For me perestroika was a good thing, but there were also negative features. When the USSR broke up, all creative relations between the former republics fell apart. As for me, this made my creative life poor, though I continued to work at the Conservatory. The leading musicians and orchestras don't come to Kishinev on tours. Regretfully, our television adds to the negative side of it showing vulgar unprofessional clips. There is no serious symphonic music on the screens since nobody pays for it. There is only the 'Mezzo' channel, a French channel, but it also has a tendency to worsen. I used to listen to the 'Symphony of Psalms' by Stravinskiy. But now they broadcast some jazz fragments. Being a musician, it's hard for me to have no music replenishment.
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Displaying 10501 - 10530 of 50826 results
zlata tkach
In 1992, I traveled to Israel with a delegation of Moldovan musicians at the invitation of the Kishinev composer Kopytman, who was one of the first to move there. He had an important position in the Rubin Musical Academy in Jerusalem, and Maria Bieshu [Moldovan singer (lyrical-dramatic soprano) soloist of the Kishinev Theater of Opera and Ballet, laureate of international contests]. We spent a week there and stayed in a hotel. This was a busy week: concerts, meetings and many tours across Israel. We visited the Wailing Wall, and I left a note there, of course. This was like a fairy-tale! Israel is a wonderful and beautiful country. I sensed its amazing aura and I felt like traveling many decades back, I felt an inner connection with the history of my people. I was very impressed by this tour. I visited Israel again in 2001 at the invitation of Izolda, the daughter of Kishinev conductor Boris Milyutin. She lives in Bat Yam near Tel Aviv. Life in Israel is progressing.
My husband and I witnessed the rebirth of the Jewish life in Kishinev seven years ago [1997]. Yefim began to collect material about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. He had cancer and hurried with his work. Two other activists of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Moldova, Aurel Guzhel and Yefim Levit, worked with him. They prepared and published with the help of Joint [19] four collections of documents and articles on this subject under the title 'We won't forget,' in Romanian and Russian. My husband was chief editor of this collection.
Yefim died in April 2003. On the day of his funeral I saw how much he was loved in Kishinev: by Jews and Moldovans alike. Many people came to pay their respects to him. We buried him near my parents' graves. Employees of Hesed [20] Yehuda, our charity center, helped me to make all necessary arrangements. I invited a rabbi and he recited the Kiddush. I installed a red granite gravestone on his grave to match my parents' gravestone.
I'm alone but my son often visits me and I teach at the Conservatory. I have a few students. At the invitation of Joint I teach talented Jewish children composition.
Hesed Yehuda provides assistance to me: a volunteer comes to clean my apartment once a week and I also receive food packages.
dora postrelko
In Tomashpol I stayed with my cousin Moshe, Aunt Dvoira's son. Moshe had married shortly before, and his wife Riva was having her first baby. I got a job at the town printing house. Its director, Abram Goihman, was a very nice and kind person. I worked in the typesetting shop and got a good salary. I went to the entertainment center with my friends. I didn't take part in any public activities and wasn't interested in politics. At school I was a Young Octobrist 18 and a pioneer like all other children, but I didn't feel like joining the Komsomol 19. I liked singing and dancing and went to young people's parties.
It was hard for me to work at the typesetting shop. It was hazardous work and I was afraid to develop tuberculosis like my sister. I went to work at the Central Post Office in Kiev. I sorted mail in the beginning and then became a crew leader. I liked this job. My management valued me and I often got bonuses and awards of appreciation.
On 22nd June 1941 the Great Patriotic War began. We didn't know anything about the war in Europe and it came as a complete surprise to us.
The boat was overcrowded. People were evacuating to Dnepropetrovsk and from there farther East. It didn't even occur to us that we had to evacuate as well. Hana had her job assignment, received her traveling allowances and had to get to work. The Dnieper was bombed, but fortunately nobody suffered on our boat. We arrived in Kremenchug at night and bombs exploded all around. There was such a noise that we were afraid that our eardrums would burst into pieces. We hid in some pits to wait until the bombing was over. Then we crossed the Dnieper on a boat to get to Kryukov. Kryukov consisted of a plant, a big three-storied building for non-manual workers and a small village. My sister and I got a room for two in this building. Hana went to work for several weeks. On 6th August 1941 German troops landed a few kilometers away from the plant. Emergency evacuation began.
A man sat at a desk in the steppe. He hired people for the construction of the Buguruslan-Kuibyshev gas pipeline. My sister showed him her diploma and we got employed. We were taken to a hostel. Hana became an engineer and I was employed as a cleaning woman for the time being. We were accommodated in a hostel for non-manual workers.
As soon as Kiev was liberated in 1943 I began to submit requests for a permit to return. I didn't know where my relatives were: my cousins Olte, Rachil, Fania and Tsylia, my grandmother and grandfather. I didn't even know where Uncle Abram was because I hadn't gone to see him before I evacuated.
I returned to Kiev in June 1944. I didn't have a place to stay and went to the Ukrainian family that had once given me shelter. They accommodated me again. A month later I got a job as an electric welder in a plumbing trust. I received a salary of 1,000 rubles. I got back the room where I had lived while I was working at the Central Post Office. I got a one-month assignment to restore the mines of Donetsk, along with several other workers, in September. When the month was over we were told that we had to stay for another six months. I left the place without permission, but the management didn't have a problem with that. Shortly after I returned, I was sent to a one-year course of advanced training at the Institute of Electric Welding. I received a stipend of 300 rubles, which wasn't enough to live on. Uncle Abram found me soon after he returned from evacuation and we cried after Hana together. He began to support me like he did before the war. I met my cousins Rachil and Olte that had been in evacuation during the war. I knew that my father's mother Surah died.
My father made arrangements with a shadkhan - matchmakers that still existed in small towns, even though they did their business secretly. When they found a decent young man that proposed to me. I gave my consent under my father's pressure.
My fiancé Leonid Postrelko was born in 1914. He lived with his parents in Kiev before the war. His father Pinhus and mother Malka perished in Babi Yar 24 in Kiev. They must have been religious, but I didn't know them. Leonid was at the front and received several awards. My father gave us money for my wedding. I had a long, white gown with a long train. We got married in summer 1946. There was a chuppah in the only operating synagogue in Podol 25. My father wasn't religious, but all relatives from both my mother's and father's side insisted that I had a traditional wedding. The wedding party took place at Olte's house. My relatives and friends came to the wedding. There was traditional Jewish food on the table including gefilte fish. The guests ate and drank, danced and sang, and shouted, 'Bitter!' [Editor's note: This is a Russian tradition. Guests shout 'Bitter' to the bride and bridegroom asking them to sweeten bitter alcoholic drinks with their kiss.
However, I always tried to be cheerful. When my condition became more stable I began to attend a Ukrainian folk choir that went on tours to many towns of our country. I often went to health recreation centers on vacation. I could stay there for free. I took part in amateur art activities, liked singing, cracking jokes and playing tricks on people. I had friends and cousins that visited me when I was ill. Sometimes we spent time together. We went to the cinema, walked in parks, celebrated Soviet holidays and had parties. They had family responsibilities though and therefore I often didn't have any company. I couldn't afford going on vacation and besides my health condition didn't allow me to travel. I spent my evenings working or watching TV. I retired in 1978. I receive a minimal pension since my salary had been very low.
I never faced anti-Semitism in my life. People have always treated me nice. Of course, I read in newspapers about anti-Semitic campaigns in the late 1940s [the campaign against 'cosmopolitans'] 26 and the early 1950s [Doctor's Plot] 27, but they had no impact on me. When Stalin died I didn't cry like others did. I didn't care.
I've always tried to observe Jewish traditions, at least, a few of them. I couldn't celebrate Saturdays because it was a working day in our country, but I always fasted on Yom Kippur. After the war I went to the synagogue on that day. I always had matzah on Pesach and I celebrated this holiday with my cousins Olte and Rachil.
Many of my relatives moved to Israel and US. If I hadn't been an invalid I would have moved there, too. I've always been attracted by Israel. I believe this is our common motherland.
Perestroika turned out to be a severe trial for me, just like for many other lonely pensioners. We get miserable pensions, just enough to buy bread and milk. However, there are positive signs, too. I think it's good that the Jewish way of life has revived in Ukraine. Hesed provides great assistance to me. They take care of me. It's not just words; Hesed doesn't only mean material support - kind words and information about Jewish cultural life are equally important. We are involved in various activities related to Jewish customs and traditions. I used to attend meetings for elderly people at Hesed daytime center. Two years ago I fell and had a fractured neck of femur. Hesed came to help me. Visiting nurses from Hesed helped me to survive and begin to move. I can only move in my room with the crutches, but I'm alive and I want to live on. That's all that matters.
My maternal and paternal ancestors came from Tomashpol, Vinnitsa province, in Ukraine [about 400 km from Kiev]. This town was within the Pale of Settlement 2 before the Revolution of 1917 3. 90% of its population was Jewish. Ukrainian families lived on the outskirts of town where land wasn't so expensive. There were small pise-walled houses with downward roofs, window shutters and front doors. There were narrow lime and poplar trees alongside the streets. The Jews in the town were craftsmen: tailors, shoemakers, joiners, glass-cutters and barbers. They had their shops on the ground floors of their houses. There were also wealthier families of a doctor, a pharmacist and merchants, who lived in stone houses in the main square. There was a synagogue and a market. Ukrainian farmers sold poultry, millet, and vegetables and bought salt, soap, matches, haberdashery and hardware from the Jews.
My maternal ancestors, the Wainshteins, were merchants and wealthy. I don't know their names or what they were selling. They had many children. The youngest, Ehill Wainshtein, my grandfather, was his mother's darling.
Ehill was an apprentice to a local roofer for several months. He made mugs, buckets and basins from roof tin in the roofer's shop and studied making roofs and painting them. He became a skilled roofer. Grandmother Anne was a housewife.
They had five children: Dvoira, Leib, Moshe, my mother Surah and Abram. The boys studied at cheder, where they received the basics of Jewish religious education, and at the Jewish elementary school. The girls also finished two or three years of the Jewish elementary school.
My mother grew up in a religious family. My aunt told me that their parents celebrated all Jewish holidays, observed Sabbath and followed the kashrut and Jewish traditions.
My paternal grandfather Srul Gehtmann was born in Tomashpol in the 1860s. He was a joiner, but he didn't have much work to do. He was a very religious Jew and stayed in the synagogue all day long. He engaged himself in reading old dusty religious books in Hebrew and in prayers. Srul was a well- respected man who could interpret the Talmud and the Torah; I don't know whether he ever had a chance to use this knowledge in everyday life, but it certainly added to his personality. However, he was no good in everyday routine. His wife Surah and their children lived from hand-to- mouth in their small house, which didn't differ from other houses of poor Jewish families in Tomashpol. There were two small rooms, a small kitchen with a Russian stove 6, which occupied a lot of space, and my grandfather's shop.
Meat was rare food for the family. They ate potatoes for the most part and could hardly afford to have a festive meal on Saturdays. But still, before Pesach and other religious holidays, Grandmother Surah bought a chicken at the market, which was kept in a box in the kitchen until it was time to bring it to the shochet. My grandfather demanded that all religious rules were strictly observed in the family. He conducted the seder and my father, being the only boy in the family, asked him questions from the Haggaddah.
Meat was rare food for the family. They ate potatoes for the most part and could hardly afford to have a festive meal on Saturdays. But still, before Pesach and other religious holidays, Grandmother Surah bought a chicken at the market, which was kept in a box in the kitchen until it was time to bring it to the shochet. My grandfather demanded that all religious rules were strictly observed in the family. He conducted the seder and my father, being the only boy in the family, asked him questions from the Haggaddah.
The main reason why my grandfather's family was poor was that they had four daughters. They had to get married and, according to Jewish laws, a bride needed dowry; the Jewish [Yiddish] word is 'nadn'. After a girl was born to a family her parents began to save money for her dowry. My grandparents needed a lot of money for the dowry for four daughters. Grandmother Surah managed to save some 'peanuts', by putting aside some money from the modest family income.
My father didn't like Jewish customs and traditions from his childhood on. He believed they were the reason for the suffering of his mother and his sisters and their poverty. He went to cheder like all Jewish boys, but then he refused to continue his studies and gave up religion for good. He thought it was funny the way his father was praying and swinging, repeating weird words. He was slapped and hit for mocking his father. As a protest, he spent more and more time with his Ukrainian friends. He ate bread with his friends during Pesach. This made my grandfather very angry and didn't help liking his son, of course. However, my father agreed to have his bar mitzvah. A year later he ran away from home and went to Vinnitsa where he became an apprentice to a joiner.
My father returned to Tomashpol before he turned 18. He met my mother. He had known her since he was a child, but hadn't seen her for a few years. My mother was two years older than my father. She was a beauty and sang wonderfully. My father fell in love. My mother also fell in love with him, although he was just a boy then. According to Jewish custom they couldn't get married. If a girl had the same name as the boy's mother they weren't allowed to be married. [Editor's note: This custom was followed only among certain ultra-Orthodox groups.] Superstition had it that this might lead to the mother's death. My mother's name was Surah and so was the name of my paternal grandmother.
My sister Hana was born in May 1915. On the day she was born my father received a call-up from the military registry office. He had to join the tsarist army. World War I was raging and my father went to the front. My mother stayed in his parents' house. Grandfather Srul had a harsh character and treated my mother badly, but Grandmother Surah liked her namesake and tried to help her, although she had been against her son's marriage at the beginning.
My father was at the front until the middle of 1916. At that time soldiers with revolutionary ideas began to agitate against the tsar and my father took advantage of the situation and left for home. Simply said, he was a deserter. He went to Russia where he knocked around for about a year before he returned to Tomashpol after the October Revolution of 1917.
My father was at the front until the middle of 1916. At that time soldiers with revolutionary ideas began to agitate against the tsar and my father took advantage of the situation and left for home. Simply said, he was a deserter. He went to Russia where he knocked around for about a year before he returned to Tomashpol after the October Revolution of 1917.