In April 1944 Rot’s factory where I worked was closed. All the Jews of Mukachevo were taken to the ghetto. We didn’t have to move since our street formed the center of the two ghettos organized in Mukachevo because there were so many Jews. My older sister Margarita and her son, who was nine years old, happened to be in the other ghetto. We couldn’t communicate since both ghettos were fenced and there was patrol watching the fence. My mother, my younger brother Shmil and I stayed in our house. We didn’t know that our three brothers had perished. My sister Szerena was in Moscow and my brother Fishl was in England. I don’t remember how long we stayed in the ghetto – probably a few weeks. We weren’t allowed to leave the ghetto, but there were no other restrictions. We starved. We had no food in the ghetto. Occasionally villagers who knew our family brought us some food.
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Displaying 18571 - 18600 of 50826 results
Tilda Galpert
After some time we heard rumors that we were going to be taken to a concentration camp. Then we were told to prepare some food and clothes to take with us. Then all inmates were ordered to come to the territory of the brick factory. We spent I don’t know how many days in the open air on the factory territory. From there we were taken to the railway station and went to Auschwitz by train. We traveled in an overcrowded train for about a week. We didn’t get any food on the way. This happened in April 1944. When we came to the concentration camp we didn’t know what kind of place it was. Later I got to know that this was Auschwitz.
I wasn’t even in the same carriage with my brother. I wanted to go with my friend Frida and my brother wanted to be with his friends. In Auschwitz my mother and I got separated. The guard shouted that older and younger people should stand in separate lines. They said that they were going to take the older ones on a truck. I hugged my mother and said, ‘I’ll see you soon!’. We were not meant to see each other ever again. My mother perished in the gas chamber in Auschwitz on the day of our arrival.
I wasn’t even in the same carriage with my brother. I wanted to go with my friend Frida and my brother wanted to be with his friends. In Auschwitz my mother and I got separated. The guard shouted that older and younger people should stand in separate lines. They said that they were going to take the older ones on a truck. I hugged my mother and said, ‘I’ll see you soon!’. We were not meant to see each other ever again. My mother perished in the gas chamber in Auschwitz on the day of our arrival.
I saw my brother in the concentration camp when we were going to the washing facility. The boys were standing in a separate group and he was shouting something to me. I replied that we would talk later. I though that our family would get together – we didn’t know what kind of place this was. We didn’t know it was a death camp. We thought it was a labor camp. This was the last time I saw my brother. My younger brother Shmil died from diarrhea caused by hunger. My cousin Zvi Akerman, Uncle Izidor’s son, held him when he was dying. Zvi told me about it later. My sister Margarita also perished. She was young and strong and could have survived. The Germans didn’t exterminate those that could work, but she was there with her son, and the children were sent to the gas chamber immediately. She probably didn’t want to leave her son behind – of course she didn’t, she was his mother and she went there with him.
,
1944
See text in interview
We stayed in Auschwitz for three months, three months of hard exhausting work and hunger. This was a very hard period. I told this story in my interview to the Spielberg Foundation [Survivors of the Shoah Foundation]. I can’t bring back these memories again. Later my friend and I were taken to a labor camp in Reichenbach [600 km from Auschwitz, Germany]. After 1945 this town belonged to eastern Germany. Life was relatively better there. We put together radio parts. It wasn’t very hard work, but we were starved and exhausted.
On 8th May 1945 we saw that the guards of the camp were gone. Soviet tanks moved along the streets of the town and we got to know that the war was over. It’s hard to find words to describe how happy we were. We didn’t get any information in all those years. We were released on that day.
My friend Frida and I set out on our way home. We went to the concentration camp together, were together in the camp, worked together, shared a bed and we were also on our way to Mukachevo together. We stayed in an abandoned apartment in Reichenbach for two weeks. Frida and I were waiting for some opportunity to go home when Red Cross representatives came looking for Czech citizens. We believed we were Czech citizens since Hungary had occupied Subcarpathia temporarily. We spoke Czech and thought this was sufficient proof that we came from Czechoslovakia. We were taken to the town of Trutnov in Czechoslovakia, the first town near the border. From there we were sent to Moravska Ostrava and then to Bratislava. From Bratislava we went home via Budapest. We didn’t have to pay anywhere: we just said that we were going home from a concentration camp and were given way. In Budapest we went to a synagogue. We stayed in a big building that must have been a yeshivah. Doctors examined us. We received three meals a day and didn’t have to do any work. We stayed there for a few days and then moved on. There was a group of young people that we went with.
When we arrived in Mukachevo we met Frida’s friend Voita. He had been in a forced labor battalion in Austria with Ari. They returned to Mukachevo together. When they returned to Mukachevo there were no Jews back from the concentration camps yet, and Ari volunteered to the Soviet army. He said he wanted a revenge for what the fascists had done. He went to the army in April 1945 not knowing that the war was going to be over soon. When the war was over he couldn’t be demobilized since he came of age for mandatory service in the army. Subcarpathia became a part of the USSR and Ari was subject to service in the army as a Soviet citizen. I waited for him for three years: one year in the camp and two years after the war. He was demobilized in March 1947.
I was eager to join the Communist Party. I believed it was my duty to do so. Since I didn’t quite understand what the Soviet power was about I believed in my ideals. I believed the Soviet propaganda stating that all people were equal in the USSR and that there was no oppression or national segregation that we had since 1938. The ideas of communism are very attractive actually, but what they called communism in the USSR had nothing to do with communism. Only I didn’t understand it then. An old friend of our family was the secretary of the district party committee. He came from Mukachevo. Old communist members from Mukachevo that knew Szerena and me gave me a recommendation to the Party. I became a party member within a day. My sister made arrangements for me to attend a three-month party training course to at least learn Ukrainian. It wasn’t a problem for me. After finishing this course I went to work.
At first I worked at the regional food department: I was responsible for the distribution of food products to stores. I had to go on business trips across the region, but there was no transportation. I didn’t like this job. Braun, a Jewish man, was head of the town trade department. He offered me a job and I went to work at the public meals sector in the town trade department. I worked there until 1948.
In March 1947 Ari demobilized from the army. He came to meet me in Uzhhorod. Ari and I lived in Szerena’s apartment. In late April Ari began to work as mechanic at a waste salvage shop called Utilptom. On 30th April he and I went for a walk to watch how they decorated the town for 1st May. We were walking when it suddenly occurred to us to go register our marriage at the registry office. We had our passports with us and the director of the office registered our marriage. We received our certificate, had our photograph taken by a street photographer and each went to our offices to celebrate 1st May. Ari was back home before I returned from the party. He told my sister that we were married. That was it.
Ari went to study in an evening school. He joined the Party at work. After finishing school he entered the Machine Building Faculty of Odessa Machine Building College. He was an extramural student. Later the shop where he worked became the Bolshevik Plant. There were 800 employees there and it was a big plant for Uzhhorod standards. Ari was the deputy technical director before he retired.
He and I always identified ourselves as Jews. We didn’t observe any Jewish traditions. We always wrote in application forms that our mother tongue was Yiddish. We also wrote that I was in a concentration camp during the war and Ari in a forced labor battalion. Other Soviet citizens tried to keep quiet about such facts in their biography.
In 1948 I attended a nine-month party training course. Then I went to work at the regional executive committee [Ispolkom] [14]. I worked there in the food department from 1949 to 1985. There were good times and bad times.
In 1948 the struggle against ‘cosmopolitans’ [15] began. I read a lot about it in the newspapers, but I never faced any negative attitude directed towards me.
I remember January 1953, the time of the Doctors’ Plot [16], a horrible time. Some people were forced to speak against doctors, saying they were poisoners. A friend of our family, the communist Rotman, a Jew, was forced to make a speech. He refused and was fired immediately. As for me, nobody forced me to say anything. I was kind of born with a silver spoon in my mouth.
How hard was Stalin’s death for us! How I cried! My God, it was hard! All people cried. Then after Nikita Khrushchev [17] spoke at the Twentieth Party Congress [18] we heard what Stalin had done. Only when Khrushchev told us what Stalin had done did we see things clearly. We believed everything without second thought. We did see what was happening. We knew everything, but we didn’t want to believe that it was true. We didn’t want to give it a thought. We were like ostriches hiding their heads in the sand.
When in 1956 the Soviet troops came to Hungary we believed the Soviet propaganda telling us that the Germans wanted to invade Hungary and that it was necessary to rescue the Hungarians. [The interviewee is referring to the 1956 Revolution in Hungary.] [19] However, when the Soviet troops came to Czechoslovakia in 1968 [to put down the so-called Prague Spring] [20] we were indignant. We sympathized with the Czechs. We were upset when the Soviet troops destroyed democracy in Czechoslovakia. But what could we do? Some people in Moscow openly demonstrated their disagreement with the party policy in Czechoslovakia. We were no heroes here. We expressed our indignation in whispers sitting in the kitchen with our family. We were afraid of being arrested. Anyone that dared to disagree with the party policy had to be punished and we knew this but too well.
We hired a nanny for our children. Her name was Palania. She was an old Christian woman and very religious. She always reproached us, ‘Why are you not teaching your children to have faith in God? I would baptize Pyotr.’ We laughed at hearing this. Frankly speaking, we weren’t religious people. We didn’t go to the synagogue, not even on Jewish holidays. The Soviet power struggled against religion. My husband and I held official posts in governmental offices and were party members. We couldn’t afford to demonstrate any sign of religiosity. Besides, during the war, when we saw that Jews were exterminated only due to the fact that they were Jews, our faith in God who allowed this to happen was shattered.
We raised our sons like common Soviet children. They were Young Octobrists [21], pioneers and Komsomol [22] members. They studied in a Russian school.
We spoke Hungarian at home, but they have very poor Hungarian. However, they can speak it when necessary. They also studied English. Our family doesn’t actually use Yiddish. Not at all!
Our children knew about Jewish traditions. We always remembered about Jewish holidays. We didn’t celebrate them, though. We told our children about these holidays. We showed them what games we played when we were children. I also cooked traditional Jewish food. I often made gefilte fish – this was their favorite food. On Saturday I made chicken broth. I also used to make cholent, they still like it. So, we tried to teach our children. My children knew very well what Rosh Hashanah was and that one had to fast before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and that God would forgive all sins. Although we didn’t actually fast. We told our children how the seder at Pesach is conducted. We knew this all since we grew up in this religious environment. When they grew older I made a Rosh Hashanah meal for them: tsimes and fish and all traditional food. My conscience is clear: I taught my sons what they had to know about Jewish traditions. And they will live their life to their liking… I’m not saying that we inspired them to religious thoughts, but we tried to teach them traditions. Most important is that they like it all.
After finishing school Pyotr went to Leningrad to enter a college. Anti-Semitism was at its height and I didn’t want it to have an impact on my son. Anti-Semitism in Russia wasn’t as strong as in Ukraine. Pyotr finished school with a silver medal and was a winner of school Olympiads many times. He entered the Faculty of Physics and Engineering of Optic Mechanic College in Leningrad. He was very fond of reading books by Jewish writers. We collected works by Sholem Aleichem [23] that he enjoyed reading very much. Pyotr is very knowledgeable. Upon graduation he received a mandatory job assignment [24] to the instrument manufacture plant in Uzhhorod. In the late 1980s the plant was closed. Our son went to work with an Internet company.
Our younger son, Yuri, finished the Electrotechnical Faculty of Lvov Polytechnic College. He worked at the instrument manufacturing plant for some time. Now he works at Hesed.
In the evening after work we liked to get together with the family to share the news of the day. At weekends we went for long walks. Our sons joined us willingly. In summer we spent our vacation together. We went to the seashore or rented a house in a village in Subcarpathia. We liked walking in the woods or swimming in a river. Sometimes our friends joined us. In the early 1970s my husband got an opportunity to rent a plot of land. We built a small hut and it became our favorite pastime to stay there. We planted fruit trees, berries and many flowers. We enjoyed working in our garden, but now we are too old and our son Yuri does it.
When Jews began to move to Israel in the 1980s we didn’t quite want to move there. We weren’t young any longer and we didn’t know the language. It’s hard to start a new life or make new friends at this age. We didn’t condemn those that decided otherwise – it’s their life. If our sons decided to go there we would have followed them, but they weren’t enthusiastic about this idea. So we stayed here.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
We were enthusiastic about perestroika [24] and it couldn’t have been otherwise.
. My husband and I held official positions and were party members and we might have been punished for corresponding with citizens of capitalist countries. We both left the Party in 1991. At best we would have been expelled from the Party and fired from work. We could only meet our relatives in Hungary since Soviet citizens were allowed to visit Hungary without much bureaucracy.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
A year later we visited Israel for the first time. The whole family got together and we said our first toast to Gorbachev [25] for getting this opportunity. It was incredible. It was a miracle that we could travel to Israel from the Soviet Union. We’ve been in Israel four times. It’s a wonderful country. Its residents made this country and are proud of their home country: both younger and older people. Young Jews there are patriots. They are proud to fulfill their military duty rather than trying to avoid it like here. Ancient and modern history is harmonically entwined in Israel. People cherish their history. It’s a pity there’s no peace on this beautiful land. God tests Jews sending trying circumstances of life like He did during World War II. I wish the people of Israel peace and prosperity.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
A year later we visited Israel for the first time. The whole family got together and we said our first toast to Gorbachev [25] for getting this opportunity. It was incredible. It was a miracle that we could travel to Israel from the Soviet Union. We’ve been in Israel four times. It’s a wonderful country. Its residents made this country and are proud of their home country: both younger and older people. Young Jews there are patriots. They are proud to fulfill their military duty rather than trying to avoid it like here. Ancient and modern history is harmonically entwined in Israel. People cherish their history. It’s a pity there’s no peace on this beautiful land. God tests Jews sending trying circumstances of life like He did during World War II. I wish the people of Israel peace and prosperity.
Perestroika brought many changes into Jewish life in Uzhhorod. Jews began to get together. They are glad to attend Jewish events. The synagogue was half-empty before perestroika.