In the 1920s one by one they moved to Leningrad [today St. Petersburg]. The big city with its opportunities attracted them and they wanted to provide their children with a good education. At the end of the 1920s after the NEP [1] was abolished, the local authorities imposed exorbitant taxes on traders and craftsmen and threatened them with repressions in case of non-payment.
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Displaying 17881 - 17910 of 50826 results
Mikhail Plotkin
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Abram Plotkin, my father, came from Parichi settlement near Bobruisk [today Belarus]. There was a village nearby, all inhabitants of which were Plotkins. Some families of our relatives lived in this village. Father was educated in his own way, though he never got any certificates. He served as a manager for local landlords and worked at several places.
My elder brother – I don’t remember his name – was notable for his intractable temper. He studied at cheder and constantly clashed with the teacher. The latter began picking on him. One day my brother hid a stone in his bosom and brought it to cheder and dropped it on the teacher’s foot. The teacher became furious and beat him mercilessly. After that my brother was ill for a long time and died soon after. Back then teachers had the right to use forms of corporal punishment, but not cruel ones. Such cases were left without any investigation in a small borough, as the inhabitants were afraid to make complaints to the authorities.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
In 1916, during World War I, he was summoned to Orsha for the Army draft. He left for Orsha with open tuberculosis. The medical commission found him fit for army service, though his consumption was in its final stage. Mother brought him home. He could barely walk, came home, lay on the bed and died. I was six months old, when he died.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
In 1919 I fell seriously ill, I ate too many sour cherries and poisoned myself with cherry stones. It happened to me often: as soon as sour cherries ripened, I climbed onto the tree and ate far too many of them. But this time I was near death. Mother was running around like crazy, she didn’t know what to do. She ran to the synagogue to see the rabbi. The rabbi told her, ‘He should be given another name at the synagogue.’ According to the rabbi’s advice I was named Itzhak, in honor of a Hassidic tzaddik. My new name was solemnly proclaimed at the synagogue. After that literally on the second day I recovered: either the name helped or it was over by itself. Three days later I was as good as new. But no one called me Itzhak. As a child I was called Meishke. My name according to my passport is Moisey Abramovich.
One of the most striking impressions from my childhood was connected with Polish anti-Semitism during the Civil War [2]. When in 1920 the Soviet-Polish War [3] broke out, the Polish troops at first quickly moved across the territory of Belarus. Mother sent me to the village and arranged for me to stay with an old Jewish acquaintance. She thought it would be quieter there, but the Polish soldiers entered the village. I hid on the stove [4]. A Polish officer in beautiful uniform and konfederatka [black or colored square Polish hat] tore out a tuft of hair from a man’s beard, brought his fist to the man’s nose and said, ‘Well, kike! As many zlotys as you have hairs! Or I’ll knife you.’ Ever since then I distrusted Poles, though Stas Fialkovsky, a Pole, was my best friend since my student years.
Only Jews lived in Chashniki. It was a pure Jewish borough, Belarusians lived in villages around. Everybody spoke Yiddish in the borough. Even Belarusians, who came to the marketplace, spoke Yiddish. We had a very solid national system there. No bilingualism. Jewish mono-lingualism. Mother spoke only Yiddish to me.
The small borough looked ordinary, like all boroughs, and looked more like a village than a town. Dirty streets, it was impossible to walk along them in spring and fall, no boots lasted long enough. It was better to go outside in winter, when the ground was covered with snow; or in summer when the soil dried out and dust stood rooted to the ground.
The small borough looked ordinary, like all boroughs, and looked more like a village than a town. Dirty streets, it was impossible to walk along them in spring and fall, no boots lasted long enough. It was better to go outside in winter, when the ground was covered with snow; or in summer when the soil dried out and dust stood rooted to the ground.
My mother inherited three houses from Father, who died in 1916. The biggest house served as an inn. Peasants from villages arrived with horse carts to the fairs and on market days. They entered the yard, left their horses there and went to trade. During the day, at lunchtime they came in for tea. Mother put on a huge samovar for them, first one and then another. Dozens of men and women sat at the table and drank tea with baranki [type of bagels]. Those who were wealthier bought home-brew from my mother. The marketplace was in the middle of the settlement. Food was there in abundance, one can only dream of it nowadays. All Jews had vegetable gardens. They had enough potatoes and beetroot. If someone bought something, it was usually meat, though Jews had their own goats, ducks and chickens. For every winter Mother fed 15-20 geese and a couple of dozens of hens, which grazed at the backyard. No one counted them. Two or three barrels of pickled cucumbers and sauerkraut were procured for the winter as well. We were able to live without buying food at the market.
All borough boys were busy with games. Every summer battles started, street against street. We all prepared clay ‘shells,’ ran and threw them at each other on command. After that we ran to bathe in the river. Timber was procured upstream and floated down the Ulla. We got onto these rafts and dived into the water. The current was very strong. Once I was drawn under a log by the stream. There was no air to breathe. I choked and lost consciousness. Fortunately, a man passing by noticed me and dragged me out with his boat-hook. In winter we went ice-skating. When Mother gave me real skates, I became so keen on it that I stopped going to school: in the morning I just went to the ice-rink instead of going to school. I had to repeat a year, the third grade. Mother refused to buy me a bicycle as a punishment. I asked her very much, but she was inexorable. It was the most ‘acute pain’ of my childhood and I still remember it.
I played in his family orchestra. There were eight musicians: two sons and a daughter of his, a local blacksmith, a drummer and a trumpeter. He played very well and loved music. We played at weddings and formal events. We marched at the head of the column during holiday demonstrations, playing the ‘Budenny March’ or ‘Slavianka’s Farewell’ [Russian military marches]. We played freilakhs and other Jewish melodies at weddings. When theater performances took place at the House of Culture, we played any music, which came to our minds, in the foyer.
I went to cheder when I was five, in 1920. We studied the Torah there. I studied the Hummash for two years. We didn’t come to studying the Talmud. All studies at cheder were in Yiddish. We learnt prayers in Hebrew by heart, without understanding the meaning of the words. I didn’t have time to learn Hebrew. We weren’t taught to read and write in Russian. I revolted in 1922 and flatly refused to go to cheder, as it ‘was not in fashion anymore.’ All my friends quit. ‘Mother, I will not go to cheder anymore.’ ‘What?’ She began to beat me, but I remained inexorable. The melamed, the cheder teacher, came and complained about me, ‘Your son doesn’t visit me anymore.’ She told him, ‘What can I do? The time is gone, not only he quit.
In 1922 I went to school. The school was considered a good one. The building and the basic team of teachers remained from the pre-revolutionary times [5]. All the studies were in Russian.
At the end of the NEP in 1928-1929 all my relatives were out. Some were evicted, some were bereaved of their property. Their property was taken away like this: all of a sudden the financial inspector, the tax service inspector, sent a subpoena ordering to come for tax charging. And the amount of tax exceeded the cost of the house, all household and income ten years in advance. Even if one had sold oneself to slavery, it still wouldn’t have been possible to pay the tax. So people left everything and fled, in order to avoid prison because of failure to pay.
Mother was dispossessed at the beginning of 1929. The financial inspector sent her a paper, which said that she had to pay a tax amounting to 5,700,000 rubles. It wasn’t possible to earn such an amount of money in a lifetime. The paper was just written at random. If one didn’t pay the tax, one was prosecuted. So smart people left their houses and escaped. Those who didn’t manage to escape, were prosecuted, exiled to Solovki or Kazakhstan [6]. Mother was warned by friends that in the evening she would be taken away and arrested. My mother was a very smart woman. As soon as she heard it, she didn’t wait for any miracle to happen, she fled. She got onto a passing cart and went to the railroad station. She went to the neighboring station, not the closest one, in order not to be tracked down. She took a train from there to Leningrad where our relatives, who had left before, lived. Mother couldn’t take me with her. If we had been caught, we would have both been exiled.
Mother was dispossessed at the beginning of 1929. The financial inspector sent her a paper, which said that she had to pay a tax amounting to 5,700,000 rubles. It wasn’t possible to earn such an amount of money in a lifetime. The paper was just written at random. If one didn’t pay the tax, one was prosecuted. So smart people left their houses and escaped. Those who didn’t manage to escape, were prosecuted, exiled to Solovki or Kazakhstan [6]. Mother was warned by friends that in the evening she would be taken away and arrested. My mother was a very smart woman. As soon as she heard it, she didn’t wait for any miracle to happen, she fled. She got onto a passing cart and went to the railroad station. She went to the neighboring station, not the closest one, in order not to be tracked down. She took a train from there to Leningrad where our relatives, who had left before, lived. Mother couldn’t take me with her. If we had been caught, we would have both been exiled.
I was left alone with three houses. And above all, I had stocks of jam for five years maybe. I also had a dog as ‘dowry.’ It happened in February or March 1929, two or three months after my birthday. I was 13 years old. That’s why I had no bar mitzvah. I was left all alone and there were no relatives around; no one to take care of me.
Mother couldn’t take me in right away. After my mother arrived in Leningrad she lived incognito with one of her sisters on Grazhdansky Prospekt. Then her sisters found her a Jewish fiancé. They got her acquainted with a representative of the working class with the help of some well-wishers. Iosif Borisovich Barvish worked as a glue-maker at a factory manufacturing musical instruments. He came from Kazan [today the capital of Tatarstan region, Russia], arrived in Petrograd [today St. Petersburg] at the beginning of the Revolution. His wife died and he had four grown-up sons. He was an unsophisticated man, a nice one, hard-working, without interest in lofty matters and politics. After his wife had died it became difficult for him to cope with his sons. They were serious grown up people but none could cook and keep the house. Three days after Mother was introduced to this man they decided to get married. She was satisfied with his social origin; she would become the wife of a worker and wash off her past sins as a dispossessed person. He thought it convenient that he would have a wife who would feed him and his sons.
Since 1929 Sonya lived with our mother. She finished school and graduated from the Timber-Processing Academy in Leningrad. All her life she worked as an economist in the field of wood processing at the A. V. Lunacharsky musical instruments factory. She was considered a good expert. Her work was very hard; she was the head of the Labor and Salary Department of the whole factory.
Barvish’s elder son, Chaim, took the Party courses. He was a member of the [Communist] Party, a very ideological and committed person. He worked as a secretary of the Party organization at the ‘Bolshevik’ [9] plant shop. In 1933 Chaim was summoned to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party and was present at Stalin’s reception. He was appointed Manager of the MTS – machine-and-tractor station on the Kuban [river]. He had a hard time there. We began to get information that it was restless there. He married a Cossack [10] woman. It cost him a lot. His wife’s relatives began to dislike Chaim because of his Jewish nationality. The Cossack woman herself never came to see us. We were informed before the war that he was killed by the Cossacks.
The second son, David, worked at the SOMP [State Optical-and-Mechanical Plant] as the head of the Planning Department. He had a good salary and he had a nice wife. Lusia was a very nice and sociable woman, she managed a perfumery store, she also sang well. They had a son, Vladimir. He became a very good design engineer and participated in designing submarines. When the war broke out [11], the SOMP, a modern plant, producing strategically important goods, was promptly evacuated to Kazan. David left for Kazan with the plant. He left Lusia and started a new family. After the war he stayed in Kazan and died there.
The third son, Mikhail [Matos], was the manager of a restaurant on Nevsky Prospekt. He couldn’t trade or steal. He always ended up losing. His only merit in the face of the Soviet Power was that he had served in the cavalry as a young man and was a brave Red cavalryman and joined the Bolshevik Party. That is why the authorities entrusted a restaurant to him. My mother proposed her niece Lyuba to him as a wife. They got married and lived in harmony. Right before the war the restaurant went broke under his management. Either some criminals robbed it, or the employees embezzled it. Matos returned to the army, served all the way up to the rank of a captain and was in command of a battalion.
By 1929 I had finished only five grades: four grades of elementary school and one grade of high school. I had to continue my studies or find a job. There was unemployment at that time. Nobody waited for such a ‘responsible employee’ as me, nobody kept a place for me. In August I went to the labor registry office. It was located on Maxim Gorky Prospekt. I came there and told them that I was 14. They replied, ‘Grow up.’ I came back in two days and said, ‘I am 15.’ ‘Well, a 15-year-old is fine. We are taking on apprentices for the FWS [i. e. factory and works school] located in Malaya Okhta [industrial district north-east of Leningrad]. There is a cooperative of the reinforcement trust. They train metal workers, lathe operators. Do you want to go for this training?’ I said, ‘If you accept me, I will go.’ So they put me on the list. I went to the FWS with an assignment and became an apprentice.
When I came to the FWS with an assignment from the labor registry office, I found out that it wasn’t just a high school. Working personnel was being trained there for industry; they were dealing with sanitary engineering and taps. I was considered a worker and had to study at the FWS for three years in order to acquire the qualification of a metal worker and a lathe operator.
When I came to the FWS with an assignment from the labor registry office, I found out that it wasn’t just a high school. Working personnel was being trained there for industry; they were dealing with sanitary engineering and taps. I was considered a worker and had to study at the FWS for three years in order to acquire the qualification of a metal worker and a lathe operator.
Besides learning the future profession at the FWS we had lessons based on the high school program. The school was to provide us with education at the level of a seven-year school, i.e. education level of the 5th, 6th and 7th grades. We studied mathematics, technical drawing and other secondary school subjects. We also had one lesson of Russian per week. There were also political literacy lessons – about the October Revolution, about the Winter Palace being taken by storm, though in reality there was no storm, and so on and so forth. All studies were conducted rather primitively. In fact my knowledge remained at the level of the 5th grade from the school in Chashniki.
A lot of attention was devoted to public activity, the Komsomol [12], participation in various events. In summer we were taken to kolkhozes [13] to help the agricultural workers to weed the fields and harvest. There were also girls at school, no less than half of all students. There weren’t many Jews but there were some, especially in the Komsomol organization. There were no special relations between Jews there. I decided to join the Komsomol. My social origin was an appropriate one now; I came from a worker’s family. I became a Komsomol member and was accepted at the general meeting.
In 1932 I finished the FWS. I was assigned [14] to work as a turning-lathe operator at the Lepse foundry, where I did my practical work. My salary per month was 30 rubles. It was almost nothing, however, for those days it was enough to buy bread. It was as if I made my contribution to the family budget and justified my existence.
The foreman was a born anti-Semite, though there were few Jews at the plant. He was envious: this ‘kike’ was able to master something that he himself wasn’t able to do. He began to watch me, looking under my hand, spying on my work. So I took a sick-leave at the polyclinic and didn’t come to work for three or four days. I warned everybody that I was sick and couldn’t come to work. He forgot about me. When I came to work again I made 500 joints without any rejects. The standard daily work was 25 to 30 parts per shift at most. My picture was placed on the Board of Honor with the inscription ‘udarnik’ [shock worker] Plotkin. I was 17 years old.
After that the anti-Semitic foreman conceived a dislike for me and began to torment me with night shifts. He put me on night shifts every other week. It was very hard for me. I couldn’t stand night work. I couldn’t stay conscious after one or two sleepless nights and fell asleep upright. I was afraid to fall asleep and fall into the machine. I complained to my mother, saying that I couldn’t go to work at the plant. I asked her to take me away from it, though I liked the lathe operator job.
After that the anti-Semitic foreman conceived a dislike for me and began to torment me with night shifts. He put me on night shifts every other week. It was very hard for me. I couldn’t stand night work. I couldn’t stay conscious after one or two sleepless nights and fell asleep upright. I was afraid to fall asleep and fall into the machine. I complained to my mother, saying that I couldn’t go to work at the plant. I asked her to take me away from it, though I liked the lathe operator job.
Mother found OBLONO [National Education regional department] courses, which trained teachers of polytechnic labor. Young workers were taken for these courses and trained to be teachers in six months. Graduates were assigned to work at schools as teachers of polytechnic labor, bench work and timbering. I left the foundry in 1934 and signed up for these courses.
In summer 1934, after finishing the OBLONO courses, I was assigned to work as a teacher of labor and drawing in Chagodoschensky district of Leningrad region. Now Chagodoscha is part of Novgorod region, but at that time Novgorod, Pskov, Petrozavodsk and Murmansk were part of the big Leningrad region. I was accepted as a teacher to a high school in the village of Pervomayskoye.
I had to find another job. I went to work as a lather operator at the plant named after the Second Five-year Plan, located on Ligovsky Prospekt. The plant manufactured paper-producing machines. It was a complicated and modern production for those times. I handled my job well and worked there until September 1935.
Working youth entered technical schools and institutes at that time. I also wanted to obtain real education. Mother went to LITMO [Leningrad Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics] and found out that there was a rabfak [15] there. The rabfak ensured high school education for young workers, who didn’t have a chance to finish school, but wanted to get higher education. Four years at rabfak were equal to nine grades of high school. I submitted an application to the rabfak and said that I had finished FWS. I was taken in to the 4th year right away.
There were no differences between Russians and Jews at that time. Only the social origin mattered: if one was a bourgeois, one wouldn’t be accepted anywhere, but if one was from a workers’ family, one would have clear passage everywhere. The selection was social, not based on intelligence or nationality.
I stayed in bed on 22nd June, when Molotov announced on the radio that Germany had attacked us and war had broken out.