I got married in 1949. My husband Alexandr Min’kovskiy was born in 1919. When we met he was a student of Medical College. We had a civil registry and then a wedding dinner at his parents’ home.
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Displaying 33331 - 33360 of 50826 results
Olga Bernstein
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Our co-passengers wanted to force us get off the train, but we begged them to let us stay. We arrived in Sverdlovsk [about 2500 km from Kiev]. Some equipment of the ‘Krasny rezinschik’ plant where my sister used to work before the war was shipped to Sverdlovsk and workers also came to Sverdlovsk. Other workers and their families and equipment were transported by barges and then by railroad like we went.
We evacuated on 11 July: I, my sister and her daughter and my mother. We knew nothing about the war or Hitler, but we had a feeling that we had to save our life. Probably it was an instinct. We went on coal barges down the Dnieper to Dnepropetrovsk [about 500 km from Kiev]. There we changed for an open platform train and reached Rostov region [about 900 km from Kiev] and got off in a village. There was a line of wagons waiting for evacuated people at the station. One woman, her name was Matryona Titovna, gave us shelter.
I remember famine in 1933 [9]. I remember villagers coming to town, asking for a piece of bread at the porch and then falling dead. Thanks to my grandmother and grandfather Bernsteins and my father and mother’s sisters shared their last crumbs with us we survived.
What I remembered was ‘mikada’ that I liked so much. For some reason those waffles were at home, when we had brought them to my father when he was ill… I was 11, but I understood that my father died. This happened in 1931. My father was buried in Lukianovskoye Jewish cemetery [8]. After the war we couldn’t find the grave.
Grandchildren always visited grandmother Feiga on holidays. She always had a basket full of matzah covered with a bed sheet at Pesach. Those were real holidays. There were pancakes with goose fat. My mother and grandmother cooked Jewish food.
, Ukraine
Our school was near the synagogue in Stalinka. My mother and father always went to the synagogue on holiday. My mother wore a kerchief and sat upstairs and my father sat downstairs. An academic year started in September and there were all Jewish holidays at this period and we always dropped by the synagogue when we knew that father and mother were there. We actually always passed by the synagogue going home from school. Then we went home with our parents. I don’t know whether my parents were very religious.
, Ukraine
I was born in 1920. Everybody called me a ‘little pretty girl Olen’ka’ ‘myzynka’, which means ‘little one’ and dearest. I went to the Jewish kindergarten and then I went to a Jewish school in 1928. The subject curriculum in this school was no different from Russian or Ukrainian schools, but we studied all subjects in Yiddish. We had a wonderful teacher. He was also a poet. His name was Benion Gutianskiy.
She also went to the Jewish kindergarten and at the age of 8 she went to the same school as my brother. She finished 8 grades at school and went to work as a cashier in a grocery store in Stalinka. She was good at calculations.
In 1944 after liberation of Ukraine my brother wrote us to where we were in evacuation that he was sending us a document allowing us to go to Kharkov [500 km from Kiev], where he was chief of the planning department of his regiment. He also gave us money for this trip through a captain. Of course, this captain never showed up and we never got this money and then my brother mailed this letter to us. He met us in Kharkov. In Kharkov my brother received an apartment where my mother, my sister and her daughter and I lived with him.
When he grew older my parents sent him to a Jewish kindergarten across the street from our home. We all went to this Jewish kindergarten. At the age of 8 Matvey went to a Jewish school in Kiev. After finishing the 7th grade Matvey went to study in a school of economics and became an accountant.
As far as I can understand he met my mother via matchmakers. My mother had just come from a village, she was the oldest daughter in the family and was single. Although she was beautiful, she had a hearing problem. And my father’s problem was that he was short and humpbacked, but they cared about each other and had a good life together.
, Ukraine
I remember very little of what my father told me about his childhood and youth. He must have finished cheder since he could read and write and knew Yiddish. He was religious in his heart and went to the synagogue often, but he didn’t demonstrate his religiosity otherwise. He probably didn’t want to involve his children in religion. This is how it used to be when authorities didn’t approve of religiosity [4] and my father didn’t want to complicate our life.
, Ukraine
Saul Eskenazi
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I am connected to the life of St. Petersburg Jewish community very little. Sometimes they bring me food packages from the Hesed Welfare Center [13]. Oh, you should see those packages! My income is enough for living, in fact I receive two pensions: an old age pension and pension of a war participant. But I understand that it is not a package, but attention that is dear to me.
I never received any financial assistance from Germany or Switzerland. It would be ridiculous, if Germans make compensatory payments to the person, who worked at the strategical department in Berlin!
Here you ask me what I felt, when Stalin died. You know, according to Stalin's plan, I should have not talked to you here now, I should have lived (or most probably, be already buried) in Birobidzhan [14]. Certainly all these details became known rather recently. But in fact at that time even blind understood Stalin’s attitude to Jews. And when people say that they knew nothing about Stalin’s terror, I cannot believe them. In fact almost every family suffered from repressions. I am proud of the fact that when Stalin died I not only did not cry (as everybody did around me), but felt pleasure and a sense of relief. Many people say now ‘We cried, because we were afraid to witness even worse times in the near future.’ And what could be worse? It could not be worse. And I turned to be right! The doctors were released from custody, and hard as times might be later we never experienced such horror any more.
Certainly we took the Doctors’ Plot hard. I told you already that at that time I worked in Kishinev. I remember how they fired Jews. I was not fired probably because I was a war participant. It was almost impossible to find job for a Jew in 1950s (before Stalin's death).
Revolution in Hungary [15] and the Prague spring [16] I took hard. I understood well that it was unfair. But even better I understood that I had to keep my own opinion to myself. From that point of view I became a real Soviet citizen quickly.
Our family never lived in the same place for a long time. But the city of my childhood was Bucharest. The city was very large, and there were a lot of Jews there. In Bucharest there were buses, trams; streets were good (paved). A part of roads were covered with bitumen. One of my childhood sensations is the feeling of my boots sticking to road during summer heat.
I do not remember houses without electricity supply. Water supply also was almost everywhere. If it was absent, people took water from special water-pumps, which looked like fountains. Housewives with pailfuls of water gathered near them to talk behind neighbors’ back. I think that these scenes took place in the city suburbs.
In Bucharest there were two main streets, one of them was called Calais Doudesht (calais means a road) and the other one Calais Bucharest. I remember those two streets very well, because in Bucharest a lot of (if not mainly) Jews lived there, though in Bucharest there was no special district for residing of Jews. In Romania people had no respect to Jews [1].
I do not remember houses without electricity supply. Water supply also was almost everywhere. If it was absent, people took water from special water-pumps, which looked like fountains. Housewives with pailfuls of water gathered near them to talk behind neighbors’ back. I think that these scenes took place in the city suburbs.
In Bucharest there were two main streets, one of them was called Calais Doudesht (calais means a road) and the other one Calais Bucharest. I remember those two streets very well, because in Bucharest a lot of (if not mainly) Jews lived there, though in Bucharest there was no special district for residing of Jews. In Romania people had no respect to Jews [1].
There existed Garda di Fier (Iron Guard), a fascist organization. [Garda di Fier was a fascist organization in Romania in 1931-1944. It was dismissed and forbidden in 1944 after liberation of Romania from fascism.]
They were true Nazis. In general, in Romania there were a lot of anti-Semites. But approximately till 1938-1939 they were not in great power. Moreover, sometimes these fascist-minded swells penetrated into Jewish residential areas and behaved outrageously, but Jewish youth gave them resolute repulse. They escaped, as beaten dogs.
They were true Nazis. In general, in Romania there were a lot of anti-Semites. But approximately till 1938-1939 they were not in great power. Moreover, sometimes these fascist-minded swells penetrated into Jewish residential areas and behaved outrageously, but Jewish youth gave them resolute repulse. They escaped, as beaten dogs.
In Bucharest there was rather large Jewish community. There were several synagogues, cheders and yeshivot. There also were shochetim, and our family certainly visited them.
In Romania Jews were discriminated: it was not easy for a Jew to get higher education. Colleges and universities followed the rules of Numerus Clausus and Numerus Nulus. Numerus Clausus meant that that educational institution was authorized to have a certain percent of Jewish students. And Numerus Nulus meant that no Jews could enter. In Romania anti-Semitism was some sort of official.
In Romania there also existed Jewish organizations. I do not remember exactly: some Zionist organizations, some left ones and right ones. For the most part they assisted Jews in leaving for Palestine.
Jews in Romania had no right to be landowners. Sometimes a piece of land was down in the name of a gentile, and a Jew cultivated it. In general, most Jews were engaged in trade, they used to have small shops. There were a lot of Jews - owners of small pubs, where it was possible to have a drink (usually about 200 gr of green wine).
My father’s name was Samuel. He was a rabbi. As far as I remember, his father (my grandfather) was also a rabbi. And Mum was from the family of rabbis. In a word, there were only rabbis around me, probably therefore I became an atheist. Well, it often happens.
And my father finished yeshivah. He was a very good rabbi! He was able to work both with Sephardim and with Ashkenazim. And people of that sort don't grow on trees!
My parents spoke Yiddish. They spoke to each other only Yiddish. And we (children) spoke to each other and to our parents only Romanian. As for me, I did not manage to learn Yiddish. Later, when I started studying German in lyceum, I began to understand their conversations. But I did not speak Yiddish.
My parents dressed as secular people. My Mum did not wear a wig, though she was a rabbi’s wife. I also wonder how it could be. My father put on something special (long and black, probably a coat) only when he went to synagogue.
We never had either our own house or our own apartment. We always rented very modest and small apartments (two-room, usually): one room for parents, the other one for children. We had our own furniture; probably formerly it was good, but suffered very much on the wing. In general, we were hard pressed for money. But we had enough for living. Of course, for rather modest living, but we knew nothing else. In our family it was not customary to compare our income with that of others. Anyway, we were never hungry. We ate everything we had. Mum always cooked much food, and we never thought about its quality.
In our family we never had any assistants. We could not permit it ourselves. Mum was a housekeeper. We (children) helped her, but the truth was that we did it not willingly: only when she asked us about it. She had a hard time: we (children) were four.