My friends from high school were Maria, Velichka... We were very close then and still are. As a child I visited a colony [children's summer camp]. As I was physically very weak as well as needy, they always included me in those colonies. I have visual memories from St. Konstantin and Elena [a Black Sea resort]. Almost every summer they used to list me in a colony. I was such a crybaby. From the first day to the last I used to cry for my mummy. My parents didn't have the opportunity to go on vacations and they were happy to send me, at least my food was provided there.
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Displaying 11671 - 11700 of 50826 results
Anna Danon
We attended elementary and high school at the Bulgarian schools, even though most of our Jewish coevals attended the Jewish school. My father had never been a slave to those things. Generally he had progressive views and didn't have concrete political convictions. I can definitely say that there was no anti-Semitism in school. I even remember that we studied religion at school and our teacher Miss Antonova used to say before the beginning of the lesson: 'Children, if there are any Jewish kids, they are allowed to play outside, it is not obligatory for them.' But I was a real 'grinder', striving for her attention, and when she asked questions about the different proverbs of the Bible, I fell over myself to participate. Once she said: 'Shame on you, children! Anna is an Israelite and look how assiduous she is in our classes!'
I was a good student and because of that I took part in the ceremony for the opening of the school year reciting 'I Am a Child of Bulgaria' every year. [This is a famous poem by Ivan Vazov, a doyen of Bulgarian literature.] And I recited it with such pathos! My favorite subject in high school was Bulgarian, and even now I help my granddaughter with learning it.
I was a good student and because of that I took part in the ceremony for the opening of the school year reciting 'I Am a Child of Bulgaria' every year. [This is a famous poem by Ivan Vazov, a doyen of Bulgarian literature.] And I recited it with such pathos! My favorite subject in high school was Bulgarian, and even now I help my granddaughter with learning it.
We were always waiting eagerly and impatiently for those holidays - Rosh Hashanah, Pesach, Shavuot. For these holidays each one of us was presented with a new dress. Our family was quite poor - three children and a granny, and only my father was working - but my parents did their best to provide new clothes and other things for us. My weakness was shoes and as soon as they bought me a new pair, I would clean their soles and put them next to my bed. My sisters used to sew clothes for me - actually the eldest one sewed for the younger one, and the younger one, for me.
On special holidays, particularly on Pesach, all families used to gather and every housewife arranged her table with unleavened bread, such as boios, matzah and other traditional dishes. They used to cover the table with a patchwork cloth and after dinner everybody sang the Pesach songs, which narrate Jewish history. They also used to sing another song about a little goat. My father and the other men put several breads in a cloth -imitating the march for saving the Jewish people from Egypt. I remember we used to eat something like a roll with leaves of lettuce filled with walnuts and raisins, but unfortunately I don't remember its name.
I'm not sure of exactly how many people the Jewish community included. There were two synagogues in Sofia: the central one, which was visited by the people who lived around Hristo Botev Boulevard, and our Iuchbunar synagogue, which was the poorer one. I rarely visited the central synagogue. The Iuchbunar synagogue doesn't exist any more. The 'large' building of the synagogue was used on Friday evening for the welcoming of Sabbath. And there was an additional small room in that synagogue where old Jews prayed every morning. There was a Jewish charity organization called Keren Kayemet [2]. Schoolgirls from the senior classes went around the community and collected funds in money boxes in order to support the people in need. [Editor's note: The Keren Kayemet was founded with the purpose of buying land in the Land of Israel and not of helping poor community members.]
There wasn't any religious literature at home. My father was a wordly person, he only visited the synagogue on major holidays and only because other people went there, too - he did it for the sake of socializing. My mother was more religious without being fanatical. She went to the synagogue almost every Friday evening. At Pesach she didn't eat bread for 7 days. She ate boios [unleavened bread] instead.
There wasn't any religious literature at home. My father was a wordly person, he only visited the synagogue on major holidays and only because other people went there, too - he did it for the sake of socializing. My mother was more religious without being fanatical. She went to the synagogue almost every Friday evening. At Pesach she didn't eat bread for 7 days. She ate boios [unleavened bread] instead.
My mother was a fastidious and very accommodating person. She got along with everybody and we co-existed well with our neighbors. We lived in Iuchbunar [1], which was mostly inhabited by Jews and Macedonians. Jews and Macedonians used to coexist quite well together. My mother's best friend was a neighbor of ours, Donka the Macedonian. I don't remember any special custom observed by Macedonians, but the Jews mostly observed Pesach with boios and matzah. We lived in a yard with at least 4 or 5 small houses that were inhabited by separate families. We had no electricity. At a fixed hour each family's housewife used to go out and light a fire in a charcoal brazier in order to cook dinner. There was the constant smell of roast peppers. The streets were poor and miserable, but not covered in mud.
Sophia Belotserkovskaya
In the theater my mother obtained evacuation documents for us. We didn't take very much luggage. We only had hand baggage, but thank God, somebody told us to take warm clothes with us. We went down the Dnieper River by boat. There were air raids. We were scared, women and children cried - there were mostly children and women on that boat. We got off the boat near Kremenchug, 150 kilometers from Kiev. My mother and I walked to the town of Sumy where Uncle Grigori lived with his family. It took us a long time to get there. We walked and got a ride every now and then.
We were aware of Stalin's persecutions [the Great Terror]. In early 1937 Uncle Grigori was arrested and brought to Kiev. My mother went to speak to his investigation officer and stood in long lines to send him food parcels. Standing in those lines she listened to stories of wives and relatives of innocent people that were taken to prison. Of course, my parents understood that it wasn't possible that there were so many 'enemies of the people' and that therefore all those cases must have been made up, but they never mentioned it in my presence. Thousands of innocent people perished in Stalin's prisons.
The saddest memory of my childhood is the famine in Ukraine in 1932-33 [15]. I even dreamed of white bread at night. I remember that my mother refused to buy me a bun averting her eyes from me - this was my mother, who loved me more than I could think of. I remember long evenings when my mother and I were waiting for my father to come back from the theater. He could buy two sandwiches at the canteen without food coupons. He brought us these delicacies wrapped in tissues.
I began school in 1932. My parents decided that I would have no problem learning Russian since everybody around us spoke it and therefore sent me to a Ukrainian school. A Jewish school was out of the question. Although my parents always identified themselves as Jews and even exchanged phrases in Yiddish, my father spoke Ukrainian because his profession required it. Besides, my parents were typical Ukrainian intellectuals of Jewish origin.
, Ukraine
She and my grandfather were hiding from pogroms in Russian families. They suffered from hunger and destitution. After my grandfather died Uncle Grigori, who served in Kamenets-Podolskiy in Western Ukraine at the time, sent her an invitation. He helped her to get a job at a factory and lodging.
, Ukraine
My mother was born in Odessa in 1898. At the age of three she performed on the stage of the Opera Theater in an episode of the opera 'Little mermaid'. From then on her soul belonged to the theater. She dreamed of becoming an actress.
, Ukraine
My grandfather was a self-educated person. He was religious, went to the synagogue and observed Jewish traditions. My mother's family celebrated Sabbath and all Jewish holidays and followed the kashrut. However, it was more like a tribute to old traditions and the education that my grandparents got from their families.
, Ukraine
Grigoriy Golod
Our family comes from Khvoyniki near Gomel in Belarus. I never met my grandparents. All I know is that my grandfather on my father's side, Gershl Golod, was a tailor.
My father, Iosif Golod, was born in Khvoyniki in 1902. Khvoyniki was a small village in Belarus. There were 30 Jewish families, who peacefully resided in the village. The Jews were craftsmen. There were Russian, Belarus and Polish inhabitants in the village, and all nationalities respected each other's traditions and faith. There was a synagogue and a cheder in the village. Like all other Jewish boys my father finished cheder and Jewish elementary school. When he was 14 he took over his father's profession. He became a tailor and left his parents' house for good. He rented a room. He had a sewing machine and quite a few clients.
My mother's parents, Bencion and Hana also lived in Khvoyniki. My grandfather owned a haberdashery. The family was quite wealthy. My mother told me that they lived in a big two-storied house with the store on the first floor. They had a housemaid and a cook. They didn't grow any vegetables or keep livestock. They could afford to buy all necessary food at the market. The family was only moderately religious: they seldom went to the synagogue and only observed bigger holidays.
Khvoyniki was a small village, but pogroms [1] happened there every now and then. Bandits came to the village to rob its inhabitants of their meagre belongings. During a pogrom in Khvoyniki in 1918, arranged by Petliura soldiers [2], my grandparents and my mother's sisters and brothers were killed. The bandits demanded food and valuables. My grandmother gave them all she had, but then the bandits killed the whole family stabbing them with bayonets. Only my mother and Sarah survived. My mother was pregnant at that time and hiding in the attic. Sarah ran to the fields in the outskirts of the village. She was followed by Petliura military who were shooting at her. Sarah was wounded but a Belarus family gave her shelter and nursed her back to health.
My mother, Enta, was born in 1903. I don't know where she studied, but she had some education: she could read and write in Russian and Yiddish and told me about outstanding Russian writers. She may have finished a grammar school.
She had known my future father since they were children. They fell in love with one another in their teens and got married in 1918, before the pogrom during which my mother's parents died. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah and a rabbi, a number of guests and klezmer musicians.
I was born in Kiev on 4th August 1922. We lived in Fundukleevskaya Street in the center of the city. After Lenin died (2) the street was named after him. I have dim memories of or apartment: there was a room with my father's Singer sewing machine and his desk for cutting fabrics in the middle of the room. My father didn't allow me to touch his sewing machine because it was his precious working tool. He worked as a fabric cutter at the garment factory and did some work at home to make some extra money. My mother also did some sewing at home for her clients. When my father was at work she allowed me to turn the wheel of my father's sewing machine.
When I was 5 years old we moved to another apartment because our previous apartment was expropriated by the town authorities and given to an aviation club. Although there were two rooms this apartment was worse than our previous one: it was in the basement of a house, there was no kitchen, the stove was in one of the rooms and the stack came out through the window.
My parents weren't religious. They spoke Yiddish to one another and Russian to us [children], but we also knew Yiddish well.
My father worked on Saturdays. We didn't know a thing about kosher food. We only celebrated Pesach. Our father brought matzah home in advance. My mother made gefilte fish that were so delicious that I can still remember its smell and taste. She also made chicken broth, fruit jelly and pastries from matzah flour. On Pesach my father came home early, washed himself, put on a clean shirt and the family sat down at the table. We just had a festive dinner, he never told us about the holiday or any other Jewish traditions or holidays.
I started going to the Jewish lower secondary school in Shevchenko Boulevard in 1931. It was an ordinary secondary school with the only difference that we studied in Yiddish. My schoolmates were Jewish children, but I also had Russian friends, who lived in our neighborhood.
I remember the famine of 1933 [the famine in Ukraine] [4]3. My father bought potato peels and makukha [wastes from sunflower oil production] which was our only food for a long while. My father also received some honey bread at the factory, but it tasted like machine oil rather than honey. He divided it into equal parts to give it to us. There were four beggars in our yard in the corner of Lenin and Chkalov Streets: two men and two women. One woman had an open putrefying injury on her leg which was a terrible sight. Later one man and woman died, and their corpses were lying beside their companions for a whole day. Then coupons for 400 grams of bread were introduced and things became slightly better. My sisters and I went to get the bread and usually there was a smaller piece of makeweight bread in the ration. Sometimes we ate on our way home, and sometimes we gave this makeweight of bread to the beggars. During those hard times Sarah and Haim took our sister Sima to their home. She stayed with them afterwards. They simply adored her and were raising her like their own daughter.
I studied well, but I often got poor marks. When I was in the 5th grade our Jewish school was closed, like the schools of many other nationalities. The Soviet power led a struggle against religion [5] that way. Over the next two years I went to three different schools. I was a trouble-maker and expelled from every school. However, I became a pioneer and was responsible for the collection of scrap. Before finishing school I became a Komsomol [6] member because my father said it would be good for my future career. I remember receiving a Komsomol membership card in the district Komsomol committee. It was quite a festive ceremony.
I had many Ukrainian and Russian friends. In the schools where I studied the last years of my education there were only a few Jewish children, and I didn't select friends on the basis of nationality. My friends and I attended an aviation club where we made replicas of airplanes that we set off on Trukhanov island on the Dnipro River. I was also fond of football and liked to go to football matches. Sometimes my father bought me a ticket, but when I had no ticket I joined a bunch of friends and we managed to get into the stadium without tickets.
My friends and I also went to parades on 1st May and 7th November, the anniversary of the October Revolution [7]. After parades we went to dance clubs.
I dreamed of going to university after finishing school, but my mother was often ill and couldn't work and my father distanced himself from the family. My older brother, David, was a mechanic at the telephone station, and I got a job as a courier at the district financial department. I was to deliver receipts and subpoenas, and I enjoyed my work.
Yiddish and everything else associated with my Jewish identity died along with my mother. I was a typical Soviet internationalist and atheist.