My paternal grandfather was a handsome man with a long beard. He knew Jewish history, Yiddish and Hebrew very well, therefore people in the synagogue held him in high respect. He used to read much; he had got a lot of Jewish books, including different prayer books. I still keep some of them at home. Children used to come to our place to study Hebrew, including me and 4 my cousins. It was not a school, he taught children for his delectation (nothing else). We studied Hebrew (it was linear learning), and I remember some words till now.
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Major events (political and historical)
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Displaying 39301 - 39330 of 50826 results
Berta Mazo
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They used to follow the plough and earned their leaving by agriculture (I think so, because in fact they had got no profession). I remember that they had got a large garden. In that garden there were different trees, including apple-trees. They kept a cow.
I am in touch with members of the Jewish community. While I was able, I often visited Hesed Avraham Welfare Center [6]: studied Yiddish, attended interesting concerts, took part in different excursions.
Neither me nor my husband (he was always held in great respect by his coworkers) ever came across any manifestations of anti-Semitism.
Neither me nor my husband (he was always held in great respect by his coworkers) ever came across any manifestations of anti-Semitism.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
Political situation did not have great influence upon us. Everything was quiet and stable at our working places. We kept an eye on political events, but never discussed them at home.
And my younger daughter Lubov entered the Radio Engineering Technical School №1. Later Lubov became a musician: she graduated from the Conservatory. Her husband Yakov Gull is a research worker in the sphere of biology.
After school my elder daughter Mara entered the College of Intercommunications named after Bonch-Bruevich. There she got acquainted with her future husband. Later they worked together at a plant.
After school my elder daughter Mara entered the College of Intercommunications named after Bonch-Bruevich.
We always tried to bring our children up in the spirit of culture, to make them useful for our society. We often visited concerts at the philharmonic society, different museums and observed all holidays with great pleasure (including Jewish ones: we even made matzot ourselves).
I was in Israel only once (in 1996): when I accomplished 80 years, I was invited by my friend Serafima Epstein. Unfortunately she is not alive now; she was 10 years older than me.
,
1996
See text in interview
Distant relatives of my father live in Israel. Maria, a doctor works near Haifa [a city in Israel].
We all lived in one room: not large, with 2 big beautiful windows. Our neighbors Elena Mironovna Chashnik and her parents lived in the same house, but later they moved to Petrogradskaya side [a district of St. Petersburg].
We returned to Leningrad and at first I did not work, but later I started working and at last came to PROMTRANSPROEKT and worked there until my retirement on pension.
So among my relatives only aunt Rachel was killed because of her nationality. Among my husband’s relatives we lost his parents and his sister (her name was Rachel, too). They lived in a small town Shpikov [in Ukraine]. In the beginning of the war they were ready to leave, but Germans got them off the train. It happened probably in 1942. We got to know about it only in Sverdlovsk: we received a letter. I read it and hid: I was afraid to show it to my husband. Later he found it by chance and cursed me out for my silence. Several years later we (together with my children) visited cemetery in Shpikov: there we found common graves and a monument. In Shpikov my husband’s cousin lived with her family and we often visited her in summer before the war burst out.
Later (at last) we got a good apartment in a good house of Sverdlovsk (on the 3rd floor). There were 2 large rooms, balconies, central heating, and a bathroom. Things got better. There we had a neighbor who kept goats. Goats spent day time in the shed near our house, but every evening our neighbor dragged them into our bathroom, because she was afraid they could be stolen. One night one of her goats chewed up our linen put out to dry. We also got a small garden-plot, but we managed to grow nothing there, there were only mosquitoes. Later we received another one and cultivated potatoes, carrots, onions - a lot of vegetables.
Our room was about 16 square meters large and we lived there five together. We had a round stove for heating. The room next door was occupied by a woman with a daughter: very pleasant people, not Jews. We made friends with them. On a lower floor there was situated a military school. Every morning its cadets sang a song ‘My dear Belarus, my beloved Ukraine!’ My Mara learned it by heart and sang it, too.
Later I became a school teacher. I taught drawing. At the school lunchroom I used to take meals (they had very good products: different sausages, second courses, etc.). I brought meals home and we ate it. At that school I worked till spring of 1942, but then we had to leave for Sverdlovsk.
Then I went to the Communist Party Committee and explained that I had to take care of my sister and a little daughter and described awful conditions we lived under. Then they allowed us to move there. Owners of our new apartment had got little children, so my sister cheered up. There I managed to unswaddle my daughter for the first time, and she began to stir her arms and legs (before that she was swaddled all the time). Soon she started walking. So in the new apartment it was much better for us. On our way to Perm we got acquainted with Emma, a woman also going to Perm with her little daughter. Emma was a doctor. In Perm she began working and helped us very much: she wrote prescriptions for infant food. At the special canteen I received milk, porridge, kissels, etc. It was enough to feed both my daughter and my sister.
Our room turned to be very cold: the stove did not function and the window was broken. That winter there was terrible frost. My daughter was a baby and I had to wash her linen in cold water. The only plus was that the linen was frozen and my baby got it extremely clean. It was no good to live in that room, therefore I started searching for something else. It appeared to be not easy task: all places were occupied already. At last I found an apartment very close to the center and rather warm, but again it was told to be occupied.
We went from Tosno in a heated goods van. [A heated goods van was a freight car adapted for transportation of people.] There were two-tiered plank beds in the van. Emotional shock resulted in disappearance of my breast milk, therefore it was necessary to take it from special canteens on our way, warm it and give to my daughter. We arrived in Perm. Initially we had to go to Chelyabinsk with my factory coworkers, but we went to Perm, because our neighbor and her family had moved there earlier and wrote us that it was very good to live there. At first we could not find her there, but then I met her near the railway station by chance. She took us to her place for a while. Not to lose touch with my husband, we decided that he would write us to Perm (to be called for). And you probably know that Mariinsky theatre was also evacuated from Leningrad to Perm. By the way, many years later I got to Perm on business trip and found it to be changed much.
Soon after arrival I found a small room for rent and we moved there. It was situated very far from the center. Therefore it was necessary to walk long to reach the canteen and get milk for my daughter.
Soon after arrival I found a small room for rent and we moved there. It was situated very far from the center. Therefore it was necessary to walk long to reach the canteen and get milk for my daughter.
At that time Daddy worked in Tosno, and my husband worked in Kolpino. War burst out when my elder daughter was about 5 months old. We left almost everything and managed to escape before Germans occupied Tosno. We went to evacuation with my sister (she was 13 at that time), my baby daughter and my Daddy.
In summer of 1941 we rented dacha near Tosno [a suburb of St. Petersburg].
I worked at the PROMTRANSPROEKT institution [a designing organization for transport industry].
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
We got married after graduation from the College, in 1939.
Vera Sonina
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I was born in 1918 in Zaporozhye. We lived there only 4 years, but I remember myself from two-year-old age, therefore I can tell you something about the Zaporozhye period of our life. We lived very poorly. My father worked at a grain-collecting station. [Grain-collecting station was an office, where merchants brought grain bought from peasants.] Mum never worked.
I was born in 1918, i.e. a year after the Revolution [1]. Therefore I remember nothing except poverty. I do not remember if we lived in a house or in an apartment, but I know for sure that we lived in the main and luxurious street named Sobornaya. I can tell nothing about the Jewish community of Zaporozhye and about that of Smolensk (where we moved soon), too.
I remember from our life in Zaporozhye that there were Jewish pogroms [2]. Once Daddy told us very seriously ‘Children, silence! I forbid you either to cry or to shout or laugh.’ Parents threw all our pillows and feather-beds to the distant room, and placed there younger children (me and Annette). Shura and Slava (our elder sisters) went to the basement. You see, when they pushed me to the feather-bed I was suddenly taken with a fit of laughter, and Daddy allowed me to laugh, but only very quietly. I remember nothing about this pogrom, except my unrestrained laughter. It is so good to be little! I remember one more about Zaporozhye. My sister Zhenya disappeared suddenly. Everyone was nervous, we were running, shouting. Our neighbors shouted to each other ‘Which of them is missing?’ - ‘Zhenya, of course, who else could it be!’ She was a well-known hooligan. And in the meantime I was creeping round the yard. There was a huge stack of fire wood there. It seemed to me similar to a city with streets, lanes, and squares. And there I saw Zhenya sleeping in one of those streets. That scene is still before my eyes, and I do not know the reason: probably, anxiety of adults impressed me.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
When I was about 4 years old, my father got seriously ill. Later (when I was already adult) Mum whispered in my ear that Daddy could not accept Revolution and had fallen ill out of grief. I do not know whether it was true, but indeed father could not go on working. And he was the only earner in our family.
This Aunt lived in Smolensk. Parents decided to move there to be close to our relative. In Smolensk my Aunt had a large apartment. A large pantry was adjacent to it. That was the place where we took up our residence. Can you imagine that you place your sister and her dying husband with their six children in such conditions? This is beyond my mind! I think Mum understood at once that she would get no help, but there was no other place to go. In our hovel we together with my younger sister occupied an upper bunk bed. I often woke up shivering with cold and found out that Annette had fallen down together with our blanket. Usually she did not wake up and continued to sleep on the floor!