Grigory lived at his grandfather’s. He finished secondary school and was an ordinary Soviet child. His family wasn’t religious, so Grigory grew up an atheist.
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Displaying 19831 - 19860 of 50826 results
Maria Reidman
My husband understood a little Yiddish but couldn’t speak it. In our family he took it up promptly. Sometimes he even used words that I didn’t know.
Grigory entered the Sevastopol Navy School in 1939 when there was a Komsomol [9] call to enter it. He had studied two years before the war.
During the war the cadets were sent to the front near Novorossiysk. He was wounded there and stayed two weeks in hospital. He returned to the front and was wounded again in 1943. He was about to have his arm amputated, but a doctor from Leningrad saved him. He had a nerve wounded on his right hand and he couldn’t control it. Then he was wounded on the head. He stayed in hospital in Kislovodsk for half a year and didn’t return to the front afterwards.
In 1944 he arrived in Kiev and got a job as a locksmith at the Lepse Plant. Soon his uncle, Matvey Gutgarts, returned from evacuation with his wife. They couldn’t get their apartment back, although they had lost two sons on the front. Grigory helped them to get their apartment back and stayed with them. He wanted to get a job in Podol [10] to be near where he lived. There was a position for a teacher of military disciplines open at the school where I worked and he got the job.
We decided to get married in 1945. We didn’t have a wedding party. We couldn’t afford it. Besides, my sister Sonia had died in a car accident on the eve of our wedding. We had a civil ceremony. However, my father was famous for knowing the Torah, and besides we lived near the only operating synagogue in Kiev, so Papa insisted that we had a wedding ceremony in the synagogue, too. We didn’t understand much of it, but it was a very ceremonial and strict procedure.
My husband decided to study but he didn’t know where. We heard that law students at the law school received a higher stipend and had some more privileges. The competition was high, but he managed. Besides, he was a war invalid and had a priority. He was a very industrious student. He finished law school and began to study at Kharkov Law University by correspondence.
He got a job assignment as an investigation officer in Staraya Sinyava, Khmelnitskiy region. He worked there for almost three years. The term of this job assignment was to be three years, and then he was free to return.
He couldn’t find a job as a lawyer for eight months. He was a party member and needed an appeal from the party district committee to get a job. Besides, people were trying to avoid employing Jews. Nobody made any open statements, but it was common knowledge. He got a job at the Human Resource Department at the Ukrcable Plant and worked there for 35 years. He worked as HR manager for two years, and then they had a vacancy for a law advisor. The director of this plant was a Jew. He explained to Grigory that he could take him to fill this vacancy if he weren’t a Jew. Otherwise the others would suggest that he only employed Jews for good positions. This was in 1950. Later the Doctors’ Plot [11] was a nightmare. However, my husband got the position of a law advisor at that plant and worked there until 1980. He was working with the copying machine, which wasn’t safe considering that he suffered from allergies. I insisted that he quit his work. Grigory retired in 1985.
We lived a happy life, although we didn’t have children. We often went to the theater and the cinema. We had a collection of books at home – Russian and foreign literature. All members of our family read them, and afterwards we had interesting discussions about literature. We had many friends of different nationalities. Nationality never mattered to us. We always had lots of guests on Soviet holidays: 1st May, October Revolution Day [12] and the 8th March [International Women’s Day]. We took advantage of all occasions to see our relatives and friends.
My grandmother went to the synagogue on Saturdays. She had an old siddur, a prayer book, and she was reluctant to leave it at the synagogue. She used to ask one of her grandchildren to carry it to the synagogue, and sometimes it was I who carried it. Then I went to school and became a Young Octobrist [5]. I was told at school that there was no God and that we couldn’t go to the synagogue. So, when my grandmother asked me to carry the siddur my reply was, ‘A Young Octobrist can’t go there’. And the older children said that pioneers weren’t allowed to go to the synagogue. So, there was no one to help her. My mother was just looking at us and volunteered to help my grandmother, although she was not supposed to carry the siddur. She wrapped herself in a big shawl, hid the siddur underneath and carried it to the synagogue.
We loved to celebrate Chanukkah. It was a tradition that any visitor to the house was supposed to give some money to the children. 50 kopecks were a lot of money at that time. A month before the holiday we were looking for the brightest pieces of cloth to make little bags for the money. Our father gave us banknotes, and the others usually gave us some change. My grandmother was a housewife later and didn’t receive any pension because she didn’t work during the Soviet power. My mother used to change 2-3 rubles before the holiday, gave this change to my grandmother and told her to give it to the children on the holiday.
My mother was born in 1896. She was the only one to go to a Ukrainian elementary school because her family was very poor and couldn’t afford for all the children to go to school. The rest of my grandmother’s children studied in cheder. They knew their prayers. My mother was a good pupil. She also attended Christian religion classes, although Jewish children were allowed to skip those. She attended those classes because she found them interesting.
Aunt Haya, my mother’s older sister, was born in 1891 and got married in 1912. My grandmother paid all her wedding costs.
Her husband, Veniamin Zoger, was a dispatcher at the railroad.
Mozik worked as a locksmith at the china factory from where he was mobilized to the front.
When the war began Anya and her daughter, Aunt Eta and my parents went to Kokchetav [Northern Kazakhstan].
Aunt Haya and Uncle Veniamin stayed in Olevsk. They escaped a short time before the Germans reached the town. They went to Kursk, got on the train and came to Kazakhstan.
Anya and her daughter returned to Kiev after the evacuation, and her husband came back from the front.
Mozik had finished his service in the army when the war began. In 1942 he got into encirclement and was put into a prisoner of war camp. His comrades knew that he was a Jew and did their best to keep it a secret from the fascists.
In 1945, after the war, was over, he was sent to the mines in Podmoscovie. The authorities didn’t even let him go to see his mother. He visited her after Stalin died in 1953.
And then Anya and her family and Mozik decided to emigrate to the USA. This was in 1979. Abram didn’t want to go. They tried to convince him to go with them, but he refused.
Abram was a little retarded from his birth. He didn’t even go to the army. He was in evacuation with his mother.
He worked hard all his life. He was a laborer.
His name was Isaak Gonikman. He worked at the china factory. He was very happy about the Soviet power at first because he had a job and was even promoted to head of the packing shop. In 1937 he was arrested for nothing [during the so-called Great Terror] [6]. They kept him in prison for a week before they let him go. My mother was trying to tell him to go to Kiev to join his sister. But he said he couldn’t leave and, besides, he was free by then! My mother intuitively knew things. She was right: He was arrested again after three days and killed. He was charged of causing damage to the china factory and putting it on fire. Of course, he had nothing to do with it.
Aunt Eta was forced to move to the town of Malyn, Zhytomir region, along with the wives of other arrested men. My aunt was helpless; she was blind on one eye. My mother went to her every week to help her about the house.
When the war began Eta and Manya went to Kiev. Luba had to stay behind at work. They didn’t let her go although the Germans were already approaching the town. Aunt Haya demanded that Luba went with her and her husband. She was in evacuation with them and worked as an accountant or assistant accountant.
In 1946 she married Yakov Shapiro, a Jew. She met him while she was in the evacuation and stayed with him in Samara.
Manya, her daughters and their families emigrated to Israel.
My mother had a brother named Avram. He was a forest warden in the forestry in Olevsk. He was a very intelligent man. His wife’s name was Lisa. In 1938, when arrests began in Olevsk, he ran away to Kiev and never returned. He worked in a shop in Kiev – I don’t know exactly what he did.