Meanwhile my mother’s cousin Vera let us stay in her apartment. We celebrated the Victory Day of 8 May 1945 with them. We were happy and sad on this day. Many of my friends had lost their fathers and so did I.
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Major events (political and historical)
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Displaying 41461 - 41490 of 50826 results
Efim Kadanskiy
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My mother did some work at home for a shop and then she became a seamstress at shoe factory #1 where my father had worked. Rosa was an accountant. My mother worked at the factory until she retired. People remembered my father that had done so much for the factory when he was secretary of the party committee.
After finishing 7 classes in the Russian secondary school I entered Kiev shoemaking college in 1948. Anti-Semitism began after the war and I and other Jewish children faced it at school. I can’t think of any specific case of anti-Semitism, but they were abuses like “zhydy didn’t fight, they were in Tashkent”. When I heard it, I, that lost my father, beat that boy so hard that nobody ever abused me again. I was a strong guy and could stand for myself.
I faced anti-Semitism again in 1952 after I finished college and decided to enter the Institute of Light Industry. These were the years of the height of anti-Semitism: the doctors’ case 9 and struggle against cosmopolitism. Our family didn’t suffer from any demonstrations of anti-Semitism. but the general atmosphere was just terrible. It was very tense.
I finished the Shoemaking College and received my job assignment in Proskurov (Khmelnitskiy at present). I didn’t become a pioneer at school, but I became a Komsomol 10 member. It was a mere formality for me.
I remember how people reacted to Stalin’s death in 1953. Many of them cried, but many thought that his death was an escape for the people. I didn’t feel any sorrow or joy.
I went to the army from Proskurov. I served in Bolgrad, Odessa military regiment. I studied at the tank battalion there and was sent to military units. There were 30 of us with technical education of 800 military at the battalion. After 3 years of service we were released in the rank of junior lieutenant. Half of us were Ukrainians in the platoon and another half were Uzbeks. Once an Uzbek Orgashev said to me “You are a Jew”. His Russian was very poor, and he said this to abuse me expressly. I hit him on the head with a gas mask case. My commanders understood me and I didn’t have any problems with them. Tthere were four Jews in our platoon: Arkadiy Gutman, Lyonka Donskoy, Iosif Wasserman and I. We always supported each other and the others were afraid to abuse us because there were always for of us standing for each other.
I married my co-student Marina Cherniavskaya in 1952. She came from a plain Jewish non-religious family. Her father was a carpenter. Her father was at the front during the war and came back an invalid. Marina and her mother were in Kuibyshev in evacuation. We had a family wedding party. We had wedding rings, but we didn’t have enough money to buy a wedding dress. We lived with her parents at the beginning, but there was even less space and we moved in with my mother.
After my service was over I returned to Kiev. I couldn’t find a job, but I didn’t want to leave my mother and my wife. I stayed in Kiev. The mother of my friend helped me to get a job, because it was impossible for a Jew to get employed. Her acquaintance that was secretary of the district party committee helped me to get a job at shoe factory #6 where I worked 40 years. These were good years of my life. I worked in a nice and industrious team. Kats, director of the factory, was a Jew, and shop supervisors were Jews and there was no anti-Semitism at the factory. We were like a family.
However, I can remember an incident in the early 1970s. Somebody brought a lighter made in Israel: when you lit it magendovid and the lighter played the anthem of Israel. I showed it to a couple of people -- we had a Jewish collective at the factory. Many employees were Jews and we had a friendly atmosphere at work. On the other hand, we were a typical Soviet work collective. We read Soviet newspapers, celebrated Soviet holidays and took part in the socialist competition -- and then gave it back to the owner. In two or 3 months I got a subpoena to the KGB office. I didn’t have a hint what it might be about. I was paying monthly fees for a new apartment and I thought that they might want to check where I got the money. When I came to the office there were two investigation officers. Tthey began interrogation asking me whether I had relatives abroad and where my parents were. They directed the light in my eyes and asked questions in turn. ”Why are you involved in the Zionist propaganda?” I could see their point. “You showed a lighter playing the anthem of Israel. Where did you get it?” I told them that some Jews that had arrived from Israel showed it to my father-in-law at the synagogue -- in fact, none of us went to the synagogue, but I couldn’t say that I had friends among foreigners, especially from Israel, that was not on friendly terms with the USSR. I might have had problems and even be arrested -- and I borrowed it to show my colleagues at the factory. I had to sign the paper that I repented and would stop my Zionist activities. So it turned out that there were reporters in our work family.
Until recently I didn’t observe any Jewish traditions or celebrated holidays. My grandmother Zelda started this attitude to the Jewish way of life, after lost my grandfather. But I didn’t enter the party, either, although I was recommended to become a communist. One couldn’t get promotion if one wasn’t a communist at that time. I took total abandonment of the communist ideology from my grandmother. I say that if my father, the communist to the marrow of his bones raised from dead he would die again on hearing what I say about the Communist party.
We celebrate Jewish and Christian holidays. Luba can cook traditional Jewish food: stuffed fish, Jewish stew and matsa bakery. She is almost as good cook as my mother.
Esphir Kalantyrskaya
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He didn’t want to send us to school as he didn’t want to lose his workforce. He hired teachers to teach us at home. We actually received education equal to 4 years of primary school.
My father and Sofa didn’t go to the synagogue. Only Pesach of all Jewish holidays was celebrated at our home. My father just loved this holiday. He baked matsa by himself, cooked delicious food and the whole family sat at the table. We didn’t know the history of the holiday. My father didn’t conduct the sedder according to the Jewish tradition. It was just a fancy family dinner.
In 1932 I went to work at the knitting garments factory of NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs). My job was to wind the yarn onto huge bobbins.
That was the only time I saw my mother. When the Great Patriotic War began my mother stayed in Pochep. She didn’t want to evacuate. Her Russian neighbors gave her shelter for some time, but in 1942 somebody gave her up. Policemen took her to a ravine in the outskirts of the town and shot. All Jews of the town were shot there.
Our younger sister Fania graduated from Pedagogical Institute before the war and worked as a schoolteacher in Pochep. During the war she joined a partisan unit in the Brianskiye woods. In 1942 Fania was told about our mother’s death. She went to Pochep to find out whether it was true. In Pochep a policeman saw her. He was the man that had proposed to her earlier, but she refused. So, he grabbed his chance to take revenge. He gave Fania up to Germans. They captured and shot her in the same ravine where our mother had been shot.
My younger brother Iosif finished school and was recruited to the army. He was supposed to demobilize in 1941 when the war began. He didn’t demobilize but became a communications operator. He perished in 1943.
In summer 1933 I visited my mother in Pochep and in the autumn of this year famine 3 began in Ukraine. I remember dead bodies near the buildings and at the entrances in Kiev. I saw them in the morning. During the day they were removed from streets. I received a food package at the factory where I was working. Of course, I shared it with my father’s family.
I had many friends: Jews, Russians and Ukrainians. Nobody cared about nationality at that time. To be a good person was sufficient. My friends and I went to the cinema in Podol, to the beach and for walks. We always celebrated Soviet holidays: 1st of May, October Revolution Day, etc. We went to parades. Several times the factory trade union committee granted me a free trip to a recreation home. I rested at the Belaya Dacha recreation center in Irpen near Kiev. I felt very comfortable and equal to other young people staying there. I also rested in Kislovodsk, Caucasus, and went to the sea.
On the first day of war - 22 June 1941 4 Grisha’s call up notification was delivered to our apartment. At that time Grisha was at the military training near Kiev. I went there on foot to give him this call up. All employees of the military plant were exempt from service in the army. Grisha went to the military registry office and they released him from service. He went back to his plant to continue preparing equipment to the evacuation. At the beginning of July refugees from Western regions of Ukraine began to arrive in Kiev. They were living in the open air in the botanical garden. They were telling people about the Germans exterminating Jews on the occupied areas. We understood that we had to evacuate. At the end of August we, factory employees, went to dig up trenches near Kiev – Germans troops were coming nearer. One day I stayed at home because I was not feeling well. I didn’t want to go without Clara whose husband was in the army. Grisha obtained a permit for Clara and her child to go with plant. He came back and I told him that I didn’t want to go without Sopha, Polia and Manya. My brother got angry with me telling me that the plant couldn’t take all of us, but he went back to the plant to obtain another permission. He was only allowed to take Manya, the youngest. I remember myself crying when I was saying “good-bye” to Sopha and Polia. Sopha was saying that they would also go to the evacuation, but I knew they wouldn’t. She had no money for that. We went to the evacuation by train. We reached Dnepropetrovsk and it was decided to deploy the plant there. While they were unloading equipment, the Germans came very close to Dnepropetrovsk. We had left on the last train before the town was occupied. Our trip was long. We crossed the Volga on barges. Or point of destination was the town of Kuvandyk near Chkalovsk. The plant was commissioned there.
At first we were renting apartments, but later the plant constructed barracks for its employees. I went to work at the plant. Clara, her son Miron and our sister Manya were staying at home. Life was very hard. I received 400 grams of bread and Clara and her children received 200 grams each.
In autumn 1944 all of us but Grigory returned to Kiev. I was sure that he didn’t want to go back to Kiev, because he believed that Sopha and Polia had perished and that it was his fault. He failed to obtain permission for them to evacuate with the plant as members of his family.
We returned to Kiev and all our suspicions about their fate turned out to be correct. Our Ukrainian neighbors told us that all Jewish population of our neighborhood, including Sopha and Polia, went to the Babiy Yar on 29 September 1941. In few days the postman brought us “death notification” about Fima’s death. So, there was only Manya, my stepsister, left. I have always felt like a mother towards her and felt responsible for her life.
We returned to Kiev and all our suspicions about their fate turned out to be correct. Our Ukrainian neighbors told us that all Jewish population of our neighborhood, including Sopha and Polia, went to the Babiy Yar on 29 September 1941. In few days the postman brought us “death notification” about Fima’s death. So, there was only Manya, my stepsister, left. I have always felt like a mother towards her and felt responsible for her life.
When we returned to Kiev we found our apartments (ours and Clara’s) occupied. I turned to court. It took me 3 years to return our apartments. This issue could have been resolved sooner if we bribed an official at the executive committee. But we didn’t have any money. During the war everything that we had in our apartment vanished: furniture, clothing and my stepmother’s inexpensive jewelry. In 1946 Clara’s apartment was returned to her, and in 1947 Manya and I received one room of the two that we used to have.
I went to work at the Kiev meat factory. They paid good salary. I had a difficult task to bring up Manya. I realized that I wouldn’t cope alone. I had met Grigory Kalantyrskiy, a Jew, before the war. He was ten years older than me and was at the war from first to last day. He had a wife (Lisa) and a daughter (Sima) before the war. Lisa and Sima stayed in Kiev and shared the fate of thousands of Jews – perished in the Babiy Yar. Grigory proposed a marriage to me. I didn’t love him at all, I didn’t even like him, but I agreed. He was a butcher at the market, he earned a lot of money and he treated Manya and me well. I agreed for the sake of Manya who I loved with all my heart. She loved me, too, and sometimes she called me “Mummy”. In 1946 we registered our marriage. We didn’t have a wedding party.
There have been no more significant events in my life. We were “small” people and anti-Semitic campaigns in the early 1950s didn’t impact our life. Many Jews were fired from their jobs, there were articles published in newspapers against Jews. One could hear abuses addressed to Jews in the streets, transport or in stores, but we tried to ignore them. We didn’t live a happy life. I can’t remember celebrations or laughter in our house. My life consisted of work and routinely chores. My husband took to drinking and began to have rows. He had a stroke and died in 1984.
I remain an atheist and I don’t celebrate Jewish holidays, but my daughter buys matsa at Pesach.
My grandfather on my father’s side, Abram Persov lived in Pochep, a small town in Briansk region, Russia. This town consisted of two parts: the central Jewish part and the suburbs populated by Russians that were involved in farming. Jews were handicraftsmen, jewelers, tradesmen. There was a church and a synagogue in town. People were friendly and supported each other.
My grandfather was a very good jeweler. His jewelry was in big demand of the local merchants. Even representatives of the noble circles were his customers. My father’s mother Malka was a housewife and looked after the children. My grandfather had a big house. His shop was on the first floor. It was a small shop. He didn’t need much space. The rest of the house belonged to the family.
They were a wealthy family and could afford a housemaid and a cook. My grandfather’s family was rather religious. At least even in the late 1920s when I knew them my grandfather had a pew at the synagogue, prayed every day and observed religious holidays and traditions.