Rakhil Givand-Tikhaya
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Vladimir Zaidenberg
My family background
Growing up
My school years
During the war
Post-war
My husband
My present-day life
My name is Givand Rakhil Grigoriyevna, and I was born on January 23,1928, in Kiev.
My parents, Gersh Shimonovich Givand and Rebecca Yakovlevna Givand, lived indowntown Kiev on Tarasovskaya Street, while my mother's mother, mygrandmother, Sonya Eidelman, lived in a private house on the left bank ofthe Dnieper River, in an area called Slobodka.
My great-grandmother, Genya Grubman, also lived in that house. Iremember her very well. She was very old, but was always glad to see me.She often told me stories about the histories, traditions and religions ofJewish folk. At home, my great-grandmother no longer worked around thehouse, but she was a very wise woman, and many people turned to her foradvice on how to deal with one or another of life's situations. Great-grandmother was very religious. I don't remember how religious holidayswere celebrated at her house, but I know for sure that all the Jewishtraditions were kept very strictly while she was still alive.
She had a special place in the synagogue. She read the Torah out loudand other women repeated the passages after her. She was one of the fewwomen there who could read and understand the Torah, so she read it for theother women who came together in the synagogue, and then explained it tothem.
My great-grandmother died in 1936. I remember her funeral very well,first of all, because it was the first funeral ceremony I had everattended, and secondly, because it was carried out according to Jewishtraditions. I remember entering the house on the day of the funeral andsaying "Hello" to everyone. An old Jewish man replied, "Child, you shouldnot say "hello" today - you have a dead body in your house". My great-grandmother was lying on the floor, on straw, with no coffin. The ceremonyincluded neither music nor flowers. Two candles were lit behind her headand prayers were read out loud by the men, while the women listened fromanother room. Great-grandmother was taken to the cemetery without a coffinand was buried wrapped in a cloth. I remember that the men said many, manyprayers that day, in a language I could not understand. I also rememberthat my grandmother and my mother tore their dresses. My mother explainedto me that this was done in accordance with Jewish law.
My grandmother, Sonya Eidelman (maiden name: Grubman), also lived inSlobodka. I never knew my grandfather, as I was born after he died.
I know about my grandfather from the stories told by my mother. Hisname was Yakov Eidelman. I believe he had no education, but by nature was avery gifted person. He worked with his hands and was involved in commerce.Before the Revolution, he was quite rich. He had lived in America, where hehad run his own business. People said he even owned his own houses there.He wanted his wife and children to join him there, but since his wife wasvery ill and doctors had forbidden her to cross the ocean on a steamship,he had to return to Russia.
In Slobodka the family owned a house and a shop. The shop traded infoodstuffs and necessities. My grandfather was very prosperous. The shopwas located in their house. Many residents of Slobodka, both Jews andUkrainians, bought products from his shop and treated my grandfather andhis family with great respect.
My grandfather was very religious. When he left America, he broughtback with him a lot of different talit, as well as other religious objectsfor the synagogue. My mother said that he would always wear a yarmulke anda hat. His day always started with prayer. In his house, they always keptSabbath and every Jewish holiday. Grandmother was also very religious, andthey both attended a synagogue in Slobodka. There were two synagogues inSlobodka at that time, but I remember only one of them, the big one. It wasdirectly across from the tram stop where we got off when we came from thetown. Every Saturday, my grandfather went to this synagogue.
Jewish pogroms began during the Civil War (1917-1922).It happened in 1918 or 1919. The army of General Denikin was in Kiev then,and its soldiers attacked and ruined Jewish homes, killing men, rapingwomen, and confiscating and destroying property. During the pogroms theJews would hide in their houses and basements, but my grandfather was acourageous man, who feared nothing and was convinced that nothing wouldtouch his family because the local Ukrainian population was very nice tohim. He hoped they would protect him. But as it happened, no one had timeto protect him for a soldier suddenly ran up to his house, stabbed himthree times and left. My grandfather lost a lot of blood and died rightthere, at the doorway of his house.
My grandparents had four daughters and a son. The eldest daughter andthe son died as babies from scarlet fever; I don't even know their names.Three daughters were left: Tatiana, who was born in 1902, my mother, whowas born in 1904, and Maria, who was born in 1913.
Before getting married all of them lived in grandfather's house inSlobodka. I remember that house very well. In the beginning of the 1930sthe house was remodeled. In the old house all the rooms were small, whilein the remodeled house they were united and made large. The house was madeof wood with an iron roof; there were two porches that faced the street andthe backyard. There were four large rooms and a kitchen. The toilet and thewell were outside. The house had good wooden furniture, for my grandparentswere not poor. There were also nice bronze candleholders and beautifulsilver dishes.
They had no garden in the yard, but auxiliary premises and a barnwith two cows. I remember these very well because every time we came tovisit I always had fresh milk to drink.
My grandmother had no servants; she had to work around the house onher own. That is why when grandfather died, my mother and her sisters hadto start helping around the house, milking the cows, and selling the milkin order to survive.This is all I know and remember about my relatives on my mother's side.
My father, Gersh Shimonovich Givand, was born in 1904 in the town ofVolodarka, outside Belaya Tserkov, in the area of Kiev. His parents, mygrandparents, Shimon and Anna Givand, were also killed in pogroms. Besidesthat, my father's elder sister Rukhlya was also killed. The pogroms wereterrible; entire Jewish families were murdered. I cannot tell you abouttheir deatsh in more detail because my father never told me much, sparingmy childish sensibility.
I know that following that pogrom three brothers remained: my fatherwas the eldest, then came Israel, born in 1908, and finally the youngest -Naum, born in 1912.
An interesting incident in the life of the middle brother, Israel,follows. During one of the pogroms, when Jews were being killed, a richneighbor, whose name I don't know, had hidden his money in Israel's shoe.Nobody knows what happened to that man, he may have been killed, too, buthis money remained in Israel's shoe. Once, when Israel saw that GeneralDenikin's soldiers wanted to throw his neighbor Lipa Novichenko into awell, Israel ran up to them and said, "I will give you money, if you'lljust let this man go". The soldiers took the money and let Lipa go, andLipa bowed down with gratitude before my father and his brothers for therest of his life; he also helped them a lot.
After they lost their parents, the brothers were put into anorphanage, but I don't remember much about that time. I know that Lipahelped them a lot, including with their education. Unfortunately, all threebrothers were killed in the Second World War.
My father finished forestry college around 1927, and then worked inan organization that dealt with the transportation of wood. He had a goodposition and our material life was pretty good.
My mother had no secondary education, because after the death of herfather she had to stop studying in order to help in the shop and around thehouse.
I don't know how my parents met, but when they married they moved toNo. 16, Tarasovskaya Street. My father worked at a plant then and he wasgiven a room in a basement. That's where I was born. It was in the citycenter, and "kikes"1 were forbidden to live in that street. I canremember the sign that said that - it was fixed to one of our houses.Later, we moved to another flat on the same street, in house No. 8.
The room was in a communal flat, and was quite large. We had goodfurniture for that time, and many books, including books in Yiddish; italso had a piano, which I was learning to play. Apart from us, there werefive more neighbor families in the flat. We had a communal kitchen with atable, and a closet for each family. There were two toilets, but they werecommunal, so in the mornings we sometimes had to queue. We had a commonelectricity-meter, and every family paid according to the number of peoplein each. The relations between the neighbors were quite peaceful; I don'tmean that we were all friends, but we never quarreled.
In general, we had mostly Jewish families in our flat, but there wasalso one German.
I remember one old Jew, our neighbor, who lived alone. Everyone calledhim grandfather Nudelman. I loved him very much. He was very religious, andhe taught me Yiddish. He told me, "If you mom does not want to tell yousomething in Yiddish, come to me." So, I learned my first Yiddish wordsfrom him. My parents spoke Yiddish only when they did not want me tounderstand, so every time it happened, I ran to grandfather Nudelman and hetranslated for me what they had said.
At our house we did not celebrate any Jewish holidays because myfather was a member of the Communist Party and feared that someone at hisworkplace might learn that he celebrated Jewish holidays at home and reporthim to the authorities. My mother exchanged whispers with grandfatherNudelman and arranged religious celebrations on their own. On Pessach, shewould bring matzoh from grandmother, and the family would celebrate thisholiday with grandfather Nudelman. During the Second World War. GrandfatherNudelman was killed in Babi Yar (site of mass killings of Jews by Germansin Kiev).
But I remember very well how Jewish holidays were celebrated at mygrandmother's in Slobodka. On Pesach, all of her daughters with theirchildren would come together. On the eve of the Passover they would takeout all the bread, and wash and clean the entire flat. Then from the atticthey would take special kosher plates that were kept there in special boxesduring the whole year. They put matzoh, boiled potatoes, horse-radishes,boiled eggs, fish and everything else that was necessary on the table. Idon't remember who led the seder or how, but I remember how nice it wasafterwards. My grandmother had a gramophone on which she played Jewishrecords with songs on them, and we enjoyed ourselves. I don't remember theother holidays much. I remember that on Yom Kippur my mother always fasted,but I did not understand why. I also know that the husband of my mother'ssister Tatiana attended the synagogue regularly until it was closed a yearor two before the war [World War II]. Then he began to go to a house whereJewish men came together to pray.
In 1935 I started going to school, a Russian school. But there werechildren of different nationalities among the students: Russian, Ukrainian,and many Jewish. I was a very good student; I liked studying very much. Myfavorite subjects were humanities - literature and history. We also hadteachers of different nationalities, and the Jewish children at schoolnever sensed any anti-Semitism. For friends, I had children of differentnationalities, and we all were equal. I had music classes with a teacher athome, and our German neighbor taught me the German language. I don't knowhow she would have reacted to the war and to fascism because she diedbefore the war began, in 1938.
I was a young Pioneer and sang in the school band. I liked to wear thered Pioneer tie, and liked all the Pioneer demonstrations and ceremonies.But I never went to the Pioneer summer camps, I always spent summers withmy mother. We sang Soviet songs, both Russian and Ukrainian, and performedat amateur concerts. We even won prizes at school.
My father liked it very much. We always celebrated Soviet holidays athome - the Great October Revolution Day, and May Day, on May 1. My fatherliked big celebrations, so they invited a lot of guests, no matter whattheir nationality was. They had friends among the Russians and Ukrainianstoo. Relations between people of different nationalities were good backthen. Tables were full of delicious food, because my father liked whenpeople said, "Look, how Givand celebrates this holiday." He emphasizedcelebrations on Soviet rather than Jewish holidays, because repression andarrests started in those years, and he was frightened. My mother wasconcerned over the fact that she could not celebrate any Jewish holidays athome, and, as I mentioned before, she would bring matzoh from Slobodka andwould celebrate the Jewish holidays with grandfather Nudelman. I remembervery well how I was warned not to tell anyone that we had matzoh at ourhouse. By the way, not only Jews were afraid to celebrate their nationalholidays. I don't remember any Russian or Ukrainian children bringingEaster cakes on Easter. Their parents were also afraid that somebody mightlearn that they celebrated religious holidays. In those days the practiceof any religion was outside the law.
In 1937 repression and arrests started. I remember this very wellbecause we had a chair next to the door in our room, and a white bag wasalways lying on that chair. There was always fresh bread and some underwearin that bag - my mother was preparing for an arrest. Many Soviet workers,even common people, were arrested back then, including, some of ourfriends, but praise God, my father was spared.
In general, I had a happy childhood. I went to school, my family hadno financial need, and I was dearly loved by my parents, because I had nobrothers or sisters. My mother took me to resorts, for instance, toZheleznovodsk. In summer, my parents often rented dachas outside Kiev - inIrpen or Vorzel. My father received special tickets at work for rest inhealth centers and rest homes. So, in general, our life was good.
I knew nothing about Hitler or fascism. We were never told about it atschool. Perhaps the senior students knew something about fascism, but wewere too young to know. My parents probably knew about fascism and thethreat of war, and were concerned, but they spared me and did not tell meanything - until the war broke out, my childhood was marred by nothing.
On June 22, 1941, shells and bombs began to explode in the sky overKiev, and my mother would call me at the balcony and tell me, "Look,military exercises are underway". A little later, German bombs began toexplode.
One morning, there was a ring at the door, and my father was given acall-up paper from the military enlistment committee. He was an officer,who was in charge of political ideology in the army. But he was in thereserves, because the first time he had been called up was in 1939 duringthe Finnish War. Afterwards he was left in Kiev because peace was signedand he was too late to be sent to the front. This time, since he was anofficer in political ideology, he was taken to work on the mobilization ofpeople. People born in his year - 1904 - had not been not called up yet, sohe worked with the enlistment committee. But when he heard that both of hisyounger brothers were called up, he did not think it possible to stay inKiev and went to fight with them. None of them came back.
It so happened that we did not even have a chance to say goodbye to myfather. This is how it happened. As soon as the war broke out, my motherand I began to prepare for evacuation. My father told us that we would needto leave because Hitler would kill all the Jews - he already knew about it.Our mood was terrible. It was scary. I remember there were a lot ofrefugees from the western regions of Ukraine in Kiev, mostly Jews. Theywere settled in the Botanical Garden, not far from our house. It was awfulto look at them: old men, women and children, who had already seen theatrocities of the fascists. They lived on the bare ground, in tents. Mymother often went to see them, to give them some food and to talk to them.I remember she cried a lot. That is why there was no question in our familyabout whether we should evacuate or not. We knew about the fascists;certainly, we did not know what degree their persecutions would reach, buthad learned enough to be frightened badly.
The main question was how to evacuate from Kiev quickly with ourrelatives. Even though the government already knew about the atrocitiescommitted by the fascists against the Jews, no special Jewish evacuationwas organized.
The husband of my mother's elder sister Tatiana Ofman worked inDarnitsa at the train station. He arranged for us to be put on the trainand taken to evacuation. My uncle came to pick us up and put us on thetrain, and there we waited for several days. We did not take manybelongings with us because we thought we were only leaving for a week ortwo. We just took along some bed linen, my blanket, some clothes, and food- as much as a woman and a girl could carry. My mother kept looking out ofthe train windows to see if my father was coming. But my uncle told her,"Riva, don't wait for Grisha." He told us that my father had gone to thefront as a volunteer and purposely did not come to say goodbye to us. Hehad told my uncle, "If I come to say goodbye to Khila and Riva, I will notbe able to leave them. I will die with them." Neither of his brothers -Israel or Naum - came to say goodbye to us either. They all left, and theyall were killed.
We, however, went on to evacuation. With us we had mother's eldersister Tatiana Ofman with her children, Yelizaveta and Abram, along withmother's younger sister Maria Vodotiyevskaya with her children, Viktoriaand Yakov, and grandmother, mother's mother.
The families of my father's brothers, that is, the families of Israeland Naum stayed in Kiev - they were too late to move out. Both familieslived in one big flat, which occupied the whole floor of a house. Therewere 15 of them. One of the relatives worked in the People's Commissariatof the Interior, and she was promised a car to evacuate her family. Butwhen the car was provided, it was too late, Kiev was already encircled.They had to return and all of them were murdered at Babi Yar.
We traveled in heated railway cars and stopped first in Lozovaya.There was a terrible bombing raid there. For some time we lived in Lozovaya- my mother worked there on a collective farm and I helped her. But thisdid not last long. Soon, we were put on open railway platforms next to somemachine-guns and taken to Stalingrad and then to Perm. In the beginning welived at the Perm train station. Each of us had a corner in whch to keepour belongings. We received a piece of bread every day and some sort ofsoup. We washed in the toilet room at the station. During the day, ourmothers cleaned and washed floors at the station. It was very hard livingthere, but we could not leave because my cousin Yelizaveta fell sick withmeasles and was in Perm's hospital. We could not leave without her.
And there we were on that terrible day of September 29, 1941, when ourtroops surrendered Kiev. It was Yom Kippur, the Day of Judgment, and allthe adults, all the Jews who were at the train station fasted. I alsofasted for the first time in my life, and since that time I have beenkeeping this fast every year of my life. I still remember that day, whenall of us, roofless, fatherless, miserable Jews, were fasting and prayingfor our nation, for victory, for our fathers to come home alive, for ourMotherland. It was very had because on the eve of the fast we ate somesalty fish and we were very thirsty, but we could not drink, for it wasforbidden. All of us endured - we thought if we endured, everything wouldbe okay.
Then we wandered around the country. We stayed in Kokanda, where I gotill with meningitis and missed two years of school because of it. Livingthere was very hard - my mother worked at the collective farm to survive. Iremember being hungry all the time: we woke up and went to bed hungry. WhenI was ill, my mother sold everything we had in order to buy penicillin,otherwise I would have died. So, we were left with nothing - not even a bed-sheet or blanket. The only valuable my mother had was her wedding ring, andshe could not let it go. For a long time I walked on crutches because mylegs became infected and would not move.
At that time, the wife of Lipa Novichenko, who was rescued by Israel,found us. Lipa was no longer living, and his wife's second husband, GeorgyIvanovich Geshko, was the director of a film studio. He was Ukrainian, buthe helped us a lot. They took us to Tashkent and gave my mother work in thestudio's canteen; I went to school and our life became easier. I attended aregular secondary school, but there were many evacuated Jewish childrenthere. We stayed with a Russian family, renting a part of a room from them.Everyone treated us with compassion, and I don't remember being offended byanyone despite our Jewish origin. We had no news from my father or hisbrothers, but my mother and I lived with the hope that he was still alive.
During our evacuation in Tashkent, we learned about Babi Yar and thetragic fate of hundreds of thousands of Jews in the occupied territories,as well as the fate of Isare's and Naum's families.
As soon as Kiev was liberated we decided to go home, even though weknew there was nowhere to go. We knew this because Mr. Geshko went to Kievimmediately after its liberation on November 8, 1943, and from thereimmediately wrote us a letter. He had visited us there before the war, sohe went to see in what kind of condition our house was. It was gone. Therewas an ammunition warehouse next to it, and when the Germans wereretreating, they blew it up, so that every house around it was also burntdown.
We returned to Kiev together with the film studio. We traveled in goodrailway cars, but when we arrived, we had nowhere to stay.
We were given shelter by our neighbors, the Rymars, a Russian familywhich showed us a lot of compassion, and we stayed in their basement for along time. We had no possessions of our own: only one pair of shoes and 100rubles. A loaf of bread at the market cost 100 rubles. The Rymar familysaved us at that time. During the occupation they stayed in Kiev, and theytold us all the details about Babi Yar and related to us the horrors of theoccupation. Their life was not easy either, because some of their ancestorswere Jewish, and they also had to hide in Kiev.
In 1945 I received a letter concerning the death certificate of myfather, and later, another one concerning the deaths of his brothers Israeland Naum Givand. Because their families were dead, there was nobody else toreceive those letters. The brothers were killed somewhere outsideKremenchug during the first year of the war.
In 1945 I attended a Russian school, but not the same one I hadattended earlier. In this school I learned all about anti-Semitism. Amongthe students, there were many Jewish children who had returned fromevacuation. The attitude of the non-Jewish children to us was horrible -the word "kike" could be heard on every step. Our teachers also secretlysupported the anti-Semites, offending us, and telling us that we had had agood time in Tashkent during the war - they said that to us, who lost ourfathers. They gave lower grades to the Jewish children, and constantlyfound fault with us. We had a girl in our class who managed to escape fromBabi Yar. I don't remember her name, I only know that somehow she hadcrawled out alive. She was teased, called a kike, and nobody had anycompassion for her - neither students, nor teachers. I still remember myafter-war school years with horror.
My mother continued to work at the film studio's canteen, and itsdirector continued to take care of us. We were given a room in a communalflat on Gorky Street, and we lived there for many years.
In 1948 I finished school and enrolled at the Light Industry Institute(the University). I had entry privileges at the university because myfather was killed in the war, and I passed all my exams with excellentmarks.
The beginning of the 1950s marks the start of an openly anti-Semiticcampaign know as the "Doctors' Case" and the fight against thecosmopolitans. When Staling died in 1953, I was part of the guard of honornear his portrait. We certainly did not link the government's policyagainst the Jews and all the repressions of the Soviet people with Stalin'sname. This policy of anti-Semitism certainly affected all of us Jewishstudents. Most of all, we felt it when graduates were sent to certainplaces of work after graduation. In those years, after graduation from auniversity, we could not work just anywhere, but had to work for threeyears at any place the university would send us.
I graduated from the university with honors, and according to therules I was supposed to be offered a good position, but I was one of thelast to be called up, and was offered a position in Siberia. This Irefused, because I could not leave my mother alone, so I did not sign thepaper. This process was repeated several times, until finally, I was sentto Kishenev, Moldavia. I worked in Kishenev for only a few months beforethe Control and Revision Department checked with my organization and toldthe director to "fire the kike." I was fired. But I was very happy toreturn to Kiev. I was not the only Jew who had such an experience. None ofthe other graduating Jews from our university were sent to a good place ofwork, either.
In Kiev I was once again reminded that I was a Jew. Having graduatedfrom a university, I still could not find a job. Only due to another Jew -the director of the "Nefteizmeritel" plant, was I hired to the Experimentaland Design Bureau, where I worked until my retirement on pension.
My mother was sick for many years, and I was very attached to her, soI had no time or opportunity to think about marriage. For many years Iremained single. My mother died in 1980. Finally, in 1986 I married.
My husband is the poet and writer Naum Meyerovich Shtilerman (Tikhiy).He was born on September 14, 1922, in the village of Emilchino, in theregion of Zhitomir.
His father, Meyer Shtilerman, was a druggist. They lived in thatUkrainian village. Naum's mother, Raisa Shtilerman, did not work outsidethe home; she was a housewife, and raised her children, her son Naum andtwo daughters, Dina and Buzya.
In 1937, Naum's father was arrested, charged with being a German spy,and was sent to penal servitude. He was imprisoned in the SolovetskyIslands. He was a very ill man, practically blind. There he contractedtuberculosis. He returned home only after Stalin's death, and soon died,too.
Naum and his sisters had attended a Ukrainian school, but were placedin a Jewish class. It was not a class in which Yiddish or Hebrew was thelanguage of tuition, but was simply a class into which all the Jewishchildren from the neighboring villages were collected. According to myhusband, relations between the Jews and Ukrainians in their village werewonderful. Even though Yiddish was spoken at home, my husband also spokefluent Ukrainian and considered the Ukrainian language to be his nativetongue.
My husband is grateful to the Ukrainian people because when it becametoo late for his mother, Raisa Shtilerman, to be evacuated, and she had toremain in the occupied territories with her daughters Dina and Buzya duringthe war, they found shelter with Ukrainian families in Korostyshev. Thepeople who rescued them were later awarded the title "Righteous Gentiles".Raisa Shtilerman died in 1990 in Israel, but her daughters Dina and Buzyaare still living there.
Naum entered the University before the war, at the age of 15. Hewanted to study in the Philology Department. He was a very gifted person.He passed all of his high school exams early and then aced his entranceexams. He was accepted even though his father was a member of a repressedminority. Perhaps he was accepted because he had gained entrance into theUkrainian Department, which was "out of fashion" in those days - everyonewanted to study only the Russian language and literature.
Back in the university, Naum began to compose poems in Ukrainian. Hebrought his first collection of poems to a famous Ukrainian poet, who wasalso Jewish, Leonid Pervomaisky (Ilya Gurevich (1908-1973), a famous andpopular Ukrainian Soviet writer. Pervomaisky is his pseudonym, which he hadto take so that his works could be published in the USSR. He was born intoa family of workers. His first publication appeared in 1924. He wrote inRussian and Ukrainian, poems and novels. He also translated from theGerman. During WWII he was a correspondent at the front.) He looked throughit and said, "Everything is fine except your last name. Shtilerman shouldnot be there. Translate it into Russian: "Shtil" means "quiet", so signyour name like this - Naum Tikhiy (Quiet)".
My husband could not print any of his poem collections before the war.After the war, he officially changed his last name, so that it is no longerhis pseudonym - otherwise, his poems would have never been printed.
During the war, Naum was in the army, but since his father had beenrepressed, he was not allowed to fight in the battle, and after the war hecould not join the Communist Party until his father was rehabilitated.
After the war Naum graduated from the Philology Department of theUniversity, and devoted his life to poetry. Twenty-five of his poeticcollections in Ukrainian have been printed. But all his life he felt anti-Semitism not on a common, but on an official, state level.
The first time he was not awarded the Shevchenko Prize was because hewas not a Communist Party member, and he was not accepted into the Partybecause of his father. In order to sweeten the situation, he was insteadawarded the Pavlo Tychyna Prize (another Ukrainian poet). In Tychyna'shouse, which is a museum, there is a portrait of my husband. He was alwaysaccepted there and his poems were read there. In general, people treatedhim kindly, understanding that he deserved much more than just Tychyna'sPrize. Several times his books were presented for the State Prize, butevery time another poet was found, who was more pleasing to theauthorities. In 1995 his other collection of poems was published and againhe was named for the Shevchenko Prize. But simultaneously, a book writtenby the wife of Drozd, the Secretary of the Writers' Union of Ukraine, wasalso named for the prize, and so she was the one who got it. But the nextyear, when the leadership of the State Prizes Committee changed, the poetYavorivsky, who was its chairman, sent a letter to the publishers, whocalled us and invited my husband to nominate his book for the State Prizeagain. The book was nominated on September 23, 1996. The response of theUkrainian poets was wonderful. The poet Nikolay Rudenko wrote on Naum'sbook, "Naum, this is what never dies". This happened on September 23, 1996.But on September 27, an article appeared in the "Literaturnaya Gazeta"newspaper claiming that Tikhiy is not a Ukrainian poet, but rather aUkrainian-speaking poet, because he is just a Jew who speaks Ukrrainian, sohe cannot be awarded such a prize. My husband was so shocked by thisarticle and took it so seriously that he died of a heart attack the nextday.
My husband was a very talented man of two cultures. He would establishdays when we were to speak only Yiddish with him so that he would learnthat language well. When we were in Israel, at the Wailing Wall, at Yad-Vashem, he was very impressed, and that is where he wrote his poem"Conception" about Jewish women's fates in ghettos. But Ukraine andUkrainian people were also very close and dear to him. He died too early,he was only 74. So, my happy family life was very short.
Among the members of our family, I am left alone. Mother's sistersMaria and Tatiana died in the early 80s; their children, my cousins, liveabroad, in Israel and America. The closest people to me now are myhusband's children from his first wife - his son Sergey and his daughter.Sergey is the director of a big newspaper in Kiev, and even though he isnot Jewish according to his passport (his mother, Naum's first wife, wasUkrainian), he still identifies himself with the Jews, attends events inthe Jewish community, and cooperates with leaders of Jewish organizationsin Ukraine. My husband's children are grateful to me for becoming a truewife and friend of their father, who made the last years of his lifesweeter. We have wonderful relations with them, even better than childrensometimes have with their own parents.
For my whole life I have honored the memory of my father, hisbrothers and all the Jews who died at the front or in Babi Yar. In 1945, Istarted going to Babi Yar on September 29, the anniversary of that terribleshooting of the Jews of Kiev. Since 1945, three Russian pilots have alsobeen coming to Babi Yar every year on September 29. At the end of the warthese pilots were kept in the Syretsky concentration camp for prisoners ofwar, and they were made to eliminate the traces of Babi Yar. Prior to theirretreating, the fascists wanted to eliminate all the traces, using theirprisoners of war, who uncovered and burned corpses. So, these pilots werecoming back for many years to honor the memory of innocent Jewish victims.Then only one came, then none.
In Babi Yar I met the famous writer Viktor Nekrasov, who also camethere every year. To this place he brought his last flowers, redcarnations, before he left the Soviet Union. He was exiled from the SovietUnion for his activities in defense of democracy, as this displeased theSoviet authorities. I was surprised that he did not even say "Hello" to me;he simply passed by me, put down his flowers, and left. He did not want todraw the attention of the Security Services officers to me, because theywere watching him closely.
On September 29, 1961, on the 20th anniversary of the shooting, manyyoung people came to Babi Yar not only from Kiev, but also from Moscow,Leningrad, and Tbilisi. Each of us carried a candle, and we placed a wreathin the form of a six-point star at the site. You can't imagine whathappened there! All the participants were arrested, right then and there,on the sacred place where the shooting took place, they were put intopolice cars and taken away. It was a great shame. Nevertheless, I continuedto go to that place every year. The Security Service told my employer thatI attend anti-Soviet rallies, and I was summoned to the personneldepartment and was asked intimidating questions. But each year, I continuedto go to Babi Yar, and all of my coworkers knew that.
A monument has been erected in Babi Yar, even two of them - a statemonument and a Jewish menorah; a monument to children was erected there in2001. The president, ambassadors, and high-profile activists in culturestage rallies and meetings there now, but very few of those who go therenowadays went there when it was forbidden.
I consider myself religious. Immediately after the war I began toattend synagogue again, first with my mother, and later with my husband. Myhusband and I contributed to the maintenance of the synagogue. Every timehe was paid royalties, we gave part of them to the synagogue. That is why Ieven had my own place in the synagogue, and where there were lines formatzoh, we got ours free of charge.
I read all the Jewish newspapers printed in Kiev, attend the Jewish"Khesed" and "Kinor" centers and the synagogue, when I can. Unfortunately,I don't know Hebrew. I have a Russian Bible, and when I come to thesynagogue, I read from it.
My husband and I traveled to Israel several times: he was invitedbecause he translated the poems of Israeli poets into Ukrainian. I sense myconnection with Israel and could probably move there if it were not for oldage and loneliness.
I celebrate all the Jewish holidays, Pesach, and especially YomKippur. I remember my first fast on September 29, 1941, very well - whenwe, evacuated Jews, were praying to God for the liberation of Kiev, ournation, and our country, and for our parents.
Jewish Ukrainians are now certainly more able to identify themselvesas Jews, without hiding or being ashamed of their nationality. But I thinkthat deep inside, anti-Semitism still exists in our Ukraine, only it ishiding for a time. And I would like the young Jews of Ukraine to return totheir roots, to know their language, their history and religion, and I praythat they will never have to go through the horrors our generation had toendure. Thank you, that's all.
