (today Uzbekistan) and Irma went there, too. 

Minna, my stepsister, stayed in Leningrad. She became a flak gunner and stayed in Leningrad during the siege 16. Occasionally we received letters and cards from Minna, cheerful and optimistic. She never wrote about the horrible days of siege. Minna even managed to sent us money: 100 rubles. We received the last card from Minna on the New Year eve of 1943. My sister sent us greetings and wishes of victory. This was the last time we heard from Minna. Later an acquaintance of hers wrote us that on 8 August 1943 Minna got into the fiercest battle for Leningrad. A group of flak gunner girls came out of a theater at noon. Minna was one of them. Many perished. Minna lost her arm, her leg and was severely wounded in her stomach. She died a few hours after. I took this letter out of our postbox and didn’t tell my mother about my sister’s death for a long while. I went to my neighbors from Stalingrad and had my cry out. A few months later those neighbors received a death certificate for their son and my mother went to support them in their grief. Then they told her about Minna. My mother grieved after her. She loved Minna like her own daughter.

We were in evacuation until Chernigov was liberated in late 1943. My mother applied for obtaining permits for reevacuation, but we left home before we had any documents issued to us. Somehow we managed to make arrangements at the railway station to get on a train. My mother couldn’t even take her employment records book from her work since we were going almost illegally. I only had my school record book. Our trip lasted for a long time. We had to change trains in Moscow and we stayed there at the railway station for a few days. 

Chernigov, my hometown, was in ruins. Fortunately, cathedrals and major historical monuments, were not destroyed. A bomb hit our house, however, and there were only iron bed frames sticking from ashes. Our former neighbors Uspenskiys gave us shelter. They were living in a nearby house. They only lived in one room, but they gave us a warm welcome. They also told us that Jews who stayed in Chernigov were killed. Doctor Radomyslskiy’s family, our prewar neighbors, and a few other Jewish families perished. Our crazy old neighbor, a single man, whom we laughed at when we were kids, went to a mental hospital before the war and was exterminated along with other patients during the war. 

My mother’s sisters and grandmother stayed with some acquaintances. About two months later aunt Sima, who went to work at the woolen yarn factory received a room in a three-bedroom communal apartment 17, and our whole big family went to live with her. So we lived removing mattresses and pillows from the floor in the morning making the room look different. At night we slept on the floor like we did in evacuation.  Even a dinner table served as a bed for one of us. Then Sarrah and Alik moved out and aunt Zelda and her children followed them and there was more room.

After the war

My mother and I continued living with aunt Sima. I went to school and had all excellent marks, as usual. I became a pioneer in evacuation and now I joined Komsomol and took an active part in public activities. At one time I was chief of the Komsomol unit of our school. My mother went to work as a nurse in hospital.  Since I was used to helping around in hospitals I went to my mother’s work almost every day after classes. I washed floors and helped patients. I felt so very sorry for my mother and wanted to help her. Irma supported us. After finishing college he worked in Chernovtsy. He married Anna Nikolayeva, a Russian girl from Leningrad and moved to Leningrad. Their son Mark was born in 1952. In 1970 Irma and his family moved to Israel. He worked there many years longer and now he receives pension as an invalid of the Great Patriotic War. His son Mark lives in the USA.

In 1949 I finished 10 grades with a good certificate. I could go to any higher educational institution like Kiev University, for example, considering its high prestige, but I had to start work to earn money as soon as possible and this made me go to Chernigov 2-year Pedagogical College. Actually, I was fond of literature and wanted to become a teacher since childhood. I studied well. Firstly, I liked it, and secondly, I was stimulated to receive a stipend for advanced students [Editor’s note: students who had all excellent grades in the institutions of higher education were entitled to receive the so-called “Lenin’s stipend,” which was somewhat more than the regular one]. It was very important for our poor family. Besides, when I entered this college, my mother and I rented an apartment near the college so that Sima and her children felt more comfortable in their room. I studied during the period of state anti-Semitism, so called struggle against rootless cosmopolites 18. I didn’t face it, but many Jewish lecturers were fired from the college. I remember our lecturer on Marxism-Leninism asking for our notes to prove that he didn’t say anything seditious to his students. It didn’t help him: he was fired. 

In 1951 there was a job assignment 19 distribution. I was prepared to go anywhere since my mother was going to follow me anyway. I had a Russian friend at that time. Her name was Valia Chukhray. Her parents liked me a lot. They always tried to make me eat with them and made gifts. Valia’s father had a high position in the town military prosecutor’s office. Shortly before the distribution of job assignments he fell ill with brain cancer. He was rather upset of not being able to help me with my job assignment. He told me to not agree to go to Western Ukraine that was recently annexed to the USSR 20 due to banderovtsy movement 21. He was very happy to hear that my job assignment was in Kherson region in the south of Ukraine. 

I chose Zagoryanovka village near Kherson hoping to be able to often go to Kherson. When I came to the regional department of education its chairman looked at me (and I was a thin short girl) and said: ‘I don’t think it’s worth for you, girl, to go to Zagoryanovka. It’s not the place a young girl would like to be at. I will send you to Tehinka. There is big construction there. They need teachers with diplomas and this place is better than Zagoryanovka’. So I went to Tehinka.  They welcomed me warmly and showed me the school. I rented a room from nice Ukrainian people: Marusia and Kolia who liked me, too. The department of education paid my rental fees and gave me money for wood and kerosene. So I was a desirable tenant. Three weeks later my mother joined me. She lived with me ever since.

There was a kolkhoz  22 named after Kalinin 23 in Tehinka. It was a poor kolkhoz. Its members were paid with food coupons for work. Since I had a regular salary I also became a desirable fiancée. Young people proposed marriage to me, but my mother and I declined them joking about it. Teaching was easy for me. I taught in the 5th, 7th and 8th grades. The 8th grade was the first year of higher secondary school. They were the children who wanted to have a complete secondary education. They listened to me with attention and I was eager to inspire love to the Russian literature in them. As for the 5th grade those children didn’t bother to listen to me. Why did they need Russian? They were noisy and caused problems. Once I lost my temper and pushed one of those hooligans. I forced him out of his desk and pushed him out of the classroom. They began to respect me then: ‘Hey, she can fight!’ and were quiet at my lessons. After working for a year I got a transfer to Daryevka, a neighboring village, since a new doctor came to Tehinka and his wife who was a teacher, needed this vacancy. I didn’t mind since Daryevka was even bigger than Tehinka and there were more comforts there. I spent a few more weeks in Tehinka and met a Jewish girl. Her name was Fira Spivak. She had her job assignment in this village. I supported her since I was well aware how hard it was for a girl from a town to live in the village. Her brother Naum Spivak came from Kherson to visit his sister and so I met my future husband.  Naum began to visit me in Daryevka. He courted me very nicely.

Naum Spivak was born in Kherson on 22 April 1925. His father Tsala Spivak was a really religious man. Although Naum was a Komsomol member, he used to go to the synagogue with his father before the war and knew Jewish customs, traditions and holidays well. However, Naum wasn’t religious and didn’t observe traditions, but he knew them. When the Great Patriotic War began, Tsala joined Territorial Army 24, and Naum, his mother and sister Fira were in evacuation in Saratov region (today Russia). His father perished in occupation. After Kherson was liberated Naum returned to his hometown. Before evacuation Naum finished 8 grades at school and when back in Kherson he passed his exams for a higher secondary school extramurally. At the age of 16 he entered the Agronomist Faculty of the Agricultural College. After finishing it he went to work as chief agronomist in a kolkhoz and in 1952 he already was an agronomist of the agricultural department in Kherson. I fell in love with him and we got married on 3 October 1952. Almost the whole village was invited to our wedding. It was a joyful wedding party. Many young people attended it. Almost immediately after the wedding he was sent to support agriculture improvement following the decision of Khrushchev 25 to send specialists to villages. We went to Sadovo, a big village where I went to work at school. A year later on 19 September 1953 my daughter Inna was born. I named her Minna after my sister when she was born, but when my daughter was to obtain her passport she changed her name. This was a hard period of time: everybody was talking about the Kremlin ‘doctors’ plot’ 26. We were so worried about it and never believed one bit of the official propaganda. I need to mention that neither my husband nor I faced any of anti-Semitic demonstrations.  Perhaps, this was because we were working in a village where people were nicer and more sincere.

Stalin’s death in 1953 was a shock for us. We were whining: how were we to live without him? My husband and many others submitted their applications to the Party. A year later my husband joined the Party. We lived in Sadovo four years. Here in 1956 my second daughter named Ella after Naum’s grandmother Elka was born. Shortly after she was born my husband was transferred to Nikolaev region and I went to work as a teacher there too. We always followed my husband. In 1958 my husband was transferred to Kherson. In the first years we rented an apartment and later we invested in construction of a cooperative apartment. This is where I live now. 

I was very happy with my husband. He was an amazing person: kind, cheerful, very smart and an erudite. It seemed there was no existing subject of discussion that he couldn’t talk about and no questions he didn’t know answers to.  My husband always had good positions and earned well.  We had an interesting life going to the cinema, to theaters and spending vacations at resorts. I had everything I ever wanted. I was always in public as a teacher and later deputy director at school.  I joined the Party and was secretary of the Party unit. I wouldn’t have made a career otherwise. I always dressed in trend and beautifully. Naum enjoyed buying me new things. My mother helped me about the house and I wasn’t overloaded with work at home. In 1981 my mother died and we buried her in the town cemetery.  Naum’s mother had died a long time before, his sister Fira moved to Israel with the first wave of emigration in the 1970s. My husband’s sister died in the early 1990s. She didn’t have children. My family have always been sympathetic with Israel, but we never considered emigration.  

In the last years before perestroika 27 Naum worked at the machine building plant as an engineer, although he didn’t have an engineering education.  When perestroika began he established a cooperative manufacturing construction materials. His cooperative was one of 15 other cooperatives at the plant that survived and developed into a successful company. I can say that perestroika gave my husband a full opportunity to reveal his talents and skills. Our life improved even more. We bought nice furniture and a dacha and supported our children even more. 

Our girls studied well at school and got a higher education. Inna finished the Faculty of Mathematic of Kherson University, and Ella finished the Faculty of Physics at this University. Both of them  have Jewish husbands. Inna’s husband Leonid Rozenfeld is also a mathematician. Ella’s husband Valeriy Lifshitz is an engineer. Inna is deputy scientific director in the experimental lyceum school in Kherson. Her son Roman, born in 1980, finished Polytechnic College and works at the same plant where my husband used to work.  Ella, her husband and daughter Yelena moved to Israel in 1990. She didn’t want to move there leaving us here, but her husband insisted on their departure.  Yelena, born in 1977, got married very young in Israel. In 1996 my Ella called me and said: ‘Mother, congratulations on your having great granddaughter Daniel-Nehama!’ When I heard that my granddaughter was named after my mother I burst into tears of happiness. Naum went to Kiev to obtain a visa for me and sent me to Israel for a month. So I visited my daughter and  saw my great granddaughter. I admire Israel, it’s just amazing! It’s a civilization in a desert created by its people.  However, I wouldn’t stay to live there: the climate is hard and besides, I love Ukraine. It is my home. It’s familiar and dear to me.  

In the recent years my husband and I didn’t work. We’ve become Hesed clients. Then they offered me to host the ‘warm home’ cooking meals for older Jews and having them come to my home to eat. Surprisingly for myself I agreed to do it and since then my husband and I gave a lot of our strengths to Hesed. They provided food products to me, but I also bought some to make my cooking delicious and variable. I participated in a few seminars for Hesed volunteers. Only at my old age I learned about many Jewish traditions and holidays. Now I know what needs to be cooked for each holiday and I make it for my family. Of course, I haven’t become religious, but this all is very interesting to me. A Jewish newspaper issued in the south of Ukraine wrote about our ‘warm home’ calling it the best one. Regretfully, my Naum died half a year ago. I am in the mourning and I miss him so much, but I always remember that Naum liked me to look nice and be among people and I try to pull myself together. I often attend Hesed to listen to interesting lectures and concerts. My children and friends do not let me feel lonely.

GLOSSARY:

Ferdinand Chernovich 
Moscow 
Russia 
Date of the interview: October 2004 
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya 

Ferdinand Chernovich is a short grey-haired man. He is very amiable and good-wishing. 

Ferdinand is limping a little bit. One of his legs was amputated as a consequence of the front-line wound.

He lives in a two-room apartment in the house built in the late 1970s. He lives by himself after his wife died.  Ferdinand does most things about the house by himself.

Twice a week a social worker comes to clean the apartment. Books is the first thing you notice in his apartment.

There are a lot of books on engineering, both in Russian and foreign languages, dictionaries, fiction books, mostly world classics.

In spite for being elderly and handicapped Ferdinand works at home. He writes annotations to technical manuals.

He knows three foreign languages and works on the books written by foreign authors. 

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

• My family background

My father’s family lived in an ancient Russian city Smolensk [300 km to the West from Moscow]. I know hardly anything about my father Lev Chernovich and his kin. My grandfather’s name is Jacob Chernovich. I do not know grandmother’s name. Grandparents were born in Smolensk.

Before revolution as of 1917 1 the city was included in the Jewish Pale of Settlement 2, and Jews were permitted to live there. I do not know what my grandfather did for a living. All I know is that he was well-off. Grandmother was a housewife. There were five children in the family. I do not know anything about my father’s elder brother, not even his name.

My father’s second brother was called Isaac. My father was born in 1891. He was given a Russian name Lev3 (Jewish name Leib). Two sisters –Iselda and Mariam, who was called Manya in the family, were born after my father. 

I think my father and his siblings got Jewish education. My father never discussed it with me. It is just my assumption as it could not have been otherwise back in that time. Jews were very religious before revolution, especially those who lived in small towns and boroughs. Apostates underwent stigmatization, so nobody wanted to be a castaway. Yiddish was spoken in the family. Everybody spoke good Russian, including my father’s grandparents.

Father went to land survey school. In 1912 he was engaged to my mother. They must have been acquainted by matchmakers, because mother’s family lived very far from Smolensk. She lived in Lithuania. That year father was drafted for the compulsory military service in the Tsarist army. Soon World War I was unleashed. Father was not very lucky he was captured by the enemy and sent to the camp for the captives located not far Wroclaw, Lower Silesia. Father did not tell much about his captivity. I know that prisoners of war were starving. Father corresponded with mother during his captivity. Father was released from the camp in 1918. When the war was over, father came back to Smolensk.

My mother’s family lived in a small town of Girtakol  - in Lithuanian province. I tried to find that town on the map, but failed. During my trips to Lithuania nobody could tell me anything about that town. I think it was a Jewish town. It must have been exterminated during WW2. Anyway it currently does not exist. I have never seen my maternal grandparents. I only know about them from my mother’s tales. Grandfather Moses Ledskiy was a teacher in the Jewish elementary school. Grandmother, whose name I do not know, was a housewife.

Both of my grandparents were born in Lithuania, probably in that town. There were five children in the family. My mother’s two elder brother’s immigrated to the USA in 1910. One of them died on his way. He was hit by a train. The second one Gersh Ledskiy managed to get to the USA. Family did not keep in touch with him. The only thing they heard from him was that he had managed to arrive in the USA .My mother Rozalia (Jewish name Reizl) was the third child in the family. She was born in 1895. The youngest child of the family, Ida, was born in 1900.

Grandfather was a mathematics teacher in the elementary Jewish school. He paid a lot of attention to the education of his children. Mother and her siblings went to lyceum. All of them finished a full course. When World War I began and Germans put foot at Lithuanian territory, mother and her younger sister Ida fled to Ukraine to Kherson suburbs  [470 km to the South from Kiev], where her distant relatives lived. The town they lived in was called Oleshki, then it was renamed Tsyurupinsk. When father was released from camp, he came to Oleshki to see my mother. They left Oleshki and went to mother’s parents in Lithuania. They got married there. I think they had a traditional Jewish wedding. Mother said that father was feeble and exhausted after captivity.

He was fed well in Lithuania. He was given a lot of milk to drink. They lived with mother’s parents for a while and then father took mother to Smolensk. They lived in the house of father’s parents. For some reason father’s relatives did not like and did not accept my mother. Mother said that the only person who treated her well was father’s elder brother Isaac. Others were constantly giving her the cold shoulder. Mother loved father very much and did her best for his relatives to get to like her. She did not want to be the bone of contention. Unfortunately, all her efforts to get along with father’s family were futile. Father went to work as a land surveyor. Mother was a housewife. She took hard continual disdain and humiliation towards her. Finally, parents decided to move to Moscow. In 1922 they left Smolensk.

Parents settled in the center of Moscow, in the house across the Central Recreation Park. Previously their house was a bathhouse. It was remodeled into apartment building. All apartments in that building were communal 4, the so-called corridor system: a long corridor where the doors of the apartments were opened on. There was no bathroom. We had to wash either in the kitchen, or take a tub in the room and wash there. 19 families lived in our apartment. Each family occupied one room. Apart from us there was another Jewish family.

The rest were common Russian families. There were constantly quarreling and swearing and binging. Jews always were caught in the middle even when they were not guilty. Food was cooked on kerosene stoves. There were 19 stoves, one for each family. The kitchen ceiling was black from kerosene smoke. When the women cleaned their rooms they used to clean only a small part of the corridor, just in front of their rooms, so that the corridor looked like a chess board- white and black squares.

Mother became a pharmacist apprentice. Then she became a pharmacist. I was born in 1923. I was named Ferdinand in honour of my relative. Father left us shortly before I was born. He had another family. That is why I know so little about my father’s family. Mother did not like talking about father, and I did not ask much about him. I considered father to be a man who had broken my mother’s life. It is an unpleasant recollection for me. My father was not interested in my life either. I treated him likewise. I practically did not know him.  He worked as an economist for the construction ministry.

He had duly paid alimony to my mother until I turned 18. Father came to my mother once a month. He gave her money and left at once. He even did not talk to me. He said couple of words to my mother, and that was it. Then I found out, that father left his second family and got married for the third time. His third wife was much younger than he was. She left him shortly after they got married. Father died in 1964. His neighbors told me about it. I do not even know where my father is buried. Father lived in a communal apartment. His neighbors noticed that he had not left his room for couple of days. They called the police. When they unlocked the door, my father was found dead.

• Growing up

When I was born, the year of 1923, there was a terrible unemployment. Mother lost her job and remained unemployed for three years. We lived on father’s alimony and on monthly child support in the amount of 7 rubles. We were indigent.

Mother never got married again after she divorced father. She lived only for me. I was the essence of her life. Mother did her best to bring me up. She tried to teach me how to read and write in Yiddish. But I was not good at it. Either I was a poor student or my mother was a poor teacher. Mother did not tell me about Jewish history and religion. She did not observe Jewish traditions and did not mark holidays. Maybe it was caused by the struggle of the Soviet regime against religion  5. Mother understood that I would be raised an atheist at school and she did not want to make my life more difficult.

Mother made up her mind to get educated during the period of her unemployment. When I was two, she entered Moscow Pharmaceutical School. In a year she was able to get a job in the pharmacy and to transfer to the evening department. She worked and studied. In 1928 she got a diploma of a pharmacist. At the beginning of the 1930s she was employed at the pharmacy.

After revolution of 1917 Baltic countries, Lithuania one of them, where mother’s relatives lived, were not merged in the USSR. That is why mother could not keep in touch with her family. Soviet regime did not welcome those people who had relatives abroad and strongly disapproved of corresponding with them 5. The only mother’s relative I knew was her younger sister Ida. She did not come back to Lithuania after World War I and settled in Ukraine, in Melitopol [now Zaporizhzhya oblast, Ukraine]. She got married there. When I was six mother got severely ill. She was in the hospital. There was nobody who could look after me. Ida came and took me to Melitopol. I had stayed with my aunt for a year before my mother got better.

In the middle 1930s Ida and her husband moved to Kharkov [now Kharkiv, Ukraine] before annexation of Baltic countries to the USSR 7. Aunt Ida kept trying to get a permission from the Soviet authorities to go to Lithuania to attend the funeral of her parents. But all her efforts were futile. When the WW2 was unleashed 8, Ida was evacuated in Kazakhstan. When the war was over she tried to return to Kharkov, but her apartment was occupied by other people. She tried to find an apartment, but failed. She came to Moscow to live with us.

She did not manage to find a job in Moscow. She left Moscow for Lvov [now Lviv, Ukraine] and settled there. In 1954 she got married for the second time. Her husband was a very decent Jewish man, whose name I do not remember. I visited her a couple of times. In 1982 Ida died from cancer. Mother and she were the closest people for me.

In 1931 I went to the first grade of Russian secondary school. It was the school in the closest vicinity to our house. It took me 15 minutes to walk to school. I was the only Jew in my class, and of course I felt anti-Semitism in every day life. I was teased and hurt. When I managed to stand up for myself, teasing and hurting stopped. I could not feel anti-Semitism from teachers, moreover I felt their support and assistance. Our teachers were very good. Most of them came from intelligentsia. I liked learning at school. I was an excellent student since the 1st grade and I finished school with excellent marks in my certificate. I did not learn things by rote. I had a good memory and it was easy for me to learn things. Chemistry was my favourite subject in senior grades. I also studied chemistry in extra-curriculum classes. I was confident that I would continue my education in the chemistry department of Moscow University 9. It was a realizable dream: Anti-Semitism was felt on social level, but it was not displayed on the state level before war. Jews were accepted in institutions of higher education and employed without a problem.

I was a young Octobrist in the first grade 10. Then I became a Pioneer 11, joined Komsomol 12. I did not even admit a thought that it was possible not to join Komsomol. I joined Komsomol in 1939 at the age of 16.  I was never interested in social life, and I kept away from all kinds of social events. I loved reading and playing football with the guys at the stadium.

During the weekend my mother and I used to ski during winter and in summer time we took long strolls and went to the forest to gather berries and mushrooms. At that time I did not understand what was going on in the country. Even older and more experienced people did not understand what was happening. When in the year of 1937 repressions and Great Terror started 13 I did not doubt that those people were guilty. I could not get one thing -- how come there were so many peoples’ enemies? I did not question anything else.

In 1934 two German Jews came in our class. When Hitler came to power in Germany, their families managed to flee to the USSR. Both of those boys finished ten classes in our school. Their fathers were arrested in 1937 on suspicion of espionage for Germany though they were common workers at the plant. When Yezhov was arrested 14 and Beriya came to power 15, the father of one of those boys was released from prison and came back home. The person was arrested on a false charge, and he was set free after they cleared things up. Those boys went to school and nobody persecuted them neither teachers nor students. Nobody reproached them for their fathers being peoples’ enemies 16. 

• During the war

With the outbreak of WW2 in 1939 people were perturbed. However, there were no assumptions that Germany might attack USSR as we were constantly convinced that our army was invincible and nobody would dare to attack us. Even if it happened, the war would not last long and our valorous army would fight the enemy on his territory. Of course, we believed in that. Besides, Polish territory was divided and its considerable part was annexed to the USSR 17 which was another proof of our power.

When Molov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact was signed 18 people calmed down as with this agreement friendship and mutual assistance between Germany and USSR would be established. In November 1939 Finnish campaign was commenced 19, and USSR gained the victory. Though, after war in Poland drafting age was reduced by one year. The drafting age was 19 and since 1939 it was changed to 18. Thus, lads after finishing 10-year school were not able to enter the institute without serving in the army.

When I was in the 10th grade I got a document from the military enlistment office stating that I would be drafted in the army in autumn 1941. I had to postpone entering the institute for two years. Even if I had entered the institute right after finishing school, I would have studied only for two months and drafted in the army anyway.

In spring 1941 I passed my final exams. I did not make any plans for summer. On Sunday, June 22, 1941 I was at home by myself. Mother went out somewhere. My neighbor knocked on the door. She told me to turn radio on. Molotov was finishing his speech 20 on outbreak of war. I was able to hear his last words: «Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. We will gain the victory».

The next day all senior students gathered at school to go to the military enlistment office without making any previous arrangements. They told us to leave and wait for the notification. Then we went to the military plant, located not far from our school. They did not accept us. They said that we had to be trained first and besides we would be drafted in the army later on. Some of my classmates entered military school, but I did not want to become a professional military. We initiated organizing  volunteers’ corps 21 by our house administration.

At nights we stayed on the roofs of the houses in turns, quenched fire bombs and took people to the air-raid shelters. Germans began bombing Moscow in July 1941.  On the 10th of August I was supposed to come to the military enlistment office with my belongings and passport. Mother was really worried. She already knew the results of war. The pharmacy she worked for was turned into military hospital for the wounded. Mother did not want to be evacuated. She had worked there for the entire period of war.

In October 1941 there was another air-raid on Moscow. Demolishing bomb hit the park located by our house, which was considerably fractured so that it was impossible to live in it. First mother spent night at work. Then father decided go in evacuation and suggested moving in his apartment, but mother refused and kept living in our dilapidated house. When our troops came to Moscow for reorganization in spring 1942, I went to Ispolkom 22 to get apartment for my mother. They gave promises me but did not do anything.

After Stalingrad battle 23 our regiment was in Moscow again and I went to Ispolkom to remind them of their promise. Finally mother was given a room of 7 square meters in the communal apartment in the basement where three more families lived.  When mother said that she lived with her son, she was told without any embarrassment that her son was at war and could be killed.  She remained living in that basement. I lived in that room after I was discharged from hospital. We had lived there until 1957. We were not put on housing record because the occupant space requirement was 2 sq.m. per person, i.e. according to the Soviet law 3.5 individuals could live in our apartment.

Other draftees and I were sent to the camps in Chelyabinsk [about 1500 km to the North-East from Moscow]. We were not given the uniform, we stayed in our civilian clothes. They wanted to allocate us in different military schools according to our education. I did not want to go to the military school as I was not willing to become a professional military. I was lucky. At the beginning of November we were brought to some school, but there probably was a excessive number of students as the commander asked if there was anybody among us who did not want to study. Some people stepped forward. I was one of them. We were sent to the training squadron of the reserve regiment. We had stayed there for a month. We were taught how to become radio operators.

There was malnutrition. We were constantly starving, thinking only of food. In December we were given uniforms and sent to Kazan suburbs in the Guards mortar division. I was a private, and had remained a private until the end of war. We left Kazan for Gorkiy [now Nizhniy Novgorod], where we got ammunition, mostly consisting of mechanized combat vehicles, rocket launchers called Katyushas 24. The latter appeared shortly before the war. There were no prototypes of this machine and for such a machine not to be taken by Germans, there was a tritolo box with Bickford fuse.

Commander of the weapon was given an order to explode the weapon before it could be taken by Germans. Of course with the explosion of that tritolo box the weapon would be torn in pieces. There were such cases during war. The first battery of Katyushas took part in the battles close to Orsha. Then it was besieged and the soldiers blew up the weapons and themselves. When I was in the lines, there were couple dozens of squadrons and regiments with Katyushas. First, Katyushas were mounted on the tanks, then on the trucks.

At the beginning of January 1942 our Guards mortar squadron was sent to Volkhovskiy front.  At that time our counterattack in that direction was terminated and there were no severe battles. Radio stations were not used there and we were field telephone operators and laid cable in the fields. We were on round-o’clock duty on the phone. We were supposed to stay by the phone for 24 hours. If cable was ruptured somewhere we were supposed to crawl to the place where it was ruptured and joint ruptured ends. Cable was precious to us, we always ran out from it. That is why when the squad moved to another place, we reeled on cable and took it with us. We had to do it rather often. Katyushas made one salvo and moved to another place not be noticed and demolished by Germans. Then they remained on their positions. The radio-operators were given a truck to take the equipment before we moved to another location.

Rockets for Katyushas were brought on a regular basis. There were no cases when we ran out of them and there was no replenishment.  Though, trucks were not able to get closer to the emplacers and we had to carry the shells by ourselves. First, the shells were not big, weighing about 10 kg. Then more powerful and heavier shells appeared. From the very beginning Katyushas were very powerful weapons and Germans were deterred by them. Neutralizing area of the shell was huge. The place was in ashes. Though, there cases at war when our soldiers were impacted as well. Fortunately there were no likewise cases in our battery that Katyusha would hit our troops. There was an observation post ahead of us, from which fire was regulated.

We lived in dugs-out. There were severe frosts. The earth was frozen. It was impossible to dig. We had to use a crow bar. Of course, it took us a long time to make a dug out. It was the most vexing when we were through making dugs-out and getting settled, we had to move to another place in couple of days. So, we had to start all over again. First, our nutrition was not very good. There was not enough food and besides it was not replenished on a regular basis. Then it got better and nutritional standard was increased.

In April 1942 our separate Guards mortar squadron consisting of 200 people was sent to Moscow. Our commandment was entirely changed. It was found out that squadron commander and commander of the headquarters took food from the warehouse and went to women. They were taken from us and we did not know what happened to them. I think they were reduced to a lower rank and sent back to the lines. The reforming in Moscow lasted rather long -- 2 months. It was a happy time for me. I lived in military barracks, but I was able to see my mother almost every day.

In squadron we had march drills and political classes. Germans were squeezed out from Moscow and there were hardly any air-raids. Beside ours, there were two more squadrons in our regiment. One of them had a lot of casualties and the other one ran out of ammunition. Those battalions were also sent for reforming. Then we were merged with another regiment and sent to Stalingrad. By that time we began to besiege Germans on the suburbs of Stalingrad. Our regiment took part in demolishing German forces close to Stalingrad.

The city itself was practically devastated by the Germans. We were positioned in 13 kilometers from Stalingrad. We had stayed there for 7 months -- for the entire period of the Stalingrad campaign. Commanders developed operational plan and stealthily moved 10 armies there. We began our attack on November 19, 1942. There were a couple of mortar regiments like ours at the operational disposal of the army.

First we worked on dugs-out. Winter was coming and we had to get ready to it. The area in the vicinity of Stalingrad was a bare steppe. There was no place to hide. Army supplies of provision and ammunition were regular and timely. We had meals twice a day -- late at night and early in the morning. It was impossible to bring food in the daytime as Germans started fire. I was lucky because I did not smoke, and I did not crave for cigarettes.  I saw that for smokers absence of cigarettes was more dreadful than malnutrition. There were no sanitary conditions. We did not take bath for couple of months. All of us were lice-ridden.

Infantry was involved in Stalingrad battle but not as much as in other battles. Artillery played the major role in this battle. First there was an artillery preparation. Germans rushed out from dugs-out. White snow was turned into a black when Germans were running. Mortar squadrons and our Katyushas started fire. I did not consider Germans to be human-beings and I did not feel sorry for the killed German soldiers falling on the ground.

From newspapers I learned about German atrocities on the occupied territories. I saw burnt trees in the vicinity of Stalingrad and hanged peasants, whose cadavers were pecked by birds. I knew about the attitude of Germans towards Jews and how they ruthlessly murdered them. Germans did not only kill Jews. I could not comprehend how they could possibly do so much harm.

German forces in the vicinity of Stalingrad were defeated on February 2, 1943.  22 divisions consisting of 330 thousand people were besieged. I saw those captives, even tried to talk to them. I had an excellent mark in German at school and there I was able to apply my knowledge in practice. Captured Germans did not look like people: lice-ridden, emaciated and frozen…  They looked miserable. They were dressed in some torn clothes. At the beginning of the blockage the food was supplied to the besieged German troops by planes. Then that corridor was demolished: tank division demolished the aerodrome and communication was terminated. Finally Germans were famished. One of the captured soldiers said that he was an Austrian. I asked him what was the attitude of common people to Hitler. He said people were not against Hitler, they were against war. In couple of months other participants of the Stalingrad battle, I among them, were awarded the medals «For Liberation of Stalingrad» 25.

After Stalingrad battle our regiment as a part of Guards mortar division was sent to Moscow for rearmament and replenishment. We had stayed in Moscow for two weeks. I was so filthy and lice-ridden that I did not apprise mother of my arrival in Moscow before I had taken bath for couple of times. I could not let her see me in such a state. Though I was looking forward to seeing my mother and a short delay seemed unbearable to me. I wanted to see my mother as soon as possible and give her a hug.

Finally, I was able to see my mother. She still stayed at work overnight. I learnt sad news from her. She was told by the neighbors of our relatives that her sister Sarah and three of her children, who lived in Lithuania, had been shot by Germans. It was the time of a mass fusillade of the Jews. When Germans came in Smolensk, my father’s siblings and their families were murdered in gas chamber.

Our regiment was replenished and well-armed. We were sent to Kursk. It was withdrawn from division and went to battles as a separate regiment. Our army was getting ready for Kursk operation 26. We arrived there at the end of March, 1943. Mass battles were commenced on July 5, 1943. Probably we knew that a fierce battle was ahead of us. During political classes we were told about coming operation, its tasks. We were apprised of the situation on other front-lines.

As usual, we began making dugs-out. We were thoroughly getting prepared. Intelligence was to do their work before attacking. It was necessary to capture Germans. They had to be cross-examined in order to find out about the plans of German commandment, the armament, number of soldiers and reserve troops to be involved in the battles. Our reconnoiters found out that Germans were planning to attack on the 5th of July. We were ready. In the morning on July, 5 dozens of German planes were seen in the air.

Our regiment was in Orlovsko-Kursk direction, there was also Belgorod-Kursk direction. It was even a more fierce than Stalingrad battle, but it did not last long. Germans were bombing hard. There were less casualties in our regiment as compared to the infantry.

Tank and infantry division had the most casualties. Artillery was in the second echelon and had less casualties accordingly. We had been retreating for about a week and came to the border with Ukraine. Then the initiative was taken by our troops and we started attacking. By that time there were many trucks in the army, including American stood backers and land rovers. They speeded up moving of our squadron and made it easier.

Americans helped us with provision. They sent us canned meat, chocolate, egg powder, but they were not in a hurry to open the promised second front. We were swiftly moving forward. Our regiment took Novgorod-Severskiy and moved towards the central Ukraine. Artillery played the major role in Kursk battle. Our artillery was excellent, maybe even better than the German one. Germans did not have such weapons as our Katyushas and they did not manage to design anything of the kind.

They had six-barreled mortar guns. But they were nothing to compare with our Katyushas. I was awarded with the medal for Military Merits 27 after Kursk battle. I got it in autumn, 1943. It was written in my order citation that I demonstrated discipline and valor. Then I was told that there was a decree by the minister of defense not to give high class military awards to the representatives of certain nationalities such as Jews, Chechens, Tartars. I do not know whether that information was true. It was mostly likely that people were included in the list to be awarded with the Red Banner Order 28, but in fact they were given the award of a lower class.

After Kursk I was not a telephone operator, but a radio operator. Communication with commandment was established. Battery commander had communication with division commander, division commander had communication with the regiment commander and so on and so forth. I serviced artillery instrumental reconnaissance, which was observing the adversary and regulating fire. All that data was transferred in cipher via radio operators. We did not know the cipher.

We moved to the west -- to Byelorussia. We liberated the town of Novozybkov in Bryansk district and stopped by Gomel. We fought for positioning. There were no battles. Only in June, 1944 we liberated entire Byelorussia. We left western Byelorussia for Poland. 

I did not feel Anti-Semitism from my commandment. Commanders were just to me. Privates might make a mistake. There were cases when I was reprimanded, but anti-Semitism was not implied. Most of the soldiers around me were sure that most Jews were not in the lines, they were just sitting in the rear. It was a mere assumption in post-war period. People often said that Jews were fighting in Tashkent rather than in the lines [Editor’s note: Tashkent is a town in Middle Asia; it was the town where many people evacuated during the Great Patriotic War, including many Jewish families. Many people had an idea that all Jewish population was in evacuation rather than at the front and anti-Semites spoke about it in mocking tones].

I did not come across penal battalions, but I heard about their existence. Two people from our regiment were sent to the penal squadron. One of them, a young lad, was driver’s assistant. During washing he caused malfunction in the car because of being inexperienced. Another man was a driver. We were attacking, and his car got broken. He was told to stay by the car and wait for us. He did not have food with him. He had been waiting for couple of days and then some regiment walked past him. They found out that he was a driver and had a car.

The driver left with that regiment. Then our deputy regiment commander found the driver and ordered him to come back. He refused to do so and told that our squad had left him, and that regiment helped him out and took in their squad. He was forced to come back in our squadron and then he was allocated to the penal battalion. I did not know what happened to him later on. The soldiers in penal battalions were supposed to fight till death or until the first wound. It was called «washing away one’s guilt with blood». The wounded were sent to the hospital, and then back to the lines, but not in a penal battalion.

There was at least one SMERSH representative in each regiment 29. Their official task was to capture the spies. But usually they spied on our soldiers ensuring that there was no «moral degradation», panic or discontent with the actions of the commandment or representatives of the Soviet authorities. I think there were making stooges from soldiers and officers. They took part in the battles rather rarely, but were awarded on a regular basis. I was lucky to be a private and not get in touch with them.

My front-line experience ended in Polish town Belostok. My colleagues, radio-operators and I were on our way to the observation post and I stepped on the mine. I was the only one who suffered from a pin-point blast. My comrades picked me up. Somebody had the car brought and I was taken to the medical battalion. I was on the operation table in 40 minutes. My leg was amputated. Heel bone and calf were crushed, so my leg could not be saved. My leg was amputated about to a knee length- 28 cm lower from the knee.

I spent couple of days in medical battalion and I was transferred to the army hospital in Tbilisi, Georgia. It took 13 days to get to Tbilisi from Belostok. I had stayed in the hospital for 6 months. I was given a temporary artificial limb and was taught how to walk with an artificial limb.

During my stay in the hospital I corresponded with mother and my front-line comrades. I was informed by them that I was included in the list of awardees for Great Patriotic War Order  30. I asked to send my award to Tbilisi military enlistment office. Soon, I was conferred with a Red Star Order in the hospital 31, which was of a lower class than the Order of Great Patriotic War, it meant that the class of my award was reduced. In Moscow in May 1945 I was given the medal «For Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45» along with others who participated in the war 32. Later on I was given the medals to commemorate jubilee dates of WWII and Soviet army. I have 15 awards, but only three of them are war decorations.

At the end of February 1945 I was discharged from hospital and on March 1, 1945 I came back to Moscow. In the hospital I was given the status of disabled having the right to work. Pensions for disabled or retired were miserable at that time and it was next to impossible to make a living on them. That is why people worked until they physically could not die by hunger. In Moscow I settled in mother’s poky apartment in the basement and began looking for a job. Disabled people had the pension in the amount of 45 rubles per month.

It was possible to get by for 3 days on that amount of money. It was impossible to survive without work and I could not be a burden to my mother not only in the household, but also financially. There were not very many men, most of them were in the lines. Soon I managed to find a job as an accountant in small company. My salary was skimpy, but the work was not tiresome, besides I had time to get ready for the entrance exams in the institute.

I did not join party in the lines. At work I was offered and recommended to join the party on a number of occasions. I objected to it. In the hospital I heard the talks of the wounded officers, the way they cursed Jews. All of them were ordinary members of the party. I understood that I should not become the member of the party, besides I was not willing to do that because I was never interested in political issues.

• After the war

I had straight excellent marks in my secondary education certificate, and I did not have to take entrance exams, just to go through the interview 33. It was as easy as pie, and in September, 1945 I became a student of Moscow Institute of High Chemical Technologies named after Lomonosov, the faculty of chemical engineers. Mother insisted on full-time attendance in spite of the fact that my salary made most of our budget. During my studies I received pension for disabled soldiers, which was a little bit increased by that time and a stipend.

I was an excellent student during entire period of my studies and I received increased stipend, but it was not much money either. Many students had odd jobs at night unloading cars at freight depots, but I was not capacitated to do that. I was not involved neither in Komsomol nor in social work in the institute. I was deeply immersed in studies.

In May 1948 the state of Israel was founded and recognized by other counties. It meant a lot to me. Jews had been roaming all over the world for centuries without having their own land. Now they had their own land, and their own state. It was my state as well. I admired prime-minister Golda Meir 34. I consider myself to be a Jew and I was never ashamed to be a Jew in spite of not knowing Jewish language, Jewish traditions, being raised atheist and brought up in Russian culture.

Anti-Semitism appeared right after the war. It started on social level. At that time I heard that Jews were not in the lines, trying to save their lives in evacuation. Anti-Semitism on state level came to place in 1948 when Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’ began 35. Jews involved in science and culture were persecuted. Many actors and writers had alias names, and when there was an article in the paper about some of them, it was always emphasized that he or she was a cosmopolitan Jew concealing himself by a «euphonic» surname, and his true name sounded typically Jewish.

Jews were exiled in GULAG 36, they were not employed. They were not only exterminated morally, but physically as well. The members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested and murdered 37. The above-mentioned committee was founded during war times and assisted our army very much.  A wonderful actor Solomon Mikhoels was the chairman of the committee. 38. He was overridden by a truck in Minsk. His death was considered to be an accident, but I along with many people understood that it was not unlikely to be accident. Mikhoels was my mother’s favourite actor.

My mother and I attended the performances of the Jewish theatre for couple of times where Mikhoels took part. I was rapt by Mikhoels’s actor’s talent in both performances I saw, no matter that they were in Yiddish and I did not know that language. Soon after his death the theatre was closed down. 

In 1950 I graduated from the institute. Scientific research and post-graduate studies was my dream, but it was unrealizable for me. Jews were not admitted to post-graduate studies. In accordance with the Soviet law the board had no right to give me a Mandatory job assignment 39 in another city or another republic because I was an excellent student and disabled. At that time there was a tacit instruction not to hire Jews. I was given a mandatory job assignment to the closed plat of ministry of defense, located in the outskirts of the city.

When I asked to find me a closer working place, I was told to take my mandatory job assignment or look for a job on my own. I understood that I would not be able to find a job by myself and I had to agree. The plant was 60 km away from Moscow and I had to take a commuter train to get to the plant. I could not go back and forth every day and I was given a room in the hostel by the plant. I had worked for three years at that plant. My job was very interesting. Besides, I got the opportunity to acquire quite a good qualification.

The working conditions were hard for me, because it was difficult for me to walk at that time as I was trying to get used to the artificial leg. The territory of the plant was huge. There was no transport, and the village, where I lived was far from the plant. At that time Saturday was a working day. But we did not work full time, so I managed to visit mother on Sunday. According to my mandatory job assignment I was supposed to work for three years, after that I had the right to quit my job.

Of course, I felt Anti-Semitism. I was not promoted, on the contrary I was constantly nagged. I had to prove that I was right. My nationality was the only reason for that. They had no right to fire me during the term of mandatory job assignment, and when the term was over they began putting pressure on me. Fortunately, new director came to the plant, who stood up for front-line soldiers. He ordered to leave me in peace.

In January 1953 doctors’ plot commenced 40. I was lucky not to be at the plant at that time. I was sent to attend courses in Moscow. If I was at the plant at that time, I would be in trouble for sure. Anti-Semitism was very severe at that time. I would have been difficult to visit mother on the weekend -- I could have been thrown from the train. I heard there were cases like that. Of course, I did not believe that doctors were guilty in poisoning Stalin. Most people believed that thinking that Jews were able to do anything.

Stalin’s death in March 1953 became a nation-wide sorrow. People were mourning as if their closest person died. People were crying in the streets, without hiding tears. I did not mourn over Stalin’s’ death. At that time I understood that he was not as good as he was deemed to be. I had fear though. Beriya came to power after Stalin’s death. I was confident that Jews would be even more fiercely persecuted and there would be dreadful times. But I was pleasantly disillusioned. Beriya gave an order to release arrested doctors-poisoners. Beriya was not at power for a long time. He was arrested as a state criminal and sentenced to capital punishment.

When Nikita Khrushchev 41 took the floor on the Twentieth Party Congress 42 divulging crimes committed by Stalin, I believed him. Khrushchev’s speech confirmed my own views and observations. Stalin conducted terrible politics. By dreadful repressions he decapitated the army before the war. Maybe if he had not exterminated the best military leaders, Hitler would not have decided to attack us. Things would have been different. At least there would be less bloodshed for sure.

National politics conducted by Stalin was also ruthless. What was the need to exile [Forced deportation to Siberia] 43 such peoples as Chechens, Crimean Tartars and Kalmyks 44. I saw the representatives of many nationalities in the lines. They did not fight worse than any others. Even in the post-war period, especially in frontier troops there was an order not to send on duty two people of non-Russian nationality simultaneously.  People felt that they were not trusted and I doubt whether they would feel love for the USSR. When I was employed at the plant, construction works were being held on the territory of the plant carried out by the prisoners.

These were the people who were captured by Germans during war times due to the stupidity of our commandment. When they were released from captivity they were sentenced to ten years just because they did not die and let themselves being captured. Such prisoners were convoyed by security guards of Uzbeks and Azerbaijani, because a Russian security guard, especially if he was in the lines, could sympathize with the prisoners and make an indulgence, while people of other nationalities made no indulgence and opened fire during any insubordinate conduct.

Our commandment was really untalented. Germans did not have so many casualties as we had. Stalin devastated agriculture starting from the years of collectivization 45, when skilled and hardworking peasants were exterminated and exiled like kulaks 46. Though, even now there are people who say that Stalin exiled people for a reason. Probably nobody would be able to change their view … I do not make an idol out of Khrushchev, he made a lot of mistakes during his reign, but I think that he can be forgiven just because of  Twentieth Party Congress coming Rehabilitation 47 of the innocent convicts. In spite of the hopes and expectations during his reign, Anti-Semitism was not in the wane.

I longed for coming back in Moscow. In 1956 I left the plant and came home. It was hard to get a job. I had been to over 40 places before I found a job as an engineer at a design institute. My salary was much lower, but I was in Moscow, at least I had home and in the evenings a loving person was waiting for me, cooking dinner and doing laundry for me. In 1957 the ministry of health care gave my mother a room in the communal apartment. We moved there. 

My aunt Ida, mother’s younger sister was really worried because I was single. She lived in Lvov, but she had a lot of acquaintances in Moscow. Aunt came to Moscow and started passionately looking for a bride for me. She had couple of girls in view, and one of them became my wife. Mariam was born in Moscow in 1923. Her father Ilia Berman worked for the ministry of iron and steel industry and her mother was a housewife. Mariam had a younger brother Alexander born in 1927. Mariam graduated from chemistry department of Moscow State University. She was not admitted in the post-graduate department, but her mandatory job assignment was in Moscow. She was employed at the chemistry laboratory. It was the time of campaign against cosmopolitans. They started firing Jews. Luckily the head of laboratory was a decent and brave man and did not allow firing any Jew from his laboratory.

We got married in 1958. We had an ordinary wedding. We got registered in the state marriage registration office, and in the evening we had a modest wedding party in Mariam parents’ house. We invited only the closest people. Mariam and I lived with her parents. Her younger brother Alexander was a test instrument engineer. He was married and lived with his wife in the apartment of her parents. Our family life was very happy. The only thing that made us sad was not having children.

At home we marked birthdays of our family members and such soviet holidays as May 1, November 7 48, Soviet Army Day 49, Victory Day 50, New Years Day. New Year’s day and Victory Day were our favourite holidays. On the 9th of May my wife and I went to the tomb of Unknown Soldier, to the monument of eternal flame. We brought flowers to the tomb, met front-line soldiers.

In the evenings we went to see some of my front-line friends or invited them to our house. We had drinks to commemorate those who perished, sang war songs. There are very few front-line soldiers Moscovites left. One of two of them is bedridden, another one cannot talk as a result of apoplectic stroke. I do not know anything about front-line soldiers from other cities.

The rest of the holidays were taken by us an extra day off. We had the opportunity to invite friends and have fun. Mariam’s parents were atheists like my mother. They did not mark Jewish holidays at home. My wife and I often went to the cinema, and to the theater. We liked to go to the seaside on vacation. I was often given vouchers to the sea resorts for being disabled.

I had worked for 10 years in design institute. I was very slowly promoted in position because of my nationality. At the end of the 1960s I began to work for the design bureau by the ministry of chemical industry. They treated me very well and I got a promotion. Shortly before retirement I was the chief project engineer. I had worked there until retirement. I retired in 1983.

In 1968 my mother died. I wanted her to be buried on Jewish Vostryakovskiy cemetery, but I did not manage to make arrangements. At that time residents of certain district were supposed to have their relatives buried in certain cemeteries. The residents of our district were buried on Karpyakovskiy cemetery. For my mother to be buried in Vostryakovskiy cemetery I was supposed to get the certificate at work signed by director, the chairman of the mestcom 51 and party organization stating that I was religious. I could not do that. If I had done it, I should have forgotten about further promotion. My mother was buried in Karpyakovskiy cemetery. It was a secular funeral.

In the 1970s mass immigration to Israel started. I sympathized with those who were leaving. I was trying to assist them in anything I could. Many friends of mine left for Israel at that time. I wanted to immigrate as well, but I understood that it was not possible for me. Israeli climate was contraindicative for my wife. She would have died there. People left for a better living. There was no sense in leaving to die. Besides, I understood that an elderly incapacitated person would not be able to find a job. It was hard for me to picture that I would not be working and be a burden.

In 1982 my wife got severely ill. She had chronic intestinal inflammation of mucus membrane. It must have been connected with her job. She was dealing with different chemical materials, and some of them were hazardous. Nobody could tell for sure what caused her disease. She was getting worse and worse. She was losing weight dramatically. Mariam was on the brink of death from cachexia. I left my job. I was convinced to stay, but I had no choice -- I was to look after my wife.

I managed to find a good hospital for her, and the doctors repaired her health. She was in the hospital for eight times. Friends helped me to get the medicine, which were in deficit at that time. In 1999 Mariam had nonreversible intestinal atrophy and at the beginning of 2001 she passed away. Her younger brother Alexander died earlier, in 1992. My wife was buried in Novodevichie cemetery next to her parents and brother. I reserved the lot for myself there as well. The funeral was secular.

At the end of the 1980s the General Secretary of the Central committee of the Communist Party Mikhail Gorbachev 52 declared a new political course, perestroika 53. First I was delighted by that. There were certain articles in the constitution on liberties of word, publishing, religion, travel, but those promised liberties were not executed in actuality. Then perestroika appeared to be in decline. Gorbachev has always been the slave of Communist Party and could not do anything to harm it. Dull politics of our semi-literate leaders brought to willingness of the USSR republics to gain independence. By the way, in accordance with the constitution they were entitled to do that. If certain ideas came in the head, there was not stopping them.

After Lenin’s death  54 there were no educated people at power. Finally perestroika caused breakup of the USSR  [1991]. I took it as a catastrophe. A huge and powerful country collapsed, and «independent» states were being founded, without being able to defend themselves. There was one good thing done by the first president of Russian Boris Eltsin – he did away with Communist party. But he was not able to push the matter through. Communist party should have been treated the same way as Nazi party was treated at Nuremberg process so that it would not exist.

Before revolution there were such people in the party who were ready to go to the penal colony for mere ideas. They were struggling for communistic ideas without sparing their lives. There were honest people in the lines as well, who were ready to rush at tanks with a bunch of grenades. After Stalin’s death a lot of go-getters and stooges were streaming in the party. There was no communist party any more. Communist Party of Russia appeared in Russia and it was real fascist party. Though, it is not the only party, which governs the country. But who khows what is ahead of us …

I live by myself after my wife’s death. From financial standpoint I live better than any Russian pensioners. I have pension in the amount of 6000 rubles the equivalent of 200 USD. It is enough to get by and for medicine.  I have a good command of three foreign languages- German, English and French. I am able to work at home. I am given work by the institute of scientific and technical information. I am handed materials in German, English and French and I am supposed to make a short annotation in Russian within certain time frame. So, I am not poor. Social worker from the municipal organization, which supports veterans of war, helps me about the house. Twice a week a lady from the social service comes to cook and clean the house.

After breakup of the USSR there appeared a lot of Jewish societies in Russia. Jewish life revived. I cannot say that I am taking an active part in the Jewish life. I am not interested in religion. I must have taken way too strong «inoculations» of atheism when I was a child. I am a member of Moscow Council of the Jewish War Veterans 55, headed by the Hero of the Soviet Union 56 Moses Мaryanovskiy. We get together and meet interesting people, attend lectures, watch movies. I have new friends and they help me to get over my loneliness.

• Glossary: