Now that independent Ukraine gave a real opportunity for the development of the Jewish cultural life I began to participate in it. I am an active member of Bnai Brith [37] I take every effort to make this organization a real hearth of Jewish culture. I celebrate Jewish holidays, go to Seder at the synagogue and read Jewish newspapers. Besides, I collect Jewish folk music and study Jewish traditions from tapes.
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Displaying 37111 - 37140 of 50826 results
Israel Shlifer
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Esther became a doctor.
Her son Yuri Rentovich lives in Germany.
After my grandmother died my grandfather stayed in Rzhishchev for few years. When in the middle of 1920s struggle against religion [6] began and the synagogue in Rzhishchev was closed he moved to Kiev where he remarried and had two children: daughter Raya and son David.
My grandfather’s family in Kiev was poor. Grandfather’s older children and my father supported them. Grandfather Idel died in 1934.
My father Iosif Shlifer was born in 1899. He received a religious education. He finished cheder and a Jewish primary school in Rzhishchev.
Then he finished a Realschule [7] in Pereiaslav Khmelnitski.
In early 1920s my father moved to Kiev and worked in the system of public education.
He also joined the Bund [8]. It merged with the Communist Party in 1920s. My father was a devoted communist for the rest of his life.
I don’t know how my parents met. I think they met through matchmakers that was a customary way in Jewish families. They got married in 1921.
Her father Beniamin Polisski was a wealthy man. He owned an agricultural equipment plant that he inherited from my great grandfather Gershl Polisski. The plant was on a hill and there was also my grandfather’s house where I grew up. There were Russian and Ukrainian employees at the plant.
My grandfather was born in Rzhishchev in 1870. He used to joke that he was born in the same year with Lenin. My grandfather got a religious and professional education. He was good at engineering and management.
My grandfather and his family lived in a big brick house. There were four big rooms and a big storehouse where the family kept food stocks. There was a kitchen garden and an orchard near the house. They also kept chicken and ducks. Russian and Ukrainian employees came to take care of the garden and livestock and my grandfather repaired their agricultural equipment at his plant in return for their services.
My grandfather got along well with his Russian and Ukrainian employees and customers. They rescued my grandfather’s family when in 1918 gangs [9] of ataman Zeleny [10] made a pogrom in Rzhishchev. A Ukrainian family gave my grandfather and grandmother shelter in their house. Only their son Mutsia, one of their sons, stayed at home. When bandits came to the house he treated them with self made vodka and they got drunk and left the house saying that they did not rob good people.
My mother’s family wasn’t as religious as my father’s parents. However, they observed all Jewish traditions: they followed kashrut. They also celebrated Sabbath, but it was more like tribute to tradition and an opportunity for the family to get together. In summer my grandfather and his sons had to do work on Saturday. Grandfather Beniamin prayed every day with his tallit and tefillin on.
Grandmother Chaika was a housewife like all Jewish women. She also managed housemaids and employees in the house.
My mother’s older brothers were married and lived in their own houses. My grandfather built houses for his sons when they were getting married.
In early 1941 grandmother Chaia died. All relatives, even my father’s sisters from Tashkent came to her funeral. They all loved and respected my quiet grandmother that dedicated her life to her husband and children. From hospital the coffin was taken to the synagogue in Podol where a rabbi recited prayers.
I became a pioneer and joined Komsomol at school, but I didn’t feel like taking part in any public activities. I didn’t make friends at school. When my father received an apartment in Saksaganskogo Street I made friends with my neighbors and we were lifetime friends.
When my father received an apartment in Saksaganskogo Street I made friends with my neighbors and we were lifetime friends. There were two rooms in the apartment that my father received. There was stucco molding on high ceilings. We had neighbors: an old woman that came from a noble family that owned the house before the Revolution of 1917 and her son.
My mother had a philological education and taught Russian literature and language at school and they had common subjects to discuss with this woman.
At that time I got fond of poetry. My friends were intelligent boys. I learned a lot from them. At first I felt like a ‘black sheep’ with them since I came from a smaller town and my friends were more knowledgeable than I in many areas, but gradually I caught up with them. I became interested in literature and poetry. We were fond of forbidden poets for the most part. At that time all poets, but Mayakovsky [18], Yesenin [19], Gumilev [20], Mandelshtam [21], – were forbidden. We got copies of poems that we read and learned by heart. Somehow the Komsomol organization of my school got to know that we read forbidden poets. Probably one of us reported to them. My friends were called to the leaders where NKVD [22] representatives were present. Fortunately, I didn’t have to go there. They asked the boys where they got copies, but my friends answered that they just heard these poets and remembered them. The officers probably didn’t believe them, but they left them. One boy’s parents were so scared that they sent their son to Moscow for a whole year. We could understand their fear: this was the period of 1937-39 [Great Terror] [23] - arrests of ‘enemies of the people’ [24] that emerged all of a sudden from nowhere. Nobody in our family suffered during this period, but my father expected arrest every day. I don’t think he understood that Iosif Stalin himself was to blame for this outrage that took away millions of innocent lives.
The majority of my mother's relatives and some of my father’s relatives lived in Kiev. They often visited us. We met on birthdays and wedding anniversaries. We also celebrated Soviet holidays: 1st May and the October Revolution Day [25]. The adults danced to Jewish and Soviet records and sang.
We didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays at home. Only once a year relatives came to celebrate Pesach with grandfather Beniamin. I didn’t attend the celebrations, and not know, as it was. I preferred my friends’ company.
My friends and I often went to theaters. One of my friends was a son of director of the Theater of the Red Army that was popular before the war. This boy often got free tickets to his father’s theater, Russian or Ukrainian Drama Theaters. Sometimes we had to stand in passageways, but this didn’t matter much to us. We were young and loved theater. We watched Ukrainian and Russian drama performances. We also went to the Jewish theater. Though some of my friends were Russian and we didn’t understand Yiddish we sat beside an old man that interpreted for us. We didn’t give much thought to nationality that actually didn’t matter to us.
In 1939 I finished school with a so-called ‘golden certificate’. There were no medals then and a golden certificate had a golden frame.
I was eager to study science – physics- and went for an interview to the Leningrad College of Physics. I had a successful interview, but my mother was against my studying away from home. I obeyed her and submitted my documents to the Kiev Polytechnic College (it was called Industrial College then) to the Faculty of Radio Physics. I was admitted and studied two years in this College.
My friends and I knew that fascism came to power in Europe. We saw Professor Mamlock [26] a film about Hitler’s view on Jews. Besides, we, radio physics, always listened to foreign channels. We made radios by ourselves. We had more information about the war in Europe than our newspapers published or radio broadcast. ‘The Voice of America’, ‘Svoboda’ [Freedom in Russian] and a number of other western radios broadcast in Russian, but very few could listen to them due to Soviet security agencies that jammed their programs. Only those that had special radios had an opportunity to listen to western radios. Nevertheless, we didn’t have a feeling that the war was near or that Hitler would attack the Soviet Union. Even lecturers of the Military Faculty in our College said that we had to learn to defend our country, but they never mentioned a possibility of war against fascism.
On 22 June 1941 I came to College to take an exam. All students were requested to gather in a big lecture room. We were told that the 43rd Distillery had been ruined by bombing the previous night and that the war began. Then the military registry office mobilized us to deliver the call-ups. The boards with number of buildings and names of streets were removed from houses for some reasons probably to confuse potential German spies. However, we were the ones that were confused. We had to ask pedestrians about numbers of buildings to deliver subpoenas. Some teenagers that were watchful about spies took us to a militia department. Of course, militia found out who we were in an instant.
In early July my parents moved to Kharkov where all managerial offices, including my father’s Ministry, moved.