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They spoke Yiddish and were religious.

They were dressed in plain clothes, not very fashionably. My grandfather had a black capote [caftan] and a black little cap [kippah], and my grandmother wore a dark dress and a kerchief.

I visited Olgopol once when I was a child. It was a remote small town. I remember a market and a synagogue; maybe there was more than one. My father, Mordko Gitelis, told me that the inhabitants were mostly Jewish, and that they had good relations with the Ukrainian farmers of the villages around.

Young people return to Jewish traditions. In our family the restoration of Jewish life started with my older grandson Leonid. He began to study Jewish traditions, religion and Hebrew at school. Leonid is the president of the Jewish youth club Gilel. He goes to the synagogue. Michael and my younger grandson Dmitri go to the synagogue with Leonid on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. At home they celebrate Sabbath and Jewish holidays. I join them for the celebration. My daughter-in-law lights candles and we say a prayer. I feel happy, it's as if I've returned to my own childhood.

Chanukkah and Purim were particularly interesting last time. At Chanukkah ten cars with huge chanukkiyahs with electric bulbs on top drove around town. There were crowds of people watching this show. The cars drove at low speed and the colorful chanukkiyahs seemed to be floating in the dark. There was an escort of traffic police clearing the way for the vehicles. At Purim there was a nice performance of Purimshpils staged by the local drama theater in the Philharmonic building that formerly housed a synagogue. Young people probably saw professional actors performing Purimshpils for the first time in their life. This was a beautiful, bright and brilliant show. Other Jewish holidays are also celebrated in a beautiful and interesting way.

Perestroika didn't only bring trouble into our household. It also changed the attitude toward Jews in the society. State anti-Semitism mitigated. The Iron Curtain [28] separating us from the rest of the world fell. We got an opportunity to travel abroad or invite our friends to visit us. We couldn't even dream about that in the past.

In 1996 I visited my brother in Jerusalem. I was afraid to travel to Israel due to my health condition, but my nephews and his sons insisted and I decided to visit him. We traveled a lot and I liked it there. I was happy to see my brother since there were only the two of us left of our big family. I admired the country so much! It's a blooming garden on stones created by beautiful and wonderful people.

In 1996 my husband died. It was an irreplaceable loss for me. He did so much for me, so much! Even when he was dying he was thinking about me, saying, 'How are you going to live?' We buried my husband in accordance with Jewish traditions at the Jewish section of the town cemetery in Uzhgorod. Our son recited the Kaddish over his grave.

It was next to impossible for a Jew to enter a college in Ukraine due to strong anti-Semitism. It was also very hard to get job for Jew.

A few days before his death my father received a parcel with a tallit. I don't know how it came that KGB [26] officers allowed this parcel to get delivered. They were checking all mail. They probably didn't understand what was in it. We buried my father according to the Jewish tradition in the Jewish cemetery in Zhytomyr. My mother died in 1969. We buried her according to Jewish traditions near our father's grave.

Before my parents died we spent all vacations in Zhytomyr with them. Our son also spent his vacations with his grandparents.

I cannot say that we raised our son Jewish. It was difficult at the time. My husband was a military and a member of the Party. He couldn't celebrate Jewish holidays or go to the synagogue.

We spoke Russian at home, but when we didn't want Michael to understand the subject of our discussion my mother-in-law and I switched to Yiddish. I had fluent Yiddish while my husband didn't know Yiddish. When my mother-in-law died I began to forget the language since I didn't practice it. Only when Hesed opened in the 1990s I got a nice opportunity to communicate in Yiddish. I enjoy speaking the language.

I couldn't find a job for a long time. I was told there were no vacancies at school. I was about to leave for Zhytomyr when I got a job in a kindergarten. At the end of each academic year I went to the district education agency to ask them for a job at school. The management at the kindergarten valued me. Finally I got an offer for a vacancy of a primary school teacher. I worked at this primary school until I retired.

At first we rented a very small room without windows or stove. Later my husband received a room and his mother came to live with us. Our son Michael was born in 1954. We named him after my husband's father. My mother- in-law helped me a lot and my mother came to visit us to help me. Shortly before my husband retired in the 1960s he received a two-bedroom apartment. My mother-in-law was confined to bed. She stayed in one room and the three of us shared the other one. After my husband retired we received a three- bedroom apartment, which was quite a surprise for us.

We met when Vladimir came to Zhytomyr on his first leave. When he left we corresponded and we got married when he came on the next leave. I was rather worried that I was four years older than he, but we lived in harmony. We had a civil ceremony in a registry office and in the evening we had a small wedding dinner. After the wedding I followed my husband to Uzhgorod.

Stalin died in March 1953 and it was a tragedy for many people. It wasn't such for our family, but we tried to hide our feelings.

Twentieth Party Congress we all hoped that life in the country would change for the better, but there was anti-Semitism and a ban on religion, although the constitution guaranteed freedom of faith to every citizen. Any person could be accused of Zionism or even arrested for attending the synagogue.

My father went to work at a clock repair shop. I began to look for a job. At first I got a job at a museum and then I went to work at school. I was a teacher at a primary school before I began to teach mathematics at a secondary school. There were many Jewish children at school. There was no anti-Semitism.

We lived in our house after we returned to Zhytomyr in 1945. My parents didn't observe Jewish traditions as strictly as they used to before the war. We celebrated Pesach, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We didn't celebrate Soviet holidays.

My brother didn't want to go to Israel. He had three heart attacks and was very ill, but he understood that his children and grandchildren had no future in the USSR. In 1990 his family and Rachil's father moved to Israel. My brother's condition has improved significantly and his children are very happy to live there. They work. Alla has two children. They like Israel very much. Alla's older son volunteered to serve in landing troops.

We returned home to Zhytomyr. My grandmother, Freida, Mirra and their children were already home. David died in evacuation in 1944. My grandmother died in Zhytomyr in 1952. She was buried according to the Jewish tradition in the Jewish cemetery in Zhytomyr.

Since we left Zhytomyr we had no information about my father's relatives. My father wrote inquiries to a search service. When we were in Tashkent my father received a response saying that his parents were in Tashkent. There was their address in this letter. We were very happy to hear about them, but when my father found them he became very sad. Grandmother Liebe, Clara and her children and Sophia told my father that Grandfather Boruch refused to evacuate with them. When the war began he was about 80 years old. My grandfather felt tired of life. He said he wasn't going to leave with them. My father was very sorry that we hadn't taken my grandfather with us. My father believed that he would have convinced grandfather to join us. After we returned to Zhytomyr we got to know that the Germans had conducted mass shootings of the Jewish population and our grandfather perished at the very beginning. There are several common graves in Zhytomyr, but we don't even know where my grandfather's grave is.

During the war following the kashrut was out of the question. We ate what we could get or buy per food coupons. However, my parents celebrated Pesach. My mother sold bread that she made at the market and bought flour to make matzah. We didn't eat any bread at Pesach. My parents fasted at Yom Kippur. I don't remember anything about celebrations of other Jewish holidays.

We arrived in Pavlodar in Kazakhstan where we heard an announcement that there was a train to Middle Asia and that all people willing to go could travel on this train. We thought that it wouldn't be so hard to live through the winter in Middle Asia and chose to go there. Our trip lasted for about a month. There was no water or toilet in those freight carriages. When the train stopped at a station all passengers ran to the toilet. Local residents brought some food to the station. Many people fell ill and had lice. Many were dying and their bodies were taken off the train at stations. We finally reached Tashkent [2,600 km from Kiev] where we stayed overnight at the railway station. There were many people ill with spotted fever. They were lying on the floor and benches in the railway station building.

We left Zhytomyr on 27th June 1941. My brother was sent to study in an artillery school in Podmoscoviye. Grandmother Pesia-Feiga, Freida and her son, Mirra and her son and our family evacuated from Zhytomyr. David refused to go with us. He said that he had seen the Germans during World War I and didn't think they could do Jews any harm. My grandmother was afraid for her children and grandchildren and decided to go with us. David evacuated from Zhytomyr a month later when he came to understand that the Germans and the fascists were two different pairs of shoes. He found my grandmother and joined us in Kuibyshev region. My father's relatives also evacuated. Grandmother Liebe, Clara and her children and Sophia left about a week after we evacuated.

My brother finished school with a silver medal in 1940. He had the right to enter a college without taking entrance exams. My brother wanted to study in Moscow. He entered the Faculty of Mathematics in Moscow University. He lived in a hostel. Our parents supported him with some money and my brother received a stipend. He had all excellent marks.

The arrests that began in 1937 [during the Great Terror] didn't have an impact on our family. Some of our acquaintances were arrested. My father was worried about them. He was smart and understood what was going on. I remember when my father's acquaintance, who was a pharmacist, was arrested my father kept saying, 'What did he do? What was his fault?' My father didn't like Stalin. I remember him saying that in the early 1920s Stalin was fighting with Lenin for 'the stool' to sit on and my mother was horrified to hear this. Of course, our parents tried to avoid discussing these subjects in the presence of children, but we lived in the same room and often heard such discussions. I didn't quite understand what it was about at that time, but I recalled them many years later.

My brother Abram started school in 1930 and I in 1932. We studied in a Russian secondary school. Boys and girls studied together. I was a sociable girl and had many friends at school. There were Russian and Jewish teachers in our school. Quite a few of my classmates were Jewish, too. I never faced any anti-Semitism at school.

Leibl perished at the front in 1942.

My mother's brother, Leibl, married a Jewish girl from Zhytomyr in 1924. I don't remember her name. They also had a Jewish wedding.

In 1932 there was a famine [16] in Ukraine. My grandmother and David didn't suffer from it because my grandmother's sister Hava lived in a village. She had fields where she grew grain and vegetables. Hava always sent her some grain and food products. Hava supported all relatives. We didn't starve, but there wasn't enough food anyway. My grandmother always gave us some food. If we didn't have enough food we had boiled millet or something else.

At Yom Kippur all adults fasted. Even when my grandmother was severely ill at her old age she still fasted at Yom Kippur. My brother and I began to fast at the age of 13-14, but my mother was still worried about us when we didn't have anything to eat for a whole day.

My grandmother, David, Freida and Mirra's family had their own first seder and we conducted it separately from them. My mother put a white tablecloth on the table. She put bitter greenery, a saucer with salty water and hard boiled eggs on the table. There was also food: gefilte fish, chicken and potato and matzah puddings. There were silver glasses for wine. There was always one extra glass for Elijah the Prophet [15]. I remember what a problem it was for me to wait until it got dark. I was hungry and even more so sleepy, but we had to wait until the first star appeared in the sky.

The family started preparations for Pesach in advance. The house was thoroughly cleaned. It was a lot of fun. Grandmother's children brought flour into the house. We made matzah for four families: for David and my grandmother, for Leibl's family, for Mirra and her husband and for us, and after Freida got married also for her family. We baked matzah in our Russian stove. The women kneaded the dough, my father made holes and Leibl watched the oven. Everybody was busy. We made matzah for one family, then another. My grandmother sent me to the shochet to have him slaughter the chickens. There was a long line at his slaughterhouse before the holidays. The shochet slaughtered the chickens and my grandmother cut them into pieces at home. All everyday utensils and crockery were taken to the attic and fancy crockery and utensils that were only used at Pesach were taken down. We had chicken broth, boiled chicken and gefilte fish made. My grandmother had a copper mortar where we crushed matzah to add it to the chicken broth. We also ate matzah with milk. My grandmother made matzah meal - matzah flour - to bake strudels and cookies. There were two poor Jewish families living in our neighborhood. After the cooking for Pesach was done my grandmother always sent me to bring them fish, chicken, strudels - a little of everything that we had - for a meal. I also brought them some matzah. My grandmother did this on all holidays. She couldn't stand the thought that there was somebody who couldn't afford a decent meal.

My mother left food for Saturday in the oven to keep it warm. She was a great cook. She was especially good at making challah and gefilte fish.

We celebrated Sabbath at home. My mother started cooking on Friday morning. There was a Russian stove [14] in the kitchen. My mother left food for Saturday in the oven to keep it warm. She was a great cook. She was especially good at making challah and gefilte fish. On Friday evening the table was covered with a white tablecloth. My grandmother lit the candles. On Saturday nobody did any work at home. David and my grandmother visited our numerous relatives. Even if it was a long distance my grandmother never took a tram on Sabbath. She walked, although she had problems with her legs. On Friday I turned on the light at home in the evening - children are allowed to do this. On Saturday Grandmother Liebe came to see us. Grandmother Pesia-Feiga was always angry that Grandmother Liebe visited on Saturday wearing no kerchief.

David and grandmother went to the nearby synagogue on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. My brother and I went with them after we turned seven. Women sat on the second floor of the synagogue. My grandmother had the most expensive seat in the synagogue.

My grandmother and David were very religious. My parents were religious, too. Of course, my father couldn't observe all Jewish traditions since he had to work on Saturday, but David didn't work on Saturday. There was a mezuzah on each door. The family followed the kashrut. My grandmother had a twig tray where she put meat to have all blood flow down to make it kosher meat.

We spoke Russian at home. My father and mother spoke Yiddish sometimes, but they only communicated in Russian with my brother and me. My grandmother spoke Yiddish. She could speak a little Ukrainian, but she was illiterate and couldn't even write. I can speak a little Yiddish, but I cannot read or write in Yiddish.