I was subject to the military draft, but all LITMO students had a draft deferment. The institute was considered a military one, as it trained engineers for the defense industry. However, the situation at the front was very difficult. Volunteers were enlisted to the People’s Volunteer Corps. At the end of June a friend of mine came from the institute, ‘Look, we all got signed up for the People’s Volunteer Corps, what about you?’ ‘I am ill, I can hardly walk.’ ‘It doesn’t matter, write an application, we will take it there.’ I wrote an application. The medical commission for the People’s Volunteer Corps was set for 3rd July. I received a call-up paper. I was sick, but I got up and went there. I didn’t want to be a deserter during wartime. Mother went to see me off.
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Mikhail Plotkin
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All our students from the 5th year, except for three people, who got deferment, were sent to the People’s Volunteer Corps Division. Several days later, the 50 boys, who didn’t have any military training, were sent to Luzhsky Line, to defend the far approaches to Leningrad. They were bombed on their way and incurred their first losses. In the middle of August the German tanks broke through our defenses and all our boys perished. No one survived.
I went to the institute. The Scientific Work pro-rector jumped on me, ‘Where have you been?’ ‘I came as soon as I heard you were looking for me.’ ‘Go to this room, there is a commission. The Defense Ministry has assignments for all those who graduated from this institute, without defending a diploma. Go there and they will tell you what to do.’ I went to the commission and told my name. ‘We have been looking for you. Here is an assignment from the Ministry. Where would you like to go? Pick a place. There is Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Sverdlovsk, Izhevsk and another dozen of cities. Pick any plant you want – a firearms plant or an artillery plant…’ All graduates were already drafted to the People’s Volunteer Corps, so there were a lot of free assignments. I started to think, ‘What plant would be farther from the frontline?’ These ministry assignments were for the whole Soviet Union: central regions, Siberia, the Far East, the Urals. I read, ‘Kaluga, Ryazan, Voronezh… that’s bad, the Germans are close there… Izhevsk.’ I counted quickly that it was 1,500 kilometers to Izhevsk. ‘I choose Izhevsk.’ ‘Fine. You will go to Izhevsk and work at an arms plant. Sign here, take the ticket and go.’ I was assigned to the Izhevsk arms plant as an engineer-researcher to work with CME – control and measurement equipment.
We immediately went to the plant in Izhevsk. We had no place to stay – no apartment, no hotel. We came to the personnel department and showed our papers. ‘We have been waiting for you. I will give you an assignment to the chief engineer.’ The chief engineer, a real Jew called Moisey, told me, ‘Moisey Abramovich Plotkin – this is very good. We have a lot of such people. I will issue an assignment for you to this department and you will have to register there.’ I was taken on the staff and the personnel department allocated me and my friend a separate apartment in the center of the city.
In 1942 Irina arrived. After evacuation from Leningrad she managed to obtain an assignment to the Izhevsk Arms Plant in order to be closer to me. She fell sick with typhoid, she was covered with lice and got into the hospital upon arrival. I visited her and took care of her. We got married soon after.
I took my daughter Genrietta to Leningrad in 1945 and left her with my mother and sister Sonya. She lived there alone without her parents’ care. My wife sent me an invitation after she successfully managed to find a job at LITMO. They asked me to stay at the plant and promised to recommend me for a government decoration, but I decided to leave. I came back to Leningrad on 1st February 1946.
My relatives had stayed in Leningrad, besieged by the Germans. They stayed there all through the winter of 1941-1942, the hardest starvation time of the blockade. Such is the fate of the Jewish nation!
Mother and Sonya stayed in besieged Leningrad until summer 1942. Later they were evacuated, barged across Ladoga Lake [18] and put on a train to Novosibirsk [large industrial center in Western Siberia]. The troop train traveled across Siberia and on the way local managers chose specialists they required among the evacuated. Mother and Sonya settled in the village of Cherepanovo near Novosibirsk. Sonya was taken on as an accountant at the local kolkhoz, she was received very well. Mother also found a good job for herself. They helped her dig up a big vegetable garden and plant potatoes and millet. When the first crop was gathered, Mother started to cook pasties with potatoes and millet and sell them at the station. She was a real entrepreneur. She could make money out of nothing in order to feed the family.
Our compatriots, Jews from Chashniki borough, had a tragic fate. I never visited the place after 1929, though I had some information from our relatives. There were about 2,000 Jews in Chashniki when the German occupation began. The Belarusian policeman brought them together, took them to the swamp nearby and shot them. All of them. Old people and children. There were no Jews left after the liberation. Only Belarusians.
Having returned from evacuation, my mother and sister Sonya discovered that their apartment, located on the corner of Vosstania Street and Ryleyeva Street, was occupied by somebody else. So they were moved to a room in a communal apartment [19] one storey higher, where another eight families lived. There was one toilet for everyone, it was horrible! There was a bath in the bathroom but it never worked. There was only a tap. I had to stay with them.
I met my institute-mate Gelman, who worked as a chief technologist at ‘Radiopribor,’ a new plant set up on Koli Tonmchaka Street in the Moscow district. He invited me to work with him as the head of the CML. I worked for 40 years in this position, having started the metrological service for an important military plant.
However, my personal life was not that successful. Relations with my wife didn’t improve, in spite of reconciliation efforts. There was nothing in common between us. Her relatives disgusted me. We became strangers and soon got divorced. Our daughter Genrietta stayed with me. She only hindered Irina in her career.
My cousin Vera, the daughter of my mother’s sister Musia, was married to Abram Meyerovich. She got me acquainted with her husband’s Jewish relative, Marianna Abramovna Meyerovich. We got married soon. It happened on 28th August 1948.
In 1949 our son was born. Jews have a tradition to name their children with traditional family names, in honor of their grandfathers. But in 1949 it would have been cruel to give the name of Abram or Simcha to a child. Anti-Semitism increased in the country. So the children were given Russian names, but at least the first letter matched. We gave our son the name of Konstantin in honor of his great-great-grandfather Kusiel.
The beginning of our family life clashed with the campaign aimed against cosmopolitans [23] in the USSR. We found ourselves in a difficult atmosphere of anti-Semitism, both state and domestic. Eighty Jews were fired at our ‘Radiopribor’ plant, mostly qualified engineers, who held average managing positions. Only four Jews remained, including me. The fact was that my position wasn’t needed. The salary was low, only 92 rubles. There were no promotion prospects. Besides, the job of the head of the CML is very responsible and requires highly specialized knowledge in the field of metrology. Only this saved me from being fired.
My wife graduated from the Medical Institute and couldn’t find a job for a long time. Finally she was taken on in a microbiologic laboratory at the Children’s Infections’ Hospital in Leninsky district. The laboratory was headed by a famous microbiologist, Doctor of Medicine, Moisey Solomonovich. He himself was mercilessly expelled from the Medical Institute because of his Jewish origin. This prominent scientist had to work in a district children’s hospital for many years. Marina worked under his supervision during the first two years without a salary. She had to wait until one of the employees retired and the position with a salary became vacant. After that she worked in that hospital for 40 years.
In summer all our family left for the summer-house, which we rented in the country-side. Most of all we liked to spend our time in Zelenogorsk, though we have been to several places. Sometimes I went to the South or traveled along the Volga River with my wife. I still remember these rare trips like real holidays.
During the war and after it I was several times offered to join the Communist Party. The positions I held weren’t very important, but rather responsible, that is why a 100 percent controllable and manageable person should have held them. I quite shared the Communist ideals at that time, but refused to join the CPSU. I pretended that I wasn’t ready to take such a responsible step. But in fact I was simply afraid. I feared that in case of a serious check-up of my papers they would find out that I was a fake proletarian and that my mother had been ‘dispossessed.’ While Stalin was alive one could be seriously punished for false information in the questionnaire.
When my daughter was 16 years old, she had to obtain a passport. She said she was Russian. At her school all Jewish boys and girls wrote ‘Russian’ [24] when asked about their nationality.
My children’s youth fortunately fell into Khrushchev’s [25] thaw period, when all anti-Jewish restrictions were relaxed. They managed to obtain university education and make a lot of Russian friends. My daughter graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics–Mechanics at [Leningrad State] University, and our son graduated from the Faculty of History. However, I was always against his humanitarian interests. My daughter happily worked all her life as a teacher at the sub-faculty of Mathematics at the [Leningrad] Polytechnic Institute and our son was constantly driven from place to place. After five-seven years of work at most modest positions he had to leave because of insults and persecution, in order to vacate the place for another ‘original Slavic talent.’ He stayed in Pskov for 20 years, between 1980 and 1999. He was not able to find a job in his native city.
After the Six-Day-War [26] in 1967, at the beginning of the 1970s we were given the possibility to immigrate to Israel. Talks about leaving became an obsession among my relatives and friends. We listened to the programs of the ‘Voice of America’ [27] and BBC about Jewish life. Our friends stealthily shared with us news received from their relatives [28], who had left for Israel and the USA. I remember how we gathered at Victor and Tsylia Barvish’s place to see their son Aron off to the USA. We sat at the table and during several hours spoke only about the departure problems, perspectives to find a job ‘there,’ and so on. Later Tsylia retold me in detail and with pride the rare letters from her son.
However, I had to avoid these plans and even these conversations, as I had absolutely no possibility to leave the USSR. I have worked in the military industry all my life and had access to secret information, including documentation marked ‘OV’ [short for ‘very important’ in Russian]. Systems, the components of which we produced, are still the basis of Russia’s defense potential. The perspective to join the army of unemployed Jews, who received a refusal, didn’t attract me at all. That is why the problem of departure was not really considered in our family.
However, I had to avoid these plans and even these conversations, as I had absolutely no possibility to leave the USSR. I have worked in the military industry all my life and had access to secret information, including documentation marked ‘OV’ [short for ‘very important’ in Russian]. Systems, the components of which we produced, are still the basis of Russia’s defense potential. The perspective to join the army of unemployed Jews, who received a refusal, didn’t attract me at all. That is why the problem of departure was not really considered in our family.
My children were brought up in the Russian cultural environment. Their life is quite successful. They had some problems with their ethnic origin, especially our son. But they didn’t dare to lose contact with their ‘pre-historic motherland’ and start life all over. They began to take an interest in the life of their nation and the Jewish community in Petersburg during the last several years. They participate in the ‘Hesed Avraham’ [29] charity center programs: my daughter conducts one of the ‘warm homes,’ two dozens of old Jews come to see her every week to talk and spend time; my son collects materials for the Jewish museum.
My grandchildren have a different fate. My daughter has two children: son Ilya and daughter Julia. In 1989 they were 20 and 17 years old correspondingly. They both announced that they are tired of ‘changing color,’ that they want to be real Jews, so they left for Israel. Ilya became an Orthodox Jew, he wears traditional clothes, is keen on Jewish mystics; he married a charming Jewess from a family of Orthodox Jews from Belgium. His wife gave birth to three wonderful children, my great-grandchildren. Julia turned out to be a very talented girl with a strong personality. She entered the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and defended a Master’s thesis in sociology. Her dissertation was considered the best graduate’s work of 2000 in the field of sociology and anthropology in Israel. Now she is working for a Doctor’s degree. I see the future of our family in our grandchildren and I like this future.
My daughter has been to Israel four times to visit her children. My son also has been to Israel at the Yad Vashem [30] seminar. They brought back brilliant, unforgettable impressions.
I also receive great support from the Jewish Charitable ‘Hesed Avraham’ Center.
Raina Blumenfeld
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There was a Jewish school at Osogovo Street in our quarter and one downtown – where Hotel Rila is now. Currently, a great dispute for the hotel land is under way, because the Jewish community started a lawsuit to get its property back. The building of the central Jewish school was destroyed during the bombings of Sofia during World War II.
Our family was comparatively well off because my father had succeeded in changing his fortune through his work as a tinsmith and plumber, and had even managed to open a scrap warehouse. The house he had built was at the corner of Pernik and Positano and for that time, it was one of the best in the quarter.
During the winters we used coal for heating and we had a shed full of coal. My mother used to give a bucket of coal to everybody who would ask her for some – she never refused anyone and always showed compassion for those poorer than us. There were many poor people at that time. The poorest Jewish families lived in our quarter. Wealthier Jews lived in the more central part of Sofia. When the Law for the Protection of the Nation [4] was introduced, the wealthier Jews had to move out of the city center, because they were denied the right to inhabit the area beyond Hristo Botev Boulevard, and they moved to our quarter.
During the winters we used coal for heating and we had a shed full of coal. My mother used to give a bucket of coal to everybody who would ask her for some – she never refused anyone and always showed compassion for those poorer than us. There were many poor people at that time. The poorest Jewish families lived in our quarter. Wealthier Jews lived in the more central part of Sofia. When the Law for the Protection of the Nation [4] was introduced, the wealthier Jews had to move out of the city center, because they were denied the right to inhabit the area beyond Hristo Botev Boulevard, and they moved to our quarter.
The houses in the Jewish quarter were densely positioned – yard next to yard. Only Jewish families lived around us. There were some Bulgarian families living in the next street, and I had a very good personal friend, whose name was Kristinka. Later on, being teenagers, we used to go out together, too. Our relations [with the non-Jewish neighbors] were always very good. There were, however, such times, when Bulgarian boys teased us with the words: ‘Come on, Moshe, go to Palestine!’ My mother had taught me to answer: ‘O.K., but you don’t let us go!’ I didn’t like those moments, but otherwise people treated us very well. Apart from that, my mother was a very compassionate woman and she would constantly ask me to take leftovers from our food to people who were poorer than us.
In 1928 my father established a Jewish society called Mitzvah Zion. This society engaged in charity and helped poor citizens of Jewish origin in Sofia. My father took part in the public life of Jews in Sofia. Together with the other well-off citizens of Jewish origin, he helped with the allocation of financial funds and different articles to his poorer compatriots through the Mitzvah Zion society.
My father, Josif Sabitai, was born in Sofia in 1900. He was a tinsmith and plumber. In 1928, a year before I was born, the winter was severely cold. Many water pipes and taps had cracked. That created plenty of work for my father and, putting a lot of efforts into it, he managed to make his fortune. And in the place of the one-roomed house, he built a house with two rooms, kitchen and a toilet inside, which was a great rarity at that time. We had hot water from a coal-heated boiler, too, which my father, being a very skilled craftsman, had connected to the stove. Four children were born in that house – one boy and three girls (including me). All the children used to sleep in the same room: my sisters and I on the bed and my brother on the divan. My parents occupied the smaller room. We grew up in such conditions and lived this way until 1946, when my brother went to France and the divan was vacated.