Later Grandfather Kulakovsky owned two houses: the old small one and a new nice big one. When Grandpa lived in Slutsk he sometimes took us to the village to show us the small house where they’d lived before, and we also saw his new house with a wooden floor, good roof and big windows.
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Displaying 39001 - 39030 of 50826 results
Raisa Gertzevna Shulyakovskaya
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He owned a house in Slutsk.
He was very religious, ate kosher food, observed all Jewish traditions, attended the synagogue and prayed every day. Shulyakovsky was fanatically religious [Raisa means very zealous].
Alvina didn’t speak Yiddish. When we were in evacuation, I spoke Yiddish with Mom, but Alvina learnt just several words. She mixed Russian and non-Russian words: ‘Wo ist der kettle?’ I told both her and my granddaughter about Jewish traditions. But my granddaughter Tatiana turned to the Russian Orthodox religion.
Alvina graduated from the Medical Institute [in Leningrad] and worked on the artificial kidney project. She was very talented and spoke English fluently. She died in 1985. My daughter had a bad heart.
Her neighbor invited her to a party at the institute, where a guy approached her and saw her off home. He asked her to give him her phone number. She gave him the number and confused him with the entrances to the building, lied to him. Later she went to another student party, and a soldier ran up to her, just like in a movie, and said, ‘I was running around the block, looking for you, but couldn’t find you, and I couldn’t reach you on the phone.’ And she liked him in the soldier’s uniform. And his student friend put on his uniform, not a soldier’s one, but a suit, and she didn’t like him in that suit. But then she began to like him and she started going out with him, I mean, with this friend of that guy, whom she lied to about the entrances to the house.
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After WW2
See text in interview
My daughter Alvina didn’t get married for a long time, until she was 27 years old, she turned everybody down, and finally she married a fellow from Vologda, similar to my husband.
After Stalin’s death in 1953 nothing changed in my life. When the ‘Doctors’ Plot’ [24] occurred, we understood that it was a provocation. Matusovsky [a Soviet poet] wrote, ‘We trusted you so much, Comrade Stalin, as we may not have trusted ourselves.’ Almost everyone cried when he died. When Khrushchev [26] exposed him [27], I thought about what my neighbor told me, when I saw her off to the hospital, ‘Stalin and Hitler are the same.
Then I got transferred to VNIIM [All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Meteorology], it was across the street from the Technological Institute and closer to our home. It was my last place of work, until I was fired. All Jews were fired from that place later on [23]. After that I didn’t work, Mom told me that I shouldn’t work while she was alive. It was in 1950. There was a Russian Party secretary at my work place, who decided to get rid of all Jews in our organization and only one Jewess remained.
Then Alvina went to school. I told her, ‘When you get your passport, write anything you want to be’ [indicate any nationality]. Stalin decided to ask schoolchildren about their nationality when they came to study. She came home happy and said, ‘We will get passports soon, I think.’ She was in the first grade then. I asked why. She replied, ‘We were asked about our nationality.’ I asked her, ‘What did you say?’ She replied, ‘Russian.’ One of the girls replied that she was a Jewess and blushed. This was how anti-Semitism was propagated.
I worked at the Geophysical Observatory as a senior technician.
In Sverdlovsk, when my daughter was four years old, she was told that she shouldn’t have gone to the dormitory, because Jews lived there, who were bad people. But I told her that I was a Jewess also and she said, ‘That’s not true, you are different,’ and then she understood that we were all different and everything depended on the person.
When I was going to Sverdlovsk, my mother told me that she didn’t need anything, only not to see the war. She told me, ‘Imagine, a young soldier is lying and begging: ‘Please, finish me off, I cannot suffer anymore.’ And we can’t do anything.’ So she said, ‘The main thing is not to see the war, let’s leave, we don’t even have to take anything with us, we just have to go.
I was in Sverdlovsk during the war. We left Leningrad in August and the blockade began in September [22], but when I was still here, everything was relatively quiet.
In the car she told me, ‘Stalin and Hitler are the same, they are of one kind.
I didn’t feel anti-Semitism before the war. It began, I think, in the course of the war and continued after the war. It came from Stalin.
But during the war, in 1944 it was all mixed up, whether a man was married or not, and there appeared a notion of PPZH [acronym for camp-field wife]. Then a law was issued stating that only a registered marriage was considered legal. After the war I went to the district ZAGS [department of registration of acts of civil condition] together with my husband and our daughter. My daughter was our witness, she was seven years old, and we got registered, but I didn’t change my last name.
At the time my husband worked on a ship under construction. He stayed on this ship in the course of the war. In 1941 the war broke out. Everybody waited for the action to begin. Some sailors came in the morning; they were called ‘krasnoflotsy,’ and called for him. He said, ‘This must be some training in case of war, I’ll be back soon.’ But he went directly to the front, he served near Leningrad. He came back in 1944.
Later we moved to Leningrad. The building where I live now was constructed in 1940. We got a room there.
My daughter Alvina was born in Vladivostok in 1937. I left Vladivostok when Alvina was six months old. I ‘wanted to go to Europe,’ as it was called there, and left for Minsk. That was in 1938 and in 1939 I came back to Leningrad.
After the institute I could do without an assignment, as I was a wife of a military man. But we had our ideological principles and I agreed to be assigned. I was assigned to Chernigov, to the Kotoninnaya factory. The factory produced short spinning fiber, a chemical one, it’s not produced anymore. I worked less than a year and left for Vladivostok where my husband was assigned to. I found a job as head of laboratory at a plywood plant. A very stupid profession, but I had university education, so I could work. I was accountable to the Leningrad Laboratory.
Mia Ulman
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We lost many national traditions during the Soviet time, but nowadays a lot has changed. Fortunately, the programs of the Hesed Avraham Charitable Center help us to restore such traditions. We find ourselves under the guard of charitable Jewish organizations, where the young (my Yevgenia) and the old (people of my age and older) feel social and, most important, psychological protection. We are supported with food packages for holidays and also morally – being assured that we and our history, our past and present won’t be forgotten but preserved for next generations. This interview also reactivated my memories, made me turn over the pages in my family album and remember the lives of my relatives and friends.
Coming to the end of this interview, I would like to address and thank the organizers of this project; those, who strive for supporting and strengthening the national dignity in our souls, something we were deprived of during the Soviet period in our history.
Coming to the end of this interview, I would like to address and thank the organizers of this project; those, who strive for supporting and strengthening the national dignity in our souls, something we were deprived of during the Soviet period in our history.
My second husband is a professor at the Faculty of Law of the Saint-Petersburg State University.
I worked as a legal adviser from 1965 until my retirement in 1992. Later I worked as the head of the Legal Department of the Leningrad Rostorgodezhda Wholesale Trade Association. I recall all those years with great joy: we worked a lot, we were a great team, and I’ve been keeping in touch with many people up until now. I took an active part in social life, and I always sang in amateur art activity concerts and musical plays, which were staged by our employees.
My brother has lived in Leningrad since 1944. He graduated from the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute of Communication named after Professor Bonch-Bruyevich. He later worked with the Leningrad Television from 1966-1998.
My brother has lived in Leningrad since 1944. He graduated from the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute of Communication named after Professor Bonch-Bruyevich. He later worked with the Leningrad Television from 1966-1998.
Anti-Semitism, whether it was concealed state anti-Semitism or public everyday one, haunted us all our lives. It was difficult for us to find jobs; that’s why I and my relatives very often worked at one place for a long time. Each of us recalls offences and humiliations related to nationality issues. I don’t want to recall and remember such situations because they still hurt me today.
The mass emigration of Jews, which began in 1990, didn’t bypass our family. I didn’t take the departure of my relatives easy. Out of our big family only me, my brother Mikhail, my cousin Lutsia and our families remained in Russia. However, we still keep in touch with the others.
Natan’s family moved to Leningrad in 1932, and he entered the Metallurgical Faculty of the Industrial Polytechnic Institute. After graduation Natan was drafted to the army and participated in the Great Patriotic War until Victory Day [14]. His father was a worker at the Kirovskiy Plant, and his mother was a medical official. Natan’s family lived in a communal apartment in the center of Leningrad, where they occupied two rooms, a big one and a small dark one without windows.
In 1945, after demobilization, he started to work at the Bolshevik Plant and worked there until his death in 1980. Natan lived with us and we helped his family on weekends: They had stove heating, so he sawed firewood. Natan was a wonderful man and an excellent husband. He only had one drawback: he worked too much; that’s why his life ended so early.
In 1945, after demobilization, he started to work at the Bolshevik Plant and worked there until his death in 1980. Natan lived with us and we helped his family on weekends: They had stove heating, so he sawed firewood. Natan was a wonderful man and an excellent husband. He only had one drawback: he worked too much; that’s why his life ended so early.
I married Natan Raiskin, whom I met at my mother’s cousins’ house in 1949. I remember that I was supposed to go to the Theater of Musical Comedy on that day to watch the Princess of the Circus. My relatives invited me to show me new magazines with patterns, because they knew that I liked to sew. At that time Natan and his sister Tamara dropped in, so we all drank tea and had very interesting conversations, and I decided not to go to the theater. Later we all went outside, Tamara jumped into a passing street railway and shouted to Natan that he had to see me off. He courted me very beautifully from then one and gave me chocolates, but he was always late, which runs in the family.
After graduating from the Faculty of Law of the Leningrad State University in 1949, I worked as a lawyer at the Kirov Plant of Handling Machinery in Leningrad for some time. I was very fond of singing when I was young. When I graduated from university, I entered the Rimskiy-Korsakov [12] Music School and became a professional soloist. I even taught singing at the Gorky [13] House of Culture from 1956-1957.
At the beginning of the 1950s we were confronted with the demonstration of anti-Semitism by the state. [This was the time of the Doctors’ Plot, as well.] [10] Our relatives were fired and exiled to other cities. Uncle Grigory, who worked as a teacher at the Hertzen Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad, left for Kaliningrad and Aunt Tira’s husband, Ilya Gutner, a professor at the Leningrad Medical Institute left for Yaroslavl. After Stalin’s death in 1953 they managed to come back to Leningrad and continue working at their former positions. I think that was possible due to the fact that they were both excellent experts and each had a name and reputation in their field. After the war all grandchildren got a higher education and began to work in various fields, achieving high positions. They founded families and gave birth to children. Our big family gathered for the family holidays as usual.
Despite the hardships our family faced during Stalinism, the death of the ‘Leader of all Nations and of all Times’ was a terrifying shock to all of us. The atmosphere was dismal and mournful in the days before the death of the leader, when the radio and newspapers reported on the condition of Stalin’s health. Before, such a mood was only experienced when close relatives were sick. When the message about his death was spread on 5th March 1953, the sorrow in the family knew no limits. Our eyes were full of tears for days. My brother Mikhail, who was 10 at that time, was sobbing in the same way as the grown-ups. My cousins, Larisa and Lutsia, left a note for their mother at home, and headed for Moscow to attend the funeral of the leader. They went in freight cars because there weren’t enough trains for the number of those that wanted to go to Moscow. Their trip almost ended tragically. They miraculously survived in that welter, which occurred in Moscow, near the House of Unions, where the coffin with the leader’s body was placed for people to bid farewell. A lot of people perished in that throng. Confusion and feelings of complete uncertainty about the country’s future without the great leader filled people’s souls. At present, several decades after, having re-examined our history, we recall that period of our life with irony.
Despite the hardships our family faced during Stalinism, the death of the ‘Leader of all Nations and of all Times’ was a terrifying shock to all of us. The atmosphere was dismal and mournful in the days before the death of the leader, when the radio and newspapers reported on the condition of Stalin’s health. Before, such a mood was only experienced when close relatives were sick. When the message about his death was spread on 5th March 1953, the sorrow in the family knew no limits. Our eyes were full of tears for days. My brother Mikhail, who was 10 at that time, was sobbing in the same way as the grown-ups. My cousins, Larisa and Lutsia, left a note for their mother at home, and headed for Moscow to attend the funeral of the leader. They went in freight cars because there weren’t enough trains for the number of those that wanted to go to Moscow. Their trip almost ended tragically. They miraculously survived in that welter, which occurred in Moscow, near the House of Unions, where the coffin with the leader’s body was placed for people to bid farewell. A lot of people perished in that throng. Confusion and feelings of complete uncertainty about the country’s future without the great leader filled people’s souls. At present, several decades after, having re-examined our history, we recall that period of our life with irony.