His younger sister Bronia finished the Polygraphist College in Kiev and stayed to live here. She was chief of technical editor office of some magazine.
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Major events (political and historical)
4256
- Armenian genocide 2
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- 151 Hospital 1
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Holocaust
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Communism
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Displaying 36301 - 36330 of 50826 results
Maya Pivovar
My father’s sight got much worse when he grew older and he felt ill from his wounds, but he was a sociable man and had to do something. My father asked chairman of the Party veterans association to give him a task to do. Being an invalid of the war, my father could do his shopping for food in a special store for invalids of the war [in the USSR there was a network of special stores for veterans of the war, and veterans having a special certificate could do their shopping there. Once a month they could buy a food package including deficit products such as: mayonnaise, buckwheat, tinned fish, smoked sausage that were not available in ordinary stores]. Veterans of the Party also did their shopping there. Chairman gave my father the list of veterans, their phone numbers and authorized him to make phone calls to tell them when food packages were ready. My father could receive his package before everybody else being an invalid of the war, but since he was blind, I was his ‘secretary’.
Before retirement he worked in the Institute of Electric Circuits. He was chief specialist in power supply network in the town.
I got married at the age of 59. My husband Yefim Karpinskiy, a Jew, was born in 1916. Before retirement he worked in the Institute of Electric Circuits. He was chief specialist in power supply network in the town. Yefim became a widower few years before we met. We had no wedding party, we just decided to register our marriage in a registry office and began to live in my apartment, in perfect harmony, and we never said a rude word to one another.
I didn’t remarry for two years, but I had a very good husband and I liked being married. I talked to my friend. Her husband had many friends. I said to her: ‘Perhaps, there is some product in no demand around?’ (laughs). The wife of my current husband, a Jew, Yefim Volodarskiy, had died. My friends introduced us to one another. She is now in Germany. When she writes me, she always reminds us who we owe for our happiness. I liked Yefim. He was a very sensible and educated man. He had worked as leading engineer at different plants. By the time we met, he was a pensioner. We had a lot of free time and we walked and went to theaters. We lived together for three years before we decided to get married. Thank God, we’ve been together for ten years already. We live in harmony and even merrily. Yefim has a wonderful sense of humor, he has a joke for each unpleasant event in life and then we stop brooding and begin to laugh. This helps very well in life.
I wasn’t good at cooking before, but now I can cook gefilte fish and sweet and sour meat. It is for my husband. I try to cook something of Jewish cuisine every Friday. We don’t observe any other traditions.
We used to have guests go went out to see my husband’s colleagues and my colleagues. We got together on Soviet holidays, New Year and birthdays, but for the recent six years our life has quieted. We and our friends have grown older. My husband and I hardly go out, but we stroll around the house every day.
I’ve never been abroad or considered emigration, and I would like to visit far away countries, but we cannot afford it.
I didn’t quit the Party. When I was a pensioner, I continued to pay monthly fees. Some time in 1990 I guess, our, former already, Party unit secretary brought me my record book – the Party was dismissed. My membership was over, but I do not consider myself a real communist. Now I am aware that I had joined the Party since it was believed to be an outstanding deed, it was good and prestigious for a career. It was my father who was a real communist. He piously believed in the bright future for all workers and tried to do only good.
At first I wasn’t quite enthusiastic about perestroika [17]. Everything seemed to be ruining. The first thought was – that’s it, I will not travel to the Caucasus since it’s a different country now. Then this confusion in the economy! But now – I don’t know, as long as the children will get used to the new system, as for us – as long as everything is fine with them!
Of course, I can feel that I belong to the Jewry. It’s bad that I didn’t know anything about our culture and traditions. I feel sorry for not having talked with my grandfather, my mother’s father, about the history and the Torah. I was too young, but I still remember how carefully my youngest aunt Lisa’s friends were listening to him. Now there are many Jewish organizations arranging interesting lectures about the Jewish people and traditions, and my husband and I can borrow books and read them with interest about our people from whom we’ve been apart for so many decades. Hesed provides assistance to us, giving food and providing medications, it’s sufficient assistance. Now, of course, we know more about our culture and holidays, but my husband and I do not celebrate them strictly following the rules, but we sometimes light candles on Friday and we know about holidays and are sure to give our grandchildren coins on Chanukkah.
My father worked at the Institute of Endocrinology, and my mother worked at the factory. They worked from morning till night, left home early in the morning and came back late at night. My mother also had to cook. There were no fridges. She cooked soup or borsch in the morning and left the pot in the corridor, in the darkest, and coolest spot accordingly, and our old neighbor fished for pieces of meat in it.
In the late 1940s – early 1950s almost all of my mother’s relatives went through our apartment. They were returning from evacuation and didn’t have a place to live. Lisa, her husband and child lived with us, then Genia, and Fania. Later they all received some kind of dwellings, but they continued to keep in touch and meet like they did before the war.
Though they didn’t observe Jewish traditions, they spoke Yiddish among themselves. I can say this was their native tongue. I understood what they were saying. I feel ashamed though, that I still cannot write or read in Yiddish. Maybe it’s my fault, maybe theirs. Even though my grandfather was a teacher in the cheder. Though we lived separately from my grandfather and grandmother.
, Ukraine
In the early 1950s gas piping began to be installed in Kiev. My mother’s sister Genia lived in the center of the city, and they had gas supplies before it was arranged in other districts of Kiev. I remember her telling excitedly: ‘You take a pot off the gas stove and can put it right on a white tablecloth – and it won’t get dirty!
When we returned to Kiev from the evacuation I entered a preparatory course at the Polytechnic College and concurrently I was finishing a secondary school. In 1945 I received my school certificate. We took exams upon finishing school and the results were accounted for during admission to colleges. I entered the Chemical Technological Faculty, department of paper and cellulose, of the Polytechnic College. I didn’t have any problems with admission. I was just lucky. It was quiet in 1945. Since I had finished a preparatory course, I was admitted to the college almost automatically. In this regard everything went well. I remember how we, students of the preparatory faculty had to work at making wood stocks near Kiev for a month. I have no idea, whose direction this was. We cut trees, sawed them and stored in the store metering boxes. The most ridiculous of this was that all students of the preparatory faculty were supposed to go there, but they didn’t actually. Those who stayed in college continued having classes and when we, the enthusiasts, returned, we had to catch up with those who were staying. However, I recall this time as a very romantic period. We lived in tents, baked potatoes in the open fire in the evenings, it was fun. Then it seemed there was going to be nothing bad in life, and the most scaring thing – the war – was in the past. I was the only Jew in my group and in college. Still, everybody treated me well and we still call each other and meet with my fellow students. I had Russian and Ukrainian friends. It took me a short time to catch up with my fellow students after this event with making the wood stocks. I cannot say that I had only excellent marks, but I wasn’t among the worst students.
I liked to go to the cinema and theater and I particularly like the Russian Drama Theater. I often went there with my parents and friends. I read a lot. I read classics and modern Soviet literature.
After I finished the college in 1950 I got a job assignment to the Kamskiy cellulose and paper factory in Perm region Krasnokamsk town [over 3000 km from Kiev]. I worked there 7 years.
In Krasnokamsk I joined the party. It somehow happened there. I knew this was good for my career, but I actually didn’t have anything against the party. We were raised patriots and we piously believed in communism and its ideology.
The events in the early 1950s, the doctors’ plot [15] had no impact on me whatsoever. I was in Krasnokamsk and things were quiet there. Well, actually, there was chief engineer, a Jew, Rappoport, in 1952 they reduced him in his position appointing him production manager, and the former production manager was appointed chief engineer. I think they did it for a show to demonstrate that they responded to the events happening at the time. At meetings this new ‘chief engineer’ was sitting beside the new ‘production manager’ asking him one ach issue ‘What’s your opinion?’ Since Rappoport was more qualified, of course.
The echo of the doctors’ plot had its affect on my father at the institute of Endocrinology. My parents never told me what actually happened. I only know that there was a big problem, they had fabricated a case and my father didn’t work for a year and a half. Then he went to the pharmacy department where he had worked in the 1920s asking for help. They employed my father in the prescription department in a pharmacy. My father retired in 1970.
I liked working in Krasnokamsk very much. There were common nice people there. I made many friends. We had a good time together, went to the woods to pick berries and mushrooms, baked potatoes, sang songs to the guitar, but my mother rebelled and said: ‘That’s enough. A little bit of good at a time is enough. Resign and come to Kiev’.
In 1957 I quit and returned to Kiev to my parents, but here I faced a problem: I couldn’t obtain a residential registration [16] in our apartment. I couldn’t get employed since I was not allowed a residential registration and couldn’t obtain this residential registration without having a job.
Somebody mentioned to me that a friend or a relative of my deceased grandfather lived in Boyarka near Kiev and I could get a residential registration to live in his house. We went to Boyarka and I had this registration there. We paid a monthly fee for this registration, but I still couldn’t find a job. I kept looking for a job for a year.
Somebody mentioned to me that a friend or a relative of my deceased grandfather lived in Boyarka near Kiev and I could get a residential registration to live in his house. We went to Boyarka and I had this registration there. We paid a monthly fee for this registration, but I still couldn’t find a job. I kept looking for a job for a year.
Once my co-student’s mother came by, her husband worked in the Polytechnic College, he was chief of department of organic chemistry. The Soyuzreactiv office rented a facility on the territory of this department. They organized a laboratory of reagents and my friend’s father said to his wife: ‘Tell Maya if you happen to go past their house to come over here’. He introduced me to the future manager of this laboratory. The manager took me to supervisor of the Soyuzreactiv office and I became his first employee! I had absolutely nothing to do with organic synthesis: I had finished the chemical technological faculty, but I dealt with paper! I remember this supervisor taking my passport looking at my residential registration in Boyarka. He said: ‘So what, your Mom and Dad could not arrange a registration for you in their home?’ I said: ‘No, there was no permission!’ Basically, he employed me. At first I worked in the laboratory of reagents and when the factory of reagents was built, I went to work there.
My parents and I went on living in our apartment in Decabristov Street till in 1970, in summer during a terrible rain storm the Victory Square was flooded and there was water in our apartment 60 cm deep. I woke up hearing the water babbling in the room. I awakened my parents, they got up and their sofa sailed across the room. Then we received a three-bedroom apartment in Borschagovka (the most remote and the least prestigious district in Kiev) and lived there.
Aron Pizman
The family celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and followed kashrut. I don’t know ay details since all I know is what my father told me.
,
Before WW2
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The sons studied in the cheder and had bar mitzvah after turning 13.
,
Before WW2
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My grandfather and grandmother were religious like all other Jews in the town.
,
Before WW2
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His brother Moishe Pizman moved to USA before the revolution and the family had no contacts with him.
,
Before WW2
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My father Isak, Itzyk in Jewish, was born in 1909 and was the youngest in the family. He had two older brothers and 5 sisters. I didn’t know my father’s brothers. One of them, whose name I don’t know, perished during the Civil War [2].
,
Before WW2
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