Once, when we were playing football, Sonia called us ‘zhydovskiye mordy’ [kike] leaning out of the window. I already knew that it was a bad word, but I didn’t quite understand its meaning. Then one of the older boys took an initiative and we went to complain to our school director Semyon Skliar, a Ukrainian man. He called a meeting. Even before the meeting our schoolmates decided to boycott Sonia and she knew that she did a wrong thing. She was sitting at the meeting with her eyes downcast. The director made a condemning speech. Sonia cried and promised she would never use this word and abuse Jews. This happened in 1934.
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Displaying 49531 - 49560 of 50504 results
Ilia Rozenfeld Biography
My uncle Yakov’s fate was tragic. Yakov, born in 1900, worked in a printing house. He joined the revolution and became a communist. However, in the 1920s he supported Lev Trotskiy 15 , and was heard to be a member of the Zinoviev-Kamenev block 16 . Later he ‘acknowledged his mistakes’ in public that was customary at the time, and later held rather high-level official posts.
He lived in Moscow and was director of the Exhibition of Achievements of Public Economy and was deputy People’s Commissar of sovkhoses. At one time he was even military attaché in Berlin. In 1937 during the period of mass arrests 17 he was arrested and executed. His family was notified that he “had been sentenced without the right of correspondence” that was similar to the death sentence. Aunt Bertha was sent in exile to Djambul town in Kazakhstan where she lived for many years. Their daughter Marina stayed with aunt Rachil in Poltava. She was a widow and didn’t have any children of her own.
He lived in Moscow and was director of the Exhibition of Achievements of Public Economy and was deputy People’s Commissar of sovkhoses. At one time he was even military attaché in Berlin. In 1937 during the period of mass arrests 17 he was arrested and executed. His family was notified that he “had been sentenced without the right of correspondence” that was similar to the death sentence. Aunt Bertha was sent in exile to Djambul town in Kazakhstan where she lived for many years. Their daughter Marina stayed with aunt Rachil in Poltava. She was a widow and didn’t have any children of her own.
My uncle’s arrest had an impact on my life as well. In 1938 they didn’t admit me to Komsomol 18 due to my uncle who was an ‘enemy of the people’ 19. Many people were disappearing at this period. Our school teachers whom we loved were gone. Our favorite Russian teacher Polina Uschenko who taught us love for the Russian literature, disappeared. We got together at her home where she recited poems of Anna Akhmatova 20, who was a forbidden author. Somebody must have reported on her. At least, once she didn’t show up at school and nobody ever saw her again. My father’s close Ukrainian friend Pisarevskiy, a Ukrainian literature teacher, an invalid of the Civil War, was arrested as a Japanese spy and disappeared. Our school teacher of mathematic Israel Garkave, an old provincial Jew with a funny Jewish accent, whom we adored, also disappeared. He was arrested, and his family with many children was gone, too.
Then his replacement Valentin Golovnia, a young teacher of mathematic, was arrested and the third teacher followed his predecessors. Our teacher of history Sarah ( I don’t remember her surname) also disappeared. We were 15-16 years old, we were raised on the examples of Bolshevik heroes and believed the Soviet reality to be the best in the world, but then there was some dual attitude in our romantic minds. On one side there were holidays, marches and parades that we liked so much, and on the other side there were ‘enemies of the people’ who were heroes just shortly before. I asked questions at home and my father answered me truly saying that he believed these were mistakes that great Stalin didn’t know about. He spoke to me eye-to-eye and told me to never discuss this subject with anybody, but we, boys, discussed those terrible arrest and people who were disappearing. The time proved that those boys were true friends: nobody reported on his friends.
Every family in those horrible 1930s was prepared for anything. My father was afraid of arrest and was particularly concerned about my mother who still corresponded with her parents living in Poland. My mother packed a basket with underwear and dried bread and kept it ready in case of arrest. Once my mother’s colleagues planned a celebration at a restaurant. My mother dressed up and was ready to go, but my father didn’t let her go, however much she cried and begged him. My father must have intuitively known about something: on the following day all participants of this celebration were arrested.
Then his replacement Valentin Golovnia, a young teacher of mathematic, was arrested and the third teacher followed his predecessors. Our teacher of history Sarah ( I don’t remember her surname) also disappeared. We were 15-16 years old, we were raised on the examples of Bolshevik heroes and believed the Soviet reality to be the best in the world, but then there was some dual attitude in our romantic minds. On one side there were holidays, marches and parades that we liked so much, and on the other side there were ‘enemies of the people’ who were heroes just shortly before. I asked questions at home and my father answered me truly saying that he believed these were mistakes that great Stalin didn’t know about. He spoke to me eye-to-eye and told me to never discuss this subject with anybody, but we, boys, discussed those terrible arrest and people who were disappearing. The time proved that those boys were true friends: nobody reported on his friends.
Every family in those horrible 1930s was prepared for anything. My father was afraid of arrest and was particularly concerned about my mother who still corresponded with her parents living in Poland. My mother packed a basket with underwear and dried bread and kept it ready in case of arrest. Once my mother’s colleagues planned a celebration at a restaurant. My mother dressed up and was ready to go, but my father didn’t let her go, however much she cried and begged him. My father must have intuitively known about something: on the following day all participants of this celebration were arrested.
In the middle 1930s one of the subjects we were discussing was fascists coming to power in Germany. Since the book ‘Mein campf’ was published we were aware of the ideology of Hitler and his attitude toward Jews, but we didn’t think the same about common Germans since we were raised to be internationalists.
In August 1939 the Ribbentrop-Molotov 21 Pact was signed surprisingly for us. This was weird at least: this surprisingly emerging friendship with fascist Germany. This so-called friendship did not deceive anybody. Many people understood that we were on the edge of war. My close friend Mitia Zayats, musician, was about two years older than me. We were both fond of music. He was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison. I met with him after the war. He was an ill broken man. His fingers were frost-bitten in the camp and he could never play again. What happened was that after the execution of this Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact in 1939Mitia said at one meeting: ‘Well, we will have problems because of this’. The following night he was arrested as an ‘enemy of the people’.
On 1 September 1939 fascists invaded Poland. Refugees who were Polish Jews for the most part began to escape to Ukraine. There were Polish children coming to our school. Though we were the same age, we were still different. Those Polish children were more mature and knew more about human relations. Many of the guys had visited brothels in Poland and it was strange for us, Soviet guys, who were raised in a more proper Soviet manner. Besides, they knew about jazz while we only heard Soviet marches. They told us about modern music and movies and we were a little jealous about it. But what we never envied was that had already faced disaster: air raids, ruined houses and towns that they knew about fascist atrocities and were forced out of their homes. They told us about it and the great Patriotic War was no surprise for us.
The family decided that I was to become an engineer, though I was more disposed to humanitarian sciences. In 1940 I entered the founding Faculty of the Kharkov Machine Building College. After studying there for less than half year I realized this was not for me. Besides, I was used to living at home with my family and didn’t feel comfortable living in another town. In early 1941 I got a transfer to the Construction College in Poltava where my mother was working.
On the morning of 22 June I was preparing for my exam in geodesy. I was turning a knob on my radio. I liked radios and assembled radios listening to different radio stations. There were different channels on the radio and I grasped something in German about some ‘losses’ of the soviet troops and their retreat. I called my mother who had fluent German and she was also surprised to hear those strange messages. At 12 o’clock we listened to Molotov’s speech 22 who said that the war began. At first it was rather quiet in the town. My family and aunts decided to evacuate and were waiting for the official evacuation of our college. There was no panic in the town, but the streets were deserted as if all residents had left for resorts all of a sudden.
My fellow students and I were working in a kolkhoz near Poltava for a month picking carrots, tomatoes, paprika and cucumbers whether they were ripe or not, just to leave nothing to the enemy since it was clear that Poltava was to be invaded. In August 1941 bombings began.
In early September, actually 10 days before the occupation of the town, my mother and I, aunt Vera and Ania evacuated from Poltava. We were going with my college to Uralsk town in the Northern Kazakhstan region. My father was staying in Poltava to transfer the pharmacy, money and material values to authorities. He went to Kharkov to submit the papers and money. We had left and had no information about my father.
Uralsk was a small town. A two-storied house in Sovietskaya Street was prepared for our college. There was no heating in the building. We studied in three shifts and had to sit in class in our winter coats. Our director Yuriy Damanskiy and our lecturers Marchenko, Korchakov, Topchiy came with us. They were too old to serve in the army. Senior students were released from the army service according to an order issued by the government and since the term of studies was reduced to three years, we, second-year students, became senior pre-graduate students and were released from the army service.
We were accommodated in an apartment and at first my aunts Vera and Ania lived with us. In late November my father joined us. He walked on crutches: on the way he got into a bombing and had a leg fracture. He stayed in hospital for over a month. Aunt Vera and Ania moved to another apartment not far from us. My father went to work in the pharmacy of the military hospital and my mother continued her work in college.
We were accommodated in an apartment and at first my aunts Vera and Ania lived with us. In late November my father joined us. He walked on crutches: on the way he got into a bombing and had a leg fracture. He stayed in hospital for over a month. Aunt Vera and Ania moved to another apartment not far from us. My father went to work in the pharmacy of the military hospital and my mother continued her work in college.
The town was populated with kazaks 23 – from the Ural and Ukraine. They had a saying. In which ‘zhydy’ were mentioned negatively. I asked our kind and hospitable landlady who were zhydy and she shrugged her shoulders and said that they were probably some devils with horns and tails and was infinitely surprised, when I said that we were zhydy.
In 1943, after finishing the advanced course of our studies, our graduates were sent to restore and rebuild buildings and houses in Kharkov according to the Order issued by the State Defense Committee. Kharkov had just been liberated. In Kharkov I received a job assignment to Zaporozhiye, I worked in the towns of miners: Volnovakha and Yelenovka. We were restoring the mines and plants. I sent my documents to the Kharkov Military Engineering Academy, but shortly afterward it was dismissed and I withdrew my documents from there. I worked in these towns until middle 1944, and then I moved back to Poltava knowing that my parents were to return from Uralsk.
In 1945 I obtained my diploma and a job assignment in Kiev. My father was very happy: he always wanted me to leave this provincial town for a big city. Kiev was ruined and at first it was a severe probation for me to live there. I was employed by a design construction office. I stayed with my companion from Poltava for about ten days, but then they let me know that it would be decent for me to move out. I moved to the design office where I worked and slept on desks there. Two months later my Polish friend from Poltava Yuzik Poznanskiy got a job assignment 26 to Kiev and we received a room on the 7th floor of a hostel in an old building in 9, Franko Street. We received bread cards for 400 grams of bread, egg powder and sometimes some meat. It was impossibly little to make a living. We took our cards to the canteen in Narkomzem (ministry of land resources) in exchange for a meal of some thin soup and boiled cereal. We exchanged whatever we could for food at the market. I made soup with canned meat in a meat can on a spirit lamp and it lasted for few days. We dressed in God knows what and had shoes with the soles tied with ropes: there was no money or place to buy new shoes.
The postgraduate school didn’t admit me: the processes against cosmopolitans 27 began and the state anti-Semitism was booming. Secretary of the admission commission was trying to warn me. She was a wise woman, but I didn’t even understand what she was trying to tell me and my failure was a serious blow on me.
Regardless all problems those were beautiful years of my youth, when I had many friends. We went to operetta and opera theaters, and to concerts of symphonic and classical music in the Pervomayskiy Garden. We often gathered in one apartment, and once my friends sent me to a girl living nearby to pick up a record player from her. I liked the girl and invited her to join us. So I met my future wife Yelena Mestechkina. Yelena was born to a common, traditional and I would say religious Jewish family in Kiev in 1924. Her grandfather Iosif Mestechkin and her grandmother and her father’s brothers perished in Babi Yar. Yelena, her father and mother were in the evacuation. In 1947, when we met, she was finishing the Kiev Medical College. We dated for few months and got married in the same year of 1947. We had a family dinner party and there was one guest: Yelena’s cousin brother from Moscow. Even my parents couldn’t come from Poltava – this was a hard time. They sent us a greeting telegram.
A happy event was the establishment of Israel that attracted Jews from all over the world. My father was particularly happy about this. Hew had professed the Zionist ideas since childhood. And those were sad years due to the merciless state anti-Semitism in the late 1940s - early 1950s, when Stalin died. It started from the defeat struggle against the rootless cosmopolites leading to the made up ‘doctors’ plot’ 29. In those years many Jews lost their jobs, were arrested and even executed as enemies of the people, like it happened in the late 1930s. They were fired from their leading or engineering positions from colleges, plants and factories. In early 1953, during the period of persecution of doctors, my wife was fired without any explanation of the reasons.
My father also suffered during this period. My father was ill since the early 1950s. He quit his job and could only walk with a stick. He used to walk in the park and once he gave candy to the children in the park. Trying to give up smoking he always carried sugar candy with him. Two young men approached him and saying: ‘Zhydovskaya morda, you are poisoning our children!’, they beat him brutally with a metal rod on his ill legs. They beat an old man believing in everything best. My father could never recover from this both physical and spiritual pain.
I remember Stalin’s death in March 1953, the mourning meeting in the central present Yevropeyskaya Square [Stalin’s Square then] on 9 March, where there was his funeral in Moscow. It was raining, there was the morning music playing and many people sobbed. I was a little infected with this general tragic atmosphere, when my colleague Sergey Vysotskiy bent over me saying: ‘But it is so great that he… died!’ Few days after Stalin died we had a call from the hospital where Yelena used to work. Again, without explaining any reasons they offered her to come back to work.
Our life was gradually improving. Since 1948 I worked in the Design Machine tool Institute ‘Giprostanok’, and in 1953 I was promoted to chief of sector. In 1954 my Institute gave us a small two-bedroom apartment with 16 and 9 square-meter rooms. However, this was our own apartment, and I think that our life improved significantly from then on. In 1960 I went to work in the Academic Institute and entered an extramural postgraduate course in Moscow. In 1963 I defended a dissertation 31. I didn’t face any prejudiced attitudes.
We also socialized with our relatives. Once a year we visited my mother and aunts in Poltava. Ania’s cousin sisters from Poltava and brother Yuriy from Moscow visited us. We also traveled to Moscow. We lived like all other Soviet intelligentsia families: from one pay day to another. We didn’t have a car or a dacha, but our family spent vacations at the seashore in the Crimea or Caucasus every year.
In 1965 Alexandr finished school brilliantly. That year schools were switching to 10-year secondary education, and school children of the 11th and 10th forms graduated from schools which increased competition to colleges. Alexandr decided to enter Mechanic Machine Building Faculty in Moscow State University. We were surprised that he managed to enter it without any acquaintances or help. Many Jewish students joined Moscow University that year: the authorities must have cancelled the quota of Jewish admission. Alexandr studied his first year in Moscow and then got a transfer to Kazan University for personal reasons. He studied well, but failed to enter a postgraduate course upon graduation from the University: this was another period of anti-Semitism. Alexandr obtained a job assignment free diploma, when he could find a job where he liked. He returned to Kiev, but he couldn’t find work for a long time. Though he was a brilliant mathematician, he failed to get employment in the Institute of Cybernetics or Institute of Mathematic. Our acquaintances helped him to get a job at the Institute of Town Planning.
In those years many Jews were moving to Israel and USA via Israel. Our acquaintances and distant relatives moved there as well. Of course, we were thinking of emigration, but we had heavy anchors: my wife’s parents and my mother, and secondly, I was raised on the Russian culture. Of course, I know Western literature and jazz, but the Russian language and Russian classical music arm up my heart and it seemed hard to tear myself away from the homeland and Russian culture. I have no regrets about it.
In any case I am grateful to Gorbachev 32 and perestroika 33 for the opportunity to write and publish what you think, with no censorship, and the opportunity to read any books and listen to any music, for the freedom of faith and for the opening of the Jewish University in Kiev, for opening of synagogues and the opportunity for people of any religion to attend their temples. My family and I are convinced atheists. We do not attend any public or charity organizations. Thank God, we have everything we need, but I know that there are many needy people. It is wonderful that they can have help.
Their oldest son, my grandfather Shymon was born in Kobelyaki in 1860. He finished cheder and an accounting course.
My grandmother’s distant relative Moldavskiy [editor’s note: Moldavskiy was a Jewish merchant, grain dealer. He contributed to the opening of a Jewish hospice house and it was named after him, and later he also built a hospice house for Orthodox believers], who owned a mill, employed my grandfather. The mill was located almost across the street from my grandfather’s house. He worked there as assistant accountant till his old age.
My grandfather’s family had a rather modest life. My grandmother was a housewife. She had a housemaid to help her with the children and about the house. There was a vegetable garden near the house. My grandparents kept livestock: poultry and a cow. My grandfather was a progressive man for his time. He was fond of reading preferring Russian classics to any other books. He was very fond of music: opera and symphonic music. He went to the opera House in Kharkov few times a year and dreamed that there would be a time, when he could watch operas staying at home. This was long before the invention of TV. My father’s family wasn’t quite religious. My grandmother and grandfather didn’t attend a synagogue or raise their children religious, but they tried to observe Jewish traditions.
I don’t know whether they celebrated Sabbath. My father never mentioned this to me. However, the family got together for a meal on Pesach and Rosh Hashanah.
My father, the first son in the family, had to help his father to support the family. Therefore, after finishing an elementary Jewish school at the age of 12 my grandfather took him to Kharkov (440 km from Kiev) to the Portugalov [editor’s note: Portugalov pharmacies were in all bigger towns of the czarist Russia] pharmacy where my father studied pharmacology working in this pharmacy. He finished a grammar school as an external student and entered the pharmaceutical Faculty of Kharkov University. Upon graduation my father went to Poltava and took up a job in the pharmacy.
My father was not religious and didn’t observe Jewish traditions, but in those years he got fond of Zionist ideas and read Zhabotinskiy 2, and attended Zionist clubs [editor’s note: Poltava was one of the Zionist centers in Russia. There was a club of young Zionists here].