Here I’d like to tell you that I finished school in 1937, in the midst of Stalin mass repressions. You see, I know about it not by hearsay. We lived in the five-storey house, and doors of our arrested neighbors were sealed up one by one. I remember that I woke up one night and saw my parents standing at the window and looking out. Only now I understand that they watched cars passing by and guessed whether one of them was meant for them. Members of our family agreed that arrested people were guilty in nothing. But it happened somehow (and I give Mom the credit of it) that we (children) understood everything very well: it was one thing to talk to family members and another to talk in public.
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Displaying 34501 - 34530 of 50826 results
Anatoly Lifshits
Among my friends there were both Jews and gentiles. By the way, in our class more than 50% of pupils were Jewish. But the nationality of my friends was of no importance for me.
By the way, at that time history course presented facts as if world did not exist before 1905 [9]. Everything I know in history, I learned without any assistance (from books).
My first 7 years at school seemed to me a game: nothing was difficult for me. In the 7th grade, I realized that it was necessary to study seriously. Most of all I liked mathematics.
We had no governesses, but teachers regularly came to teach me and my sister foreign languages. I learned German letters before Russian ones. When I was a pupil of the 6th form, I started learning English and French. Later I had to stop studying French, it was too difficult. But when I read War and Peace by Tolstoy [8], I easily understood all text paragraphs written in French. I liked languages, they came easily to me. To tell the truth, later (when I started talking to Englishmen) I realized that I was able to communicate with books, not with people. I guess it was not my fault: they taught us that way.
Mom worked much about the house, but we always had domestic servants.
In summer we used to leave for vacation. Sometimes we went to the Black Sea, sometimes rented small houses in the neighboring villages.
We were not rich (we could not imagine richness), but we were not poor.
He found a job at glass-works. Soon he became a chief engineer at glass-works near Zhitomir (close to the border with Poland). Altogether he worked at 2 glass-works 6 or 7 years.
Father worked very well. His main task was to support technological process in glass-furnaces. He managed. We lived in Kiev and we visited him only in summer. Having worked there several years, father expected no lift in his career, because he had no special education.
Father worked very well. His main task was to support technological process in glass-furnaces. He managed. We lived in Kiev and we visited him only in summer. Having worked there several years, father expected no lift in his career, because he had no special education.
Soon NEP was abandoned, father’s office was closed, and (as I understand now) father realized that no good would come of commercial activities in the USSR.
Therefore in fact we lived in a communal apartment [6].
In Kazan we lived in the apartment on the 2nd floor of a house. There was a large yard full of trees. In the apartment there was a bathroom (it was very uncommon at that time).
She worked in Moscow; she was a well-known doctor, specialist in hematology.
My sister finished school in Kiev, and entered Medical College in Ufa, in evacuation (she graduated from it in Moscow). My sister was a very capable person.
So we led a steady provincial life.
I remember that we bought a horse because father had to go on business trips very often. The 2nd floor of the house was occupied by the family of doctor Chernyak.
On holidays our table was laden with rich food. We used to cook not less than 100 pelmeni [Russian dumplings] for one male member of the family. Family habits were more Russian, than Jewish. It could be seen in every moment of life, including meals.
But little by little our financial situation improved, there came a time of NEP [5]. We were not rich, but not poor.
Now I understand that we had not plenty to live. I think so because I remember my father cooking soap for sale at home.
My father worked in an office. They were engaged in production and sales of pottery.
In Vitebsk his sister lived together with her husband. Her husband had small business connected with textiles. So my father started working there as an accountant. He was not educated, but very capable and purposeful. He managed to pass through exams and got a school leaving certificate without attending lectures. Later he entered a Kiev College for specialists in commerce.
When I was a child, my parents taught me to be respectful to clergymen. Later I read The Tale of the Priest and of his Workman Balda [Balda in Russian means a stupid or not very serious person] by Pushkin [4]. [In that fairy tale the orthodox priest is shown to be greedy and silly.] I was surprised that Pushkin showed disrespect to a clergyman, an orthodox priest in this case. As far as rabbis are concerned, I did not see any during my childhood.
During Pesach we ate matzot, but also ate Easter cakes and paskha with great pleasure [Paskha is traditional cake baked for Orthodox Easter].
Members of my parents’ family were respectful to religion, but (as I already told you) it did not occupy significant place in our life.
And my grandfather used to ask the same question “And where is the synagogue?” He usually took some striped bed sheets and leather belts and went to pray. I was surprised very much: at that time I knew nothing about tallit and tefillin.
The family was very religious. They observed all Jewish traditions.
In contrast to Mom’s family they spoke only Yiddish.
In 1916, my Mom met my father in Kiev, and that meeting was of critical importance for her.
She finished grammar school in Ufa and went to Kiev to study at some courses for women. But by that time World War I already burst out, Germans came, and it became impossible for her to finish education.
Camps undermined my uncle David's health, therefore he died during the war being not old at all.