She worked as a surgeon in a town hospital.
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Displaying 9511 - 9540 of 50826 results
roman reznikov
We've even discussed the issue of emigration to Israel. If I decided to move there she would go with me. But I have always considered myself a Soviet citizen and could never imagine living away from my motherland - Kiev, Ukraine. However I've always taken big interest in the Jewish State. But my motherland is here and I want to be here until my last day.
While my mother was alive we celebrated all Jewish holidays - we were doing this for the sake of my Mum. We stopped doing it after she died.
I often visit the Jewish center Hesed. I'm a member of the Jewish cultural society and read Jewish newspapers.
The situation in Israel is a big concern of mine. I feel close to the Jewish country and wish its people victory and peace. But I can and want to live my life here.
He had some kind of commercial business.
A few years before the [Russian] Revolution [of 1917] [1] my grandfather and grandmother's family moved to the town of Gaisin in Vinnitsa region, Ukraine. There was a big Jewish community there at that time. [Editor's note: back then Jews constituted 90% of the population of the city. The Jewish community is still big nowadays, at present nearly 30%, or 6,000 people are Jewish.] I don't know why they moved. Perhaps, it was due to World War I. I know that many Jewish families moved to Russia and Ukraine at that time.
I don't know what my grandfather did for a living in Lodz, but I know that he had a big shop in Gaisin. He sold kitchen and household utilities, tools, spades, pitchforks, etc. One could buy anything one needed in his store. The shop was on the ground floor of my grandfather's house. My grandfather's family lived on the upper floor. I remember that it was a big brick house with an iron roof, which could be afforded by rather rich families at that time. There were five or six rooms in the house. I remember the room where my mother and I were staying when we visited my grandfather. It was a big room with good old furniture. I remember candles in the antique silver candle stands, pictures and a sofa with soft pillows in velvet pillow cases. There was little light in the room. My grandfather's house looked very different to me. My mother, my father and I lived very modestly in Astrakhan, and what I saw in my grandfather's house seemed luxury to me.
As my mother told me, my grandfather Isaak and my grandmother Tsylia were very religious. My grandfather started each day by praying in the local synagogue. When I was visiting my grandfather in the 1930s the synagogue wasn't there any more, but I remember my grandfather putting on his tallit and attaching small boxes with small rolls of paper with prayers to his hand and forehead [tefillin] to pray every day.
My mother told me that they had a real Jewish home. They celebrated Sabbath, all Jewish holidays and memorable days. They followed the kashrut in the house and had different dishes for dairy and meat products. They took special and very expensive dishes before Pesach from the attic, bought matzah in the synagogue and celebrated Pesach following all necessary requirements. My grandfather Isaak was sitting at the head of the table to lead the festive seder, and read the prayer. My mother also told me that my grandparents fasted at Yom Kippur. My mother and the other children didn't have to fast until they became adults. My mother told me that there was a rabbi in Gaisin, but people were still coming to my grandfather to ask his advice. He was a very wise and considerate man. I guess he had the Talmud at home but I'm not a hundred per cent sure about it.
I remember some tension in the middle of the 1930s [during the Great Terror]. My parents stopped celebrating Jewish holidays or going to the synagogue. They seemed to be afraid of something but they never mentioned anything to me.
In 1936 our landlord's husband was arrested in Rostov. He was a manager in the fish farming industry. I remember our landlord bringing his little daughter to his house. My mother felt very sorry for the child. She used to tell me that she was an orphan and I had to be very kind and sympathetic with her. Later my mother told me that her father had been shot and her mother arrested and sent to a prison camp. That's the only thing I know about Stalin's repression of people in the 1930s.
My life was smooth and without shadows. I became a Young Octobrist [11] and then a pioneer. I went to parades on 1st May and 7th November [October Revolution Day] [12] with my parents.
I don't remember any discussions about the forthcoming war either at school or at home. My parents must have discussed Hitler's rise to power and the beginning of the war in Europe, but they never discussed such serious subjects in my presence. Therefore, the war came as a complete surprise to me. I remember hearing about the war when I was standing in line to buy some bread or cereal. At that time the situation with food products was aggravating. I don't even remember any fear. The war was an abstract notion for me. I was curious about what was going to happen next. Our relatives from Kiev - Aunt Anna and Marina, Uncle Boris' wife and her daughter Mara, Uncle Emil's wife and my grandmother's sister Fania and her son - arrived at our place for evacuation during the war. We all lived in one room. Although there wasn't enough space for all of us, we could manage all right and treated each other nicely. The situation with food products became very bad. I had to stand in line for hours to buy some food. I matured at once somehow. The war didn't show its frightening character yet, but it was clear that there was to be nothing good or 'interesting' about it.
In October 1941 Pavel Shoihet, Aunt Ania's husband, arrived. He was involved in the evacuation of enterprises from Ukraine to Middle Asia. He wanted to take Aunt Anna and Marina to Chimkent where his factory was evacuated. But Anna refused firmly to leave her close ones. Therefore, all relatives from Kiev, including my grandmother Maria, went there.
In October 1941 Pavel Shoihet, Aunt Ania's husband, arrived. He was involved in the evacuation of enterprises from Ukraine to Middle Asia. He wanted to take Aunt Anna and Marina to Chimkent where his factory was evacuated. But Anna refused firmly to leave her close ones. Therefore, all relatives from Kiev, including my grandmother Maria, went there.
At the end of 1941 my father was recruited into the army. I remember us seeing him off at the harbor - they left on the Volga River. My father got to the training unit at first and then he went to the artillery unit to serve there.
In 1942 the Germans approached Astrakhan and people were running away from them. It was impossible to travel by train - they were already bombing the railroad. We were sailing on the Volga on a barge. It was very frightening. There was a layer of burning oil on the Volga and the river was on fire. We reached Guriev and went by train from there. We went as far as Orys station where we had to change trains. There were crowds of people there, children crying - it was a nightmare. Whenever a train arrived everybody ran towards it pushing everybody else around. It was impossible for the two of us to take a train. Mum and I had to separate. She stayed at this station with our luggage and I took a freight train. I was a quick-moving boy of 12. I got to Chimkent. Pavel sent some transportation to pick up Mamma at the station and she caught up with us.
In Chimkent we lived with the family of Anna and Pavel. They lived in a small house near the stocking factory. Pavel was the director of this factory.
I went to school and became a Komsomol member in 1942. I hadn't reached the age of 14 then, and one could only become a Komsomol member beginning from this age, but I convinced the Komsomol unit secretary to let me join the Komsomol. I believed that only being a Komsomol member I would be able to help the front, our country and work for the victory. During the first summer we were sent to harvest cotton. We lived in tents in the steppe. There were local people and those that were evacuated here. Again, nobody discussed any nationality issues. We were all equal. All the boys, including myself, were dreaming of going to the front. However, I realized that I was responsible for the family and was the only man and had to take care of my mother. I was growing up.
For some time the contact with my father was lost. Then he wrote from a hospital. It turned out that he was near Stalingrad, where he had been wounded, and then he arrived in Chimkent. When he arrived I hardly recognized him. He was exhausted, starved and dirty. My mother gave him something to eat. He was hungry but he was afraid that we, kids, would notice it. His hands were trembling and he was crying. I couldn't bear it and ran out of the room. Then my father washed himself and changed into clean clothes and only then I realized that it was my dear Daddy.
The medical commission in Chimkent confirmed that my father wasn't fit to continue his service in the army and he was sent to a labor front in the town of Makat, Guriev region of Kazakh SSR. My mother and I went there, too.
I finished the 8th grade in Makat and then I studied one year in Guriev. Then I went to Astrakhan as there was no place to study in Guriev. I finished school in Astrakhan. I lived with my Aunt Mina.
My parents lived in Makat until 1946 as my father couldn't leave his labor front assignment.
My parents went to Kiev in 1946.
My parents went to Kiev in 1946.
We lived with my father's brother Emil until we received a room on Chkalov Street. It was a room in a communal apartment [13]. Five other families lived there. All neighbors got along well, although there were people of various nationalities there.
Evacuated families returned to Kiev. Many of them had lost their loved ones. Some of them never returned from the war, some were killed by fascists on occupied territory. There was the Babi Yar [14] in Kiev where thousands of Jews were exterminated.
My grandfather Isaak Shoov, my mother's father, was buried alive along with other Jews in Gaisin. My mother heard about it at the beginning of the war. After we returned from evacuation she and my father went to take a look at the horrible place where my grandfather perished. Today there is a monument in Gaisin to honor the memory of the Jewish people that were killed there.
My father got a job as a photographer.
My mother worked at the tailor's shop.
Life became a routine and I was eager to continue my studies. I submitted my documents to the Law Department of Kiev University in 1948. Of course, it was almost impossible for a Jew to enter university. What helped me was that I was a good athlete and this was a point in my favor. Higher educational institutions took a course of strengthening their sports base. I was told that my task was to not get a '2', the lowest grade in the 5 grade system. I succeeded in that. But instead of the Law Department I was admitted to the Philosophy Department.
There were two other Jews in my group. Our lecturers treated us well until the middle of the 1950s when the campaign against cosmopolitans [15] began. These events didn't impact me but two or three university students were expelled and repressed during this period. I remember them arresting Lena Reznik - this girl had the same last name as I did - and a guy called Boiko. They were both sentenced on the basis of Article 58 [treason] and were released after Stalin died in 1953.
There was trouble in our family, too. My father wasn't a good photographer, just a lab assistant. He quit photography in 1950 and got a job as a vendor at the railway station. He didn't even work half a year there. The other shift man there was a Ukrainian. And they played a trick with my father making up a cash shortage of 6,000 rubles. He was arrested and sentenced to ten years of imprisonment for theft. He was sent to the Volga-Don channel construction site. Life and work conditions there were terrible. Life there was like it was in the most horrible Stalin camps. During all these years I addressed the authorities to review my father's case. I even had a meeting with the general prosecutor in Moscow. But only in 1957 my father's case was changed to the sentence 'negligence' changing the term of his imprisonment to two years. By that time my father had already been imprisoned for seven years. When he returned he looked even more awful than he did after he returned from Stalingrad in 1942. My father hardly ever spoke about his life in the camp - these memories were unbearable for him.