My brother Joseph had finished lower secondary school and worked as a stableman in Chorniavka. It was easier to survive in towns while the situation in villages was very bad. My mother made skilly from dried leaves to save her children from starving to death. Our family survived. My mother sent my brother to me.
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Mina Smolianskaya Biography
I helped him to join the Jewish Komsomol organization of “Yermol” (Editors note: one of numerous educational institutions to educate poor and illiterate young people from villages) and entered a two-year school of mechanics. He studied and lived there. He got a bed in a hostel and a uniform. Students got one meal per day at the canteen and bread coupons. Joseph was growing and was constantly hungry. I gave him my bread coupons, because I was afraid that he could take to stealing if he starved. I had a piece of mamalyga (editor’s note: corn flour meal) from which I bit off small pieces to reduce the hunger.
My sister Surah became a nurse at the kindergarten in the collective farm.
I had many friends and admirers. I was cheerful and pretty. I went out with my friends. I had Ukrainian and Russian friends, but I tried to stick to my Jewish friends. I took an active part in public activities. I was Komsomol assistant leader and was responsible for Komsomol meetings, we propagated communist ideas and worked harder and harder dreaming about wonderful future, awaiting for us, arranged labor competition and amateur concerts on Soviet holidays.
My grandmother Hana told me that he studied at cheder and read a lot. He borrowed books from melamed, as my grandmother didn’t have money to buy books. My father wanted to become a lawyer. There were very few educated people at that time. My mother, for example, had no education. My father came from a very poor family that couldn’t afford to pay for his studies even though he was eager to study. Besides, he was a Jew and there was admission restriction of 5% for Jews willing to enter higher educational institutions. This 5% were boys from rich families. My father was advised to be baptized if he wanted to study, but he refused. He had to give up his dreams and became an apprentice of a carpenter.
He had to give up his dreams and became an apprentice of a carpenter. He became professional and earned good money.
My father was raised religious. My grandmother always celebrated Shabbat and Jewish holidays.
His family wasn’t fanatically religious, but they observed traditions and celebrated holidays.
He was much older than my mother and had a big family. They were very poor. My mother felt very uncomfortable in his family. She was not welcome and her brother’s wife called my mother a sponger and was very greedy. My mother didn’t get enough food and didn’t have a chance to study. My mother couldn’t wait to leave her brother’s family.
My mother told me how she met my father. Her sister Tzypa had married a baker and moved to live with him in the village of Pliskovo. Her husband’s last name was Bluvshtein. My grandmother Hana and her children lived near Tzypa’s husband’s bakery and so my mother met her future husband at the bakery. My mother was so eager to leave her brother’s family that she accepted my father’s proposal without any further considerations. They got married in 1912. They had a Jewish wedding in Pliskovo.
My mother moved to her husband’s small house near the house of my grandmother.
I don’t know whether my grandmother had gray hair – she always wore a kerchief. She wore log dark skirts and dark long-sleeved blouses.
We spoke Yiddish in the family and Ukrainian with our Ukrainian neighbors.
There were many Jewish families in Pliskovo. There was a synagogue, cheder and a Jewish school. Jews in Pliskovo had a very strong community. There were few rich families, but the majority were well-to-do people that worked hard to provide for their families. There were also poor families like our family of a widow raising her children.
Our neighbors were helping us. They gave us chicken on holidays and clothes of their children. Every now and then they invited us to treat us to some delicious food.
My mother and father when he was still alive, always celebrated Shabbat and all Jewish holidays. They went to synagogue at Saturday. My mother and father had a pew at the synagogue.
I remember how my parents went to synagogue at Rosh Hashanah. After my mother returned home she honeyed all corners in the house with a goose feather for the coming year to be sweet.
We celebrated Jewish holidays at home in a very conventional way. We couldn’t afford festive dinners or gifts, as we were very poor. My mother and grandmother lit candles and prayed on holidays and we had our everyday food of potatoes and vegetables.
However, we celebrated Pesach. Tzypa’s husband owned a bakery where he had a matzah baking unit. He always had a bigger workload before Pesach, as he had to make matzah for all Jewish families in Pliskovo and the surrounding villages. Jews brought their own flour to have matzah made for them. Members of our family also spent all our time at the bakery to help them with their work. My mother made dough for matzah. She weighed 5 kg of matzah adding some water, stirred the mixture and put it on the table for men to knead the dough. I was responsible for sieving the flour. In this way I earned my gift for Pesach. People paid bakers for their work and the owner of the bakery told them that a widow and her child were working with them and people paid my mother and me few kopeks. Also, all employees got matzah as a reward.
My mother liked to make things from matzah and so do I.
My mother always tried to cook something special at Pesach. We also had fancy dinnerware and kitchen utensils on the attic. If we didn’t have enough utensils we took our everyday pieces to the river to scrub them with sand and wash them in the flowing water and only then these utensils could be used for cooking at Pesach. My mother used to save from whatever little we had for living to buy chicken and fish at Pesach. We had chicken broth and Gefilte fish, potato and matzah puddings at Pesach. My mother also made strudels with jam and raisins and honey cakes. At Pesach we visited my grandmother Hana. She always expected her grandchildren and made a lot of food. She always had gifts for us.
My mother always tried to cook something special at Pesach. We also had fancy dinnerware and kitchen utensils on the attic. If we didn’t have enough utensils we took our everyday pieces to the river to scrub them with sand and wash them in the flowing water and only then these utensils could be used for cooking at Pesach. My mother used to save from whatever little we had for living to buy chicken and fish at Pesach. We had chicken broth and Gefilte fish, potato and matzah puddings at Pesach. My mother also made strudels with jam and raisins and honey cakes. At Pesach we visited my grandmother Hana. She always expected her grandchildren and made a lot of food. She always had gifts for us.
At Purim my grandmother always made gomentashy - triangle pies with poppy seeds.
All members of the family fasted 24 hours at Yom Kippur. Sometimes richer families sent us a chicken at Yom Kippur. It was a live chicken. They performed a ritual of Kapores turning a chicken over their heads saying that this chicken was to be their atonement. Later they were supposed to give this chicken to a poor family. Sometimes we even had few chicken at Yom Kippur.
All Jews in Pliskovo were handicraftsmen. Ukrainian lived in the outskirts of the town where they did farming.
We were friends with Ukrainian children and nationality didn’t matter to us.
My mother earned her living by making skirts and aprons and embroidered blouses and towels for Ukrainian women. She earned very little and we lived from hand to mouth. We didn’t even have enough bread. Mother used to bake bread for the family once a week. Once my mother’s sister Tzypa visited us and saw me eating a piece of bread. She reprimanded my mother telling her that she shouldn’t allow us to nibble on bread between meals. Mother took bread to the storeroom and locked it. We, kids, were desperately hungry. We broke the lock to get this bread. Mother told us off later, but stopped locking bread. Life was very hard when I was a child…
During the war of 1914-1918 there were gangs (1) coming to our town. We hid on the attic and were so afraid that Fania would cry and bandits would find us. I also remember Petlura (2) when he rode into our town on his horse. He wore a cloak and demanded that people gave him money. I remember that the power switched from one political party to another. There were Polish and Denikin (3) units. Denikin units were killing Jews, and who weren’t? We managed to hide so that they didn’t find us, but many of our neighbors suffered. They were robbed and beaten and many of them were killed.
There was a Jewish and Ukrainian school in Pliskovo.
My older sister Rulia was very smart. She went to a Ukrainian school, because my mother wanted her to get further education and decided that it was going to be easier for her if she studied Ukrainian.
My younger sisters and I went to the Jewish school located across the street from our home. We studied grammar, reading and mathematic in Yiddish.
Rulia and I had one pair of boots. She wore them to school and I was waiting at home until she came from school and I could wear the boots to attend the remaining classes at my school.