In 1931 our family moved to Uman and then to Vinnitsa. This had to do with his job. This was the period of famine. My father was working for the flour department then and he had to travel to various towns. He was working very hard. Finally our family moved to Kiev in 1933 at the insistence of Reizner.
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Displaying 40891 - 40920 of 50826 results
Vera Leontievna Doroshenko
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I went to school in Zvenigorodka, then continued my studies in Uman and Vinnitsa, and finished the 10th form in Kiev. These were ordinary Ukrainian or Russian schools that I went to. There were children of various nationalities in those schools, we didn't care about the nationality then, and we were all equal and friends. I was an active pioneer and later became a Komsomol member. I enjoyed doing social work, like helping other pupils with their studies if they were having problems, participate in collection of scrap and waste paper and study the works of Marxism-Leninism classics.
, Ukraine
he Jews communicated in Ukrainian, using Yiddish words every now and then. They danced waltz, tango, Cracovienne [Public polish dance], polka and freilehs [Public Jewish dance]. My brother Yakov was playing the piano and my mother dancing with her shoes off. I remember other people used to borrow our piano for a Jewish wedding or other holidays.
, Russia
He was going on one of his business trips and met my mother on that train. They liked each other and exchanged addresses. They wrote letters to one another for three years and my father often visited my mother. Then he finally proposed to my mother. My grandfather and my mother's brothers liked him and they had no objections to their marriage. In the summer of 1913 my grandmother Anna died from illness and hard work.
, Ukraine
At home my grandmother and grandfather spoke Ukrainian and Yiddish. They were fluent in both languages. They were religious people. They observed traditions and celebrated holidays and they honored Sabbath. There were no other Jews in Stetsovka where they lived and there was no synagogue. They went to the synagogue in Zvenigirodka for big holidays like Pesah, Purim or Rosh-Hashanah. My grandma not wore wig. I think that they did not keep koshrut, anyway I never heard of that that in the house was kosher meal.
, Ukraine
Irina Doroshkova
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My family’s roots go to Berdichev, a town between Zhytomir and Vinnitsa in Ukraine 200 km from Kiev. In the past there were palaces of Polish lords and beautiful cathedrals in this town. There was about 80% of Jewish population in the town that kept a number stores and shops. [This percentage is specified in the Jewish encyclopedia issued in Jerusalem] Owning a store was a business in itself including management, accounting, supplies, etc. Inhabitants of Berdichev were mainly leather tanners, tailors, locksmiths or tradesmen. Before 1917 the main language of communication in Berdichev was Yiddish. There were few synagogues in the center and in the outskirts of the town. My father’s parents lived near a synagogue in the vicinity of the town.
My grandfather on my father’s side Henry Mazor was born in Berdichev in 1870s. He was a tall man with a gray beard. He always wore a cap. My grandfather was a poultry slaughterer at the synagogue. This was a responsible job that was trusted to those Jewish men that had knowledge of turning a live chicken into kosher food. He slaughtered chickens in the corridor of his house.
My grandfather prayed in the morning and in the evening. He was a very serious and responsible man. My grandfather was also very religious. He studied at cheder and knew numerous prayers and read religious books in Hebrew. My grandfather’s family spoke Yiddish, but he also knew Russian. He spoke Russian to me since I didn’t know Yiddish. I know that grandfather went to synagogue regularly, but at the time that I remember – 1930s – the synagogue was closed. Older Jews got together in one another’s homes. I remember once they came to our house. There were candles burning and there were about ten of them. They dipped bread in wine and ate it, musing something. I can’t say whether they were praying or just came to celebrate a holidays. I was taken to the yard promptly.
My grandmother Brukha Mazor was born in Berdichev in the late 1970s. From what I remember she was a tall gray-haired woman wearing a skirt gathered at her waist and a kerchief.
My grandmother only cooked kosher food – I remember it well since her ‘advanced’ children that were not religious used to laugh at her when she emphasized this.
My grandmother went to synagogue and took me with her once. There was a synagogue in the outskirts of the town that functioned in 1930s and we went there. We came to a big building and went up on a staircase onto a balcony where there were quite a few other women. My grandmother opened her book of prayers in Yiddish – the language that I didn’t know. I got bored and I looked down from the balcony at old men that murmured something [praying] with white shawls with black stripes on them [thales]. This was the only time that I went with my grandmother and this is all I remember.
My grandmother and grandfather lived in a one-storied house, but there was another family living in that house with an entrance from another side. There were such houses in Berdichev and there was a small porch at the door of every neighboring family. The door led to a small hallway with a primus stove [1] on a table where my grandmother used to cook. There was no kitchen, but just a door that led to the room from the hallway. The room was heated with a stove that was also used for cooking. My grandparents led a modest life. They had a beautiful carved wardrobe, a big steel bed with a number of pillows, a small settee with photographs over it and a table covered with a tablecloth. My grandmother had a small kitchen garden where she grew corns and sunflower plants – this is all I remember that she grew. They had a small folding bed where I slept when I came in summer to spend my vacations.
All boys studied in cheder. As for the girls, my grandfather taught them to read and write in Yiddish.
At the beginning of the Great patriotic War [2] in 1941 they evacuated from Berdichev. They were certainly too old survive in the hot climate of Middle Asia. They died and were buried far from home in Middle Asia.
Their older son Joseph, born in 1902, left home when he turned 17. He got very fond of revolutionary ideas and left his parents home in 1919 joining the Red army units. He was in the army during the civil war and later he settled down in Odessa.
My father Moisey Mazor (called Misha at home) was born in 1905. Like his other brothers my father went to cheder. My father was raised to observe all Jewish traditions and celebrate Jewish holidays. My father’s mother tongue was Yiddish. He was eager to study and went to a Russian primary school when he turned 5 years of age. His parents had no objections to his urge for education. They wanted their children to have a better life than they had. Only during the Soviet time my father realized that he couldn’t afford to study and had to go to work. He worked as a shop assistant at a haberdashery store. In the evening my father studied at a rabfak school [4] and then attended a preparatory course to the only institute in our town – Pedagogical Institute.
My mother and her fellow comrades were raised atheists and internationalists and forgot about their Jewish identity. They believed that it was narrow-minded to focus on one’s identity when the soviet power gave people freedom, equality and happiness to all nations.
My mother was a young girl during the October revolution and Civil war but communist ideas became her religion. My mother believed in the Communist Party as if it were God and believed that socialist life was the best. She got free education and a place to live. The Soviet propaganda was so strong that people strongly believed that everything good they had inn life was given to them by the caring Soviet state. When she was very young she became a typesetter at a printing house. She knew Russian and Yiddish and set texts in these languages. She studied simultaneously – she studied continuously. My mother was happy to be an independent woman and not to have to marry for convenience. She became a Komsomol activist and later – an activist in the guild of printers before she turned 16. At that time 15-16 years was an active age. Many children became independent getting a profession and took an active part in the Komsomol and communist movement. Such activists had all chances to make a good political career or even hold commanding posts in the army. There was a popular slogan of this period ‘Communism is the youth of the world and it is to be built by the young!’ She was sent to take a training course at the All-Union Council of Trade Unions in Moscow. After finishing this training my mother became director of the municipal library in Berdichev and a lecturer-propagandist. She lectured at various enterprises explaining advantages of the socialism and communism to workers. My mother joined the Communist Party in 1929 when she had just turned 20.
Somewhere at the crossroads of her activities my mother met my father who was a student of the Pedagogical Institute. He fell in love with her. In their relationships my mother always played the leading role – my father did what she wanted. My father was devoted to my mother and did what she told him. My father wasn’t a member of the Communist Party. Firstly, he wasn’t as active as my mother, and secondly he was a son of a slaughterer – servant to religion and such people were not admitted to the Party, but my father wasn’t really willing.
When they decided to get married at the beginning of 1930 any talks about religious wedding were out of the question. There wasn't even a wedding party. My parents got married at the town registration office.
When they decided to get married at the beginning of 1930 any talks about religious wedding were out of the question. There wasn't even a wedding party. My parents got married at the town registration office.
Shortly after their marriage my mother received an apartment where they moved since my mother lived at a hostel and my father lived with his parents before. It wasn’t a big apartment, but it was all right. It was in a house in Krikinskiy Lane (before the war since later it was renamed to Pionerskiy). Grandmother and grandfather kept using an old name of the street. We had two rooms and a common kitchen – there were 3 other families living in the apartment. My mother cooked on a primus stove and stoked stoves with wood and coal.
My mother went on working a lot and entered the pedagogical Institute to get a higher education. Of course, she had no time to do housework. We had a housemaid – Marusya, a Ukrainian girl from a village. She was my first nanny.
My father worked at a Ukrainian school upon graduation. He was a teacher of physics and mathematic and deputy director for the school curriculum. My mother also involved him in lecturing, but he lectured on scientific and technical innovations. It might seem that my parents should have been wealthy people working so much, but I remember well the famine of 1932-34 [6]. Now historians call this period ‘forced famine’. I remember lying in my bed and crying of hunger. A piece of sticky brown bread dipped in some water and sprinkled with a little sugar was a favorite delicacy in my childhood. My mother tried to do her best to feed me, but she didn’t always manage.
I wasn’t raised religious. Now I realize that there were mostly Jews in my surrounding, but my parents never discussed this subject or focused on it. I had no idea about being Jewish or non-Jewish. All people had the same nationality, as I imagined. We spoke Russian in the family and with my parents' friends and acquaintances. This was a state language in the Soviet Union. My father conducted his lessons in Ukrainian working in a Ukrainian school. There were also Russian and Jewish schools in Berdichev, but the only difference between them was the language of teaching, and school programs were the same. In late 1930s Jewish schools were closed. There were Ukrainian and Russian schools functioning.
. I liked to watch parades on 1 May from the balcony of the library located in the central square. There were riders and tanks on these parades. People carried portraits of Lenin and Stalin, but I remember only portraits of Stalin. I enjoyed the parades waving my hand to the participants.
About once a month I was taken to my grandparents, but my parents never left me to stay overnight with them to protect me from hearing Yiddish or getting interested in Jewish traditions. My grandmother was always happy to see me. She usually asked me what I felt like eating and I said ‘Lotkes’ – potato pancakes. I liked them, but nobody made them at home. I also remember buckwheat with milk.
In 1937 when I turned 7 I went to a Russian school near our house in the center of the town. I remember an event at school when I was in the first form. We had portraits of Yakir [7], Kossior [8] and other military commanders and Party activists. Once our teacher told us that they were ‘enemies of the people’ and we painted them over with ink [9]. I don’t remember any details, but I remember that my mother was called to some office and I heard some big shot yelling at her ‘Which enemy has worked on you?’ My mother stood in his office and then she grabbed an inkpot and threw it at him. Thank God she wasn't arrested but they were trying to get a confession from her – I don’t know about what. I remember a terrible tension at home – my parents hardly spoke a word.
I became a pioneer when I was in the 3rd form (1940). At the ceremony we were told that we had become Young Leninists and offered to learn a poem. I learned the poem ‘Five days and nights’ in which the country was grieving for the loss of Lenin. I remember some lines ‘…And crowds of people were flowing carrying flags to look at the yellow profile and a red order on his chest. They were flowing. And the earth was freezing as if he had taken with him some of the warmth…’ and at this I burst into tears and felt very ashamed about it. These were tears of grief and despair, but I was ashamed to be crying in front of the audience not being able to pull myself together and finish reciting the poem that came right from my heart. Then our pioneer leader came to tie our neckties and show us how to salute. It was a very festive ceremony.
I had finished the 4th form successfully when my mother told me about the beginning of the great Patriotic War on 22 June 1941 [10], announced on our black plate radio in our room. But the previous morning I was woken by a roar over my head. My mother said ‘Go back to sleep – it is just another military training’. But no – those were German planes flying in the direction of Zhytomir and Kiev. In a day my mother ran home from work and told my father that Party dignitaries and their families were leaving the tom the following night, but my mother wasn’t on that list. My parents packed a suitcase, grabbed me by my hand and we ran to the center of the town where my mother’s friend Bertha lived. She worked at the Party town committee and was on the list.
In the morning a car arrived and we got in there. At the station we got into a freight railcar. My father was an only man and women didn’t let him come inside and he was on a platform near the exit door of the railcar. The train headed Stalingrad in 1200 km from Berdichev. The trip took us a whole month. We had bags of sugar and tinned meat and got water when the train stopped. It was hot in the railcar and children got thirsty begging for water.
At first we arrived in Rovenki, Ukraine, 350 km from our home. We were accommodated in a school building where we stayed for two weeks. We were thinking of staying there hoping that the war would be over soon, but Germans were approaching. My mother got concerned and we went on by a passenger train. When we arrived in Stalingrad all passengers of the train were taken to the stadium. This was August and the heat was oppressive. There were tarpaulin tents installed on the stadium, but they didn’t help much. We stayed there few days until my mother managed to obtain a permit to Frolov town near Stalingrad. We got accommodation in an apartment of a Kazakh woman. Her daughter slept with us in the room. My mother got a job of director of stationary store.
At first we arrived in Rovenki, Ukraine, 350 km from our home. We were accommodated in a school building where we stayed for two weeks. We were thinking of staying there hoping that the war would be over soon, but Germans were approaching. My mother got concerned and we went on by a passenger train. When we arrived in Stalingrad all passengers of the train were taken to the stadium. This was August and the heat was oppressive. There were tarpaulin tents installed on the stadium, but they didn’t help much. We stayed there few days until my mother managed to obtain a permit to Frolov town near Stalingrad. We got accommodation in an apartment of a Kazakh woman. Her daughter slept with us in the room. My mother got a job of director of stationary store.
My father received a subpoena from the Frolovsk military registry office– they recruited him to the front. He went to Kazakhstan where he was trained to operate with Morse alphabet. After finishing the course he went to the front as a radio operator. He was a private, but served in a special communications battalion. We received letters from him until February 1942. My mother wrote to commanding officer of the regiment where he served requesting him to give her information about her husband. He replied: ‘Your husband left for a military mission on 13-14 February and never returned. He is missing. [During the years of the war this response was worse than death notification since such people might be suspected of treason.] But my father vanished and whatever effort we took after the war to find out what happened to him we couldn’t get any information in this regard.