I liked Lvov a lot – a very nice European town with narrow streets, nice buildings that were not destroyed during the war. The local population was a bit suspicious about those that came to live there from the Soviet country.
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Displaying 49471 - 49500 of 50826 results
Sarra Nikiforenko
We settled down in a 3-room apartment with high ceilings. There was Polish furniture that remained from former tenants that left for Poland.
My husband got a good salary and big food packages and we had plenty of everything we needed. I was a housewife raising my daughters.
I got along well with our neighbors. My husband was never ashamed of having a Jewish wife. It never even occurred to me to change my Jewish name of Sarra to a different one.
I celebrated only the biggest Jewish holidays, even though my husband or children never joined me, but I didn’t insist on that. I didn’t go to synagogue, but I fasted on Judgment Day and Vitaliy and the girls knew that I was not to be disturbed on that day. We had matzah at Pesach and my husband went to buy the best wine kosher at Pesach. On his way home he showed it to neighbors ‘It’s my wife’s holiday today’. I made traditional Jewish food that my mother taught me to cook: Gefilte fish, chicken broth and stuffed chicken necks. My husband didn’t eat pork and neither did the daughters.
In 1948-50s newspapers began to publish horrible articles about rootless cosmopolites 17. It was clear that those articles were against Jews. Similar abuse happened in 1951-52. This period was called the ‘doctors’ plot’ 18. I was afraid that something terrible was about to happen. I showed newspaper articles to my husband when he came home from work, but he believed it was all stupid and indecent and just said to me ‘Take it easy’. He tried to comfort me saying that this could not last long. He avoided any discussions. He didn’t want to upset me: he was a very sympathetic and kind man. Like all of us he believed that Stalin didn’t know anything about what was happening and when he found out he would straighten it up. We believed in the wisdom of Stalin. On 5 March 1953 when we heard the announcement that the leader had died we grieved a lot. Children and adults were crying. We didn’t think we were going to survive when he was not there any longer.
I was a housewife and dedicated my life to my family. I didn’t join the Party. I wasn’t interested in it.
Vitaliy got the rank of colonel, but his illnesses aggravated: he had injured his back and had to wear a special corset, but the disease was progressing regardless. He was offered to be promoted to a higher rank, but I said to him ‘God damn this general’s rank. You are ill and this will be too much for you’. In 1954 he was demobilized. I had to look after him helping him to dress and undress. His back didn’t move and he couldn’t turn his head. He was such a beautiful man - and an invalid. Vitaliy had to get busy, though, and he worked as freelance member of the public control committee at the town council. He also took part in other activities. He had a vehicle to take him to work and when he couldn’t go there even in a car he managed work by the phone staying at home.
My father got a profession of cabinetmaker when he was very young. He was a very skilled master and became popular. They say he was a jeweler of a cabinetmaker. He made expensive carved and incrusted furniture. He took orders from important people that had seen foreign furniture, but complimented my father’s furniture. He did all work at home.
My father got married at 19. He was a desirable fiancé that could read in Yiddish and Hebrew, knew Torah by heart and had a profession.
When my mother turned 16 and it was necessary to find a match for her my grandfather made the rounds of surrounding towns looking for a suitable match. My future father, a young man from a well-to-do family, having a profession, happened to be the most appropriate suitor. My grandfather came to an agreement with my father’s parents and returned home to make all wedding arrangements. It was also quite customary for Jewish families that young people never saw each other before wedding. It was also traditional to lay tables for poor Jews before the ritual of the wedding and before the bridegroom arrived. The bride was sitting on a ‘dizhka’ [Ukrainian for a bowl for kneading paste] that was turned over. She sat on fluffy pillows. When the bridegroom arrived the bride was covered with a white veil. Four boys were holding posts with a chuppah stretched on them. The rabbi took them around the chuppah, said a prayer and gave them some wine and then the veil was taken off the bride and the husband and wife saw one another for the first time then. They liked each other and made a beautiful couple for the rest of their life.
My mother and father settled down in Smela. They rented a room from a Jewish family until my father bought a house.
He studied at cheder like all other boys in Smela but he was fond of technical things since childhood. There was a sugar factory in Smela and a technical school for boys at it. Anisim finished this school and became a mechanic.
My brothers and sisters had Jewish spouses and observed Jewish traditions and customs, but they weren’t orthodox Jews. They gave a tribute to traditions celebrating holidays and eating no pork. They spoke Yiddish at home.
In 1925 my older sister Basia went to visit him since we hadn’t seen him since the revolution of 1917 4 and Civil War 5 She came back with a cut on her clothes. My mother asked her ‘What’s the matter?’. When a close relatives dies it’s a custom that a rabbi makes a cut on clothing. Anisim died of relapsing fever during my sister’s visit.
He studied at cheder and was as fond of equipment as his brother.
At the beginning of 20th century industry was accelerating in the south of Ukraine [that belonged to Russia at that time]. There were many vacancies and the origin didn’t matter for employment – industrious work was important. Solomon went to work at an iron ore mine. A number of iron ore mines were linked to form a long and strange town named Krivoy Rog. Solomon was smart and was appointed a foreman. He told his parents to join him there thinking that life would improve in this new location. Once he was called to the office and while he was away from the mine there was a landslide resulting in fatality of the whole crew. My brother never descended to a mine again. He returned to Smela. This happened in 1912.
In Smela he married his cousin Basia, uncle Isaac’s daughter.
In 1929 Solomon and his family moved to Baku. There were no other means of communications, but correspondence at that time. They wrote occasionally and we knew that Solomon became a joiner at a kerchief factory and lived in an apartment that he rented from an Azerbaidjan family.
My older sister Basia, born in 1888, was educated at home. My sisters had Jewish teachers. I remember that they were old men wearing yarmulkas and poorly dressed. Our mother always gave them a meal and some food to go. I don’t know whether they received money for their work. They had 2-3 classes per week where they taught them to write and read in Russian and Yiddish, basics of mathematics, literature and Jewish traditions.
Basia married Grisha, a Jewish young man living in our street. I remember their wedding and my other sisters’ weddings with a rabbi. The wedding took place in a blooming orchard in spring. The chuppah was a beautiful shawl tied to blooming cherry tree branches.
Grisha was a nice and hardworking Jewish man, he worked at the mill in Smela.
My other sister Bronia, born in 1892, was married to Shymon that was a bookbinder.
They moved to Baku during famine in 1932[famine] 6.
Sister Polia, born in 1905, had the same teachers and had learned the same languages at home before the revolution, but afterward she attended a secondary school for several years.
Polia married Boris, a Jewish man, cinema operator and a very nice man. All Jewish young people knew each other and got married based on their affections and preferences.
In 1932 they moved to Baku following other relatives.
Boris perished at the front during the Great Patriotic War 7. My sister was a widow, - she didn’t remarry, but she had support of the family in Baku.
He studied at a Soviet Jewish school. There were national schools opened in town during the Soviet period: Ukrainian and Jewish schools. There was the same curriculum at those schools where children studied geography, mathematic, history and other basic subjects and the only difference was the language of teaching: Ukrainian in Ukrainian schools and Yiddish – in the Jewish school. All teachers were Jews in the Jewish school. All schools were Soviet-orieneted. We were taught to love the Soviet power an be atheists. Then he finished Food Industry College. He worked at sugar factories.
Boris perished at the front during the Great Patriotic War.
,
During WW2
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