In 1953 I met my fate. At that time I was working in the road department and we were building the road Klaipeda-Kaunas. I was in the town of Linkuva rather often as we had a machinery site there. Once I was driving in a car and saw a girl walking along the road. She asked for a lift. Her house was about five kilometers from Linkuva. I gave her a lift and went to work. When I was driving back I saw her standing there again. The lady said that she worked as a maid in Linkuva. Then I saw her again, and even drove her home. This is how we met. I liked her instantly and I came to meet her parents. They liked me at once though they were Lithuanians and I was a Jew. They didn't even think of my nationality. I took the young lady to Telsiai and we had our marriage registered. We have been together since then.
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Displaying 1351 - 1380 of 50826 results
Rafael Genis
When I came back from the war, I found a Lithuanian girlfriend, who I had been dating before the war. It turned out that during the occupation she had relationships with men and even gave birth to a daughter. I didn't want to see her, although she was offering to leave everything for me. I had been lonely for many years.
Nevertheless, my colleagues always had a very good attitude towards me. I had excellent organizational skills and they valued me. I never noticed anti-Semitisms in all those years, neither at work nor beyond it. In 1953 when Stalin died, I was only happy for that, I knew what he was worth since I had been put in the cart with the peoples' enemies [15] during the war. I understood how much trouble that person had brought.
,
1953
See text in interview
A Lithuanian, Vaytrikele, who was sitting at one desk with my sister Tsilya, was the inspector at the party committee. She asked me if I kept in touch with my relatives in the USA [14]. I said that I did and mentioned that I had recently got a letter from them. My case wasn't discussed for a long time, they turned me down and I made no further attempts.
,
1948
See text in interview
At that time all the leading positions required either Communist Party or Komsomol [13] membership. I couldn't join the Komsomol in the army as my relatives were living in the USA. When I became an engineer of the commodity base, one of the inspectors at the Ispolkom said that my title envisaged that I should be a member of the Communist Party. I applied for party membership.
In 1948 I entered a college in Kaunas. Upon graduation I entered the Kaunas Polytechnic Institute. Both educations were extra-mural. Having experience in construction, I started working as an engineer at a commodity base in Telsiai and worked there until my retirement.
,
1948
See text in interview
My boss, a Jew called Germanis wasn't a decent man and misappropriated almost all the sausage. I didn't want to work with him and be liable for larceny. I left him and soon I became the director of an industrial enterprise. It didn't exist for a long time. Then I was in charge of a logistics department in a car fleet. I changed those jobs within a year and in 1948 I started working in the road department of the Ispolkom as an engineer of asphalting the road Telsiai-Plunge.
,
1948
See text in interview
I couldn't stay in Rietavas and left for Telsiai. Here I met my master Shilenis, who also told me many things. He worked for the regional Ispolkom [12], and helped me very much. I was given an apartment - with a large room and a kitchen. I was ready to accept any job. First, I was asked if I knew how to make sausage. They brought me a cow and I made the sausage myself. I was given money and went to Klaipeda. I bought a sausage-making machine.
I couldn't stay in the house built on the foundation of our old nest where we had been so happy. The Lithuanian was worried that I would turn her out, but I wasn't going to do that. I went down to the cellar and found apple and other jam, which my mother had made. It was still good. I showed it to the lady, told her to eat it and left.
There were about 14 places out of town where Jews were executed. I don't know exactly where my kin perished. Father's sisters Chaya Riva and Channa also perished. And my brother Dovid, who was studying at Telsiai yeshivah, was shot in Rainai along with 300 rabbis. My mother and sister Tsilya lived a bit longer. One lady, who crept out from the pile of corpses told me about it later. They were in the ghetto in Telsiai. Lithuanians often went there to hire people. One of them wanted to take Tsilya and save her that way, but my sister clung on to my mother and didn't agree to part with her. Then a furious Fascist shot both Tsilya and my mother.
On the day when the war broke out, my brother Liber and his wife Ida with their baby daughter - about two months old - came to see my parents. The lady said that she noticed the tail of the column, where Liber and Ida with the stroller, were walking. The Fascists took the stroller away and it was rolling on the curb. My brother darted after the stroller and the German shot him right away, then they shot the baby.
I couldn't recognize my town, as all buildings were burnt down, including our house. A Lithuanian lady had used the foundation of our house to build her own there. I went in. We had a long conversation. She told me about the execution of local Jews, about the deaths of my kin. As it turned out my parents and Grandpa Nakhman were denounced by the neighbors. They were those Lithuanian guys, who were my friends, who came to our house. All my kin, Grandpa Nakhman, Father, Liber with his family and Isroel, were shot in the first days of the occupation of Telsiai.
My trip to Lithuania took four days and I had to change trains twice. I didn't care if it was a locomotive train or not, all that mattered was that it should go to Lithuania. Thus I reached Siauliai and from there I took the shuttle to Telsiai and walked to Rietavas.
In 1947 I was on a business trip in Moscow and saw a sign on a building downtown - it was the representative office of the Lithuanian SSR in the USSR. I went in and was stopped by the guard. I started asking him to let me in for me to see an authorized representative. The guy was compassionate. He asked me to take my military coat off. I told my story to Bachunas, the authorized representative. He made a couple of telephone calls and gave me a document for my management in Lipetsk. When I arrived, I was dismissed right away.
The war was over and I was still wearing my military jacket. I didn't have money to buy civilian clothes. Besides, I wasn't willing to take it off. Now, Lithuania was free and I was eager to go home, but they wouldn't dismiss me. I said that I wanted to go to my motherland to help restore towns and villages, but they told me that a Soviet person had his motherland all over the USSR.
I was discharged in early January 1944 with the so-called 'white card': I could not be in the lines any more. I had to get recouped somehow. I had to find a lodging and a job. I was recommended to be a military trainer at the vocational school. I went to Lipetsk [today Russia], an industrial town, where there were a lot of schools. I was hired by one of the vocational schools right away. I rented a room. I worked hard. All I had to wear was a military uniform. Lithuania was still occupied, and I didn't care where I should live. I did well at work. I had military awards: two Great Patriotic War Orders [11] and others. Later I was offered to run the local timber enterprise.
mark golub
My father's father Haim Golub was born in Lenino, Western Belorussia, in 1865. His family was involved in transportation, farming and in the timber felling business. My grandfather had a big family. My grandfather was recruited into the army and served at the town of Ladyzhin, Podolsk province. After his service term was over he married Esther Gerbinskaya. They married in the early 1890s. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah and all the other rituals.
There were Jewish pogroms during the revolution and the Civil War [1918- 1921] in the town of Ladyzhin as well as in other Jewish towns. I don't know any details - my parents never told me about the pogroms. I only know that nobody in our family suffered from them.
My grandparents spoke Yiddish between themselves and with the children. They were also fluent in Russian and could read and write in Russian as well, and also in Yiddish.
My grandfather and grandmother were truly religious people. They had their own seats at the synagogue. They observed Jewish traditions and followed the laws of kashrut. They always celebrated Jewish holidays and the Sabbath, when grandmother lit candles, and grandfather read prayers, and afterwards, the whole family ate at the festive table. My grandmother cooked the most delicious traditional food I had ever tasted. At Pesach she made the most delicious sponge cakes from matzah flour, strudels with jam, raisins and nuts, gefilte fish, chicken broth with dumplings, and stuffed chicken necks. Even during the war when special festive dishes were out of the question, my grandmother and father's sister Riva used to clean the everyday dishes with sand and ashes as required by Jewish tradition at Pesach. My grandmother observed Jewish traditions after the war, too. She was the mistress of the house.
Father studied at cheder. He didn't get any special education. From an early age, my father helped my grandfather in his business. I know that he obtained all the necessary documents to move to Palestine in 1914, but he didn't leave because World War I began. During the war my father worked at a road construction site. He had a subcontract for road construction at the border with Romania. He hired workers and administered the work. My grandfather was also awarded a wood cutting contract in Belorussia and my father went there to make all the necessary arrangements.
My father decided to return home and he had to cross the border in the vicinity of Slavuta illegally. In the mid-1920s he met Emmanuil Odelskiy, an engineer who owned a design office and designed sanitary engineering systems. My father learned this business from him and hired a crew to install these systems. The Vodotopstroy Company was established at this time, and my father became a supervisor in the sanitary engineering department. He did most of the work in Belorussia.
My grandparents were religious. All of their children received both a secular and a religious education. My grandmother and grandfather attended the synagogue and observed all the Jewish traditions. They spoke Yiddish in the family. Even after the war grandma kept the traditions.
Both families were enthusiastic about the revolution, even though my grandfather Golub was a wealthy man and my mother's father Leib Lukashevskiy was rather well off. The Pale of Settlement was abolished immediately after the revolution and this gave people the hope that life would improve [5]. The revolution was far away and life in Ladyzhin was quiet. My grandfather Golub still owned his storage facility. There were no arrests or expropriation of property in Ladyzhin. My grandfather was the owner of storage facilities until the end of the NEP in the early 1920s when the authorities took away his property. In 1924 my grandfather moved to Kiev and the family joined him in a short while.
My grandfather worked as a quality assurance specialist. He was responsible for the identification of defective beams, planks, etc. He worked there until the war began.
My father's parents followed the laws of kashrut, always celebrated the Sabbath and Jewish holidays. Grandmother always lit candles on Friday nights. Sabbath was observed according to custom - grandmother made gefilte fish and chicken broth. Lunch was served at 1 o'clock when everyone gathered at the table. My grandfather said the prayer and then they all had dinner and rested until the end of the day. They didn't clean the table until late in the evening. On Saturdays we could not light fires. On Chanukkah candles were lit by our father. We had a beautiful chanukkiyah, grandmother's dowry. The poor who did not own a chanukkiyah would cut a hole in the center of a potato, fill it with oil and light a wick. These were not candleholders but small lanterns. On Chanukkah grandfather always gave me money. On Purim mother baked hamantashen, triangular tarts with poppy seeds and nuts. She also prepared - I cannot recall its Hebrew name - chicken broth with dumplings. Grandfather read the prayer.
My father knew my mother since her birth. My mother's parents were renting rooms from my father's parents, as I mentioned before. My father was 10 years older than my mother. After he turned 30, he decided it was time to get married. My father didn't go anywhere in search of a fiancée. He already had my mother in mind. She was a beautiful girl, they knew each other and they were good friends. My father came to Ladyzhin from Kiev and proposed to her. I don't know whether my mother was in love with him. She was 21 and realized that there were no prospects in Ladyzhin. She knew my father and he was a wealthy man. They married in Ladyzhin in 1926. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah and a rabbi. The entire Jewish population of the town came to greet the bride and bridegroom. There were klezmer musicians, the guests feasted and danced, and had lots of fun. The wedding party lasted 3 days and then my father took his young wife to Kiev.
In 1934-35 the capital of Ukraine moved from Kharkov to Kiev. The government and all its governmental institutions moved to Kiev. We received a room for a dwelling. There were 8 rooms in this apartment and 7 other families were our neighbors: they were the families of a dentist, a logistics specialist, a military man, a lawyer, an accountant, a chief accountant and the director of the plant. They were all Jews. There was also a huge kitchen, a hallway, two corridors, two toilets and a bathroom in this apartment. We got along well with our neighbors. It was a grand apartment for its time. We had a boiler facility in the yard that supported water heating. There was a beautiful stove in our room, but we didn't use it. We had a beautiful encrusted parquet floor. Mother cooked on the primus stove. There was running water, sewerage and even an intercom in the apartment. Pipes served as the intercom. They connected the entrance door with each apartment, and visitors could announce their arrival and the hosts would open the door for them. We also had an elevator in the building.
Our parents spoke Russian with the children and switched to Yiddish when they wanted to keep the subject to themselves. I didn't learn to speak Yiddish - nobody taught me. My mother could write in Yiddish.
I don't remember the famine of 1932-33 [the infamous famine in Ukraine] [7]. My father was working in Belorussia at that time. There was no famine there. He came to Kiev once a month bringing some food. Besides, he was earning very well and my mother could afford to buy food at the highest price. So our family didn't starve.