In 1918 сheders were closed. The authorities would punish people for illegal teaching and studying the Torah.
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Displaying 26731 - 26760 of 50826 results
Motel Meilakhs
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I went to an elementary school. My first teacher was Vasily Andreevich Meschik, a Ukrainian. In our settlement there were only four grades of elementary school. And then Father took me to another settlement of Dashev, not far from Tyrlitsa. I lived at my uncle’s home and went to school there. It was a seven-year school. There were only Ukrainians there. They liked to stress then, that they were Ukrainians, not Russians. I remember all of them with a warm feeling, especially Maria Sidorovna Samarina, the teacher of Botany. She was very kind and tender. The school was outside of the settlement, one or two kilometers away. And the teacher lived in the settlement too. We watched out for her, boys and girls, when she would leave for school, and joined her. And on the way she would tell us interesting stories, and we would confide our secrets to her as well.
Absolutely all Jewish traditions were observed in our family. On Sukkot we used to put up a special tent [sukkah]. We sat in this tent in the open air. If you pulled the cords, the roof would open. We ate in this tent. And we celebrated all holidays.
Pesach was a special holiday. I went to the synagogue with my father and prayed with him.
,
Before WW2
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When the сheder was prohibited, I took Talmud lessons with one almost completely blind Jew. It was done illegally. I couldn’t help admiring this blind Jew in his poor house. As soon as I finished reading a line from the Talmud, he continued citing to the end of the chapter by heart.
,
Before WW2
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Our parents didn’t teach us anything; they were illiterate.
,
Before WW2
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We strictly observed all the traditions, kosher principles and holidays. I can see now: on Saturday Father and I are walking to the synagogue. I have a prayer book in my hand. Father tells me, what I should do.
I am 13. Father invited a famous rabbi from Monastyrische, and he carried out the bar mitzvah.
,
Before WW2
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Probably our favorite holiday was Lag ba-Omer, the 33rd day after Pesach. [This day is known as a student’s holiday. Kids in cheders and yeshivahs are released of studies and allowed to play various games.] A sunny day and we, the boys, were in the street. For some reason we were playing with hoops. All this is clearly imprinted in my memory.
I also remember how after Yom Kippur we went down to the river, and everyone shook out the contents of their pockets. It symbolized shaking away our sins. It stuck in my memory how the peasants from the neighboring houses jumped out and watched with great respect how Jews were observing the precepts of their God.
I began to give private lessons when I studied in the fifth grade. Neighbors’ kids were in their first and second grades. The requirements then were very serious, no indulgences, only hard work. Our neighbors asked me to practice some Arithmetic with their children. So as early as at the age of 14 years I became a teacher.
,
Before WW2
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My closest friend was Misha Moldavsky. He was from an assimilated family, not religious. My parents didn’t know about it, only my uncle knew. But this family was well educated, and their mother was educated, they were all literate. It was generally appreciated, therefore my uncle didn’t criticize our friendship. The Moldavsky family owned a small factory with 25 workers, an iron foundry. Once Misha invited me to spend the night at his, and his mother invited me to dinner. I was sitting at the table and suddenly I saw a piece of bacon in my borsch [red-beet soup]. I was so terrified. I knew that I was committing a sin, but how could I refuse? And it was my first violation, in the sixth grade. I ate that piece of bacon. I had a strong feeling of guilt for a long time after.
Then I joined the organization of pioneers [15]. You know, it was an anti-religious propaganda, carried out by absolutely illiterate people.
Teachers, who we loved and appreciated, stood aside from all this disgrace. Later pioneer leaders appeared at schools, mostly illiterate workers. So these uneducated workers, who came to school to create pioneer organizations, snatched out the best schoolchildren and made them pioneers.
,
Before WW2
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In 1925 I finished a Ukrainian national school simultaneously working as a laborer at a mechanical plant in order to earn my food. In 1926 I moved to my other uncle in the village of Kalnik three kilometers from Dashev, and worked at a mill – chopping firewood and helping around. From that time my official work experience is registered in my documents.
,
Before WW2
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In religious families it was very common to read Kohelet, and I remember, that the book was commonly cited in everyday life.
,
Before WW2
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When I turned 13, a rabbi arrived and performed a bar mitzvah for me.
I regularly prayed until I turned 15. Later religion was so much persecuted that it became simply dangerous to exercise religious ceremonies.
I never felt any anti-Semitism from the part of teachers or classmates in my whole life. On the contrary, Russians would always treat me very well and even helped me. I checked myself many times on this matter, but no, I’m convinced there wasn’t anything, neither from teachers, nor from students. Why didn’t I experience anti-Semitism in the course of pogroms? Peasants protected us. We had no pogroms, because the priest and the peasants, the parishioners, interceded for us. And at the time of Demidov pogroms, the attacks of Demidov’s gang, Jewish girls used to hide in the priest’s house. Because the gangsters raped the girls, who failed to hide in time.
I remember well the first raid of Volynet’s gang [1918]. My cousin grabbed my hand and dragged me through kitchen gardens to the peasants, where we were given shelter and were fed until the end of the day. The neighbor of the owner came and told him, that the gangsters were riding through the village, shouting: ‘Drive out the Jews, or we will shoot the owner!’ And the landlady, Taraska Kudina, took me from the stove and, calming me down, lead me to the ‘klunya’ and hid me behind the sheaves. A ‘klunya’ is a shed, where they stock sheaves. She left me there and came every half an hour to remind me that I should sit quietly. In a couple of hours she came back and said that the gang had left, and led me to my parents. I also remember a raid of Denikin [16] bandits. All the girls hid in villagers’ houses, and the majority of them ran to the house of our priest, Nikolai Ivanovich Kopeiko. And he gave them shelter and food until the gangsters left.
‘АRА’ stands for ‘American Relief Administration’ [17], an American organization, which helped Jews, victims of pogroms, in the 1920s. They brought food stuff – condensed milk, cabbage, oil – as well as clothes to villages where massacres took place. And those who suffered from pogroms were asked to describe in written form what happened and these records were kept as archives. I worked on ‘АRА’ archives, when I was a post-graduate student. For each document we filed a small card. I remember a description of a terrible massacre. Over one hundred men were executed. And those who escaped hid in peasants’ houses. I met a peasant, who had his house as well as his barn full of Jews at the time of the pogrom. So the local peasants not only didn’t quarrel with, but also tried to rescue Jews.
,
Before WW2
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My sister had a son, Mika, born in 1925, who died at the front in 1943 during the crossing of the Dniepr River. She received a pension from Germany, for her killed son.
,
1943
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My sister had a son, Mika, born in 1925, who died at the front in 1943 during the crossing of the Dniepr River. She received a pension from Germany, for her killed son. Then I found out from literature that the division, with which he was crossing the Dniepr, was completely destroyed. And I found the burial place. He is buried in a mass grave, where all his comrades, young guys, are lying. I saw the inscriptions on cast iron plates, the majority of the boys were born in 1925. As I found out from literature, three military academies were joined together and they made a combined division. This division was all lost. The cadets had no time to become lieutenants.
Since 1924 I stopped visiting my parents, because they were deprived of their electoral rights, and were referred to as ‘lishentsy.’ I could even have been expelled from school for contacts with them. But I knew everything about them and they had news from me. However all this was done secretly.
,
1924
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I was a member of the Spartak youth society [1919-1922]. We were the first pioneers, called ‘spartakovtsy.’ I was even elected the chairman of a ‘spartakovtsy’ group. When I turned 16, I was recommended to enter the Komsomol. I didn’t want to. Why? I would have needed to tell everybody about my father – deprived of civil rights – and I didn’t want to tell lies. I thought it was a shame to lie. Well, there was a meeting to decide on who should be recommended to the Komsomol. And I was named. Well, I couldn’t turn it down. But I had a guilty conscience. How should I tell the truth about my father? And I was accepted and sent to the Vinnitsa regional Komsomol Committee for approval, and there the question didn’t even arise. I was the happiest man. God helped me; I didn’t have to deceive anybody.
My first workplace was at a cast iron factory belonging to a Jew by the name of Scherba. His daughter now lives in Leningrad. I worked for him as a laborer in a foundry shop. I needed work experience to enter a college. The following year I worked at my uncle’s mill, chopping firewood for the machine, and I acquired another year of labor experience. These two years helped me to enter the institute. I had two years of experience as a worker, and another two as a teacher at a Jewish school. Having five years of labor experience, I could enter an institute. And I was adopted with my false reference, which was issued to me by the secretary of the town council, a friend of mine, stating that my father had electoral rights. Without it I wouldn’t have been allowed to take examinations. But I lived in eternal fear that somebody would report on me.
From 1927 to 1929 I was a teacher at a Jewish school. In 1927, when I was 16, I went to the regional center Uman in Ukraine and passed examinations without attending lectures to be a teacher in elementary school. I received the certificate and came to the regional department of national education. I had an interview with the inspector for Jewish schools. This was the time of the revival of national cultures. He advised me to go to Yustingrad, a Jewish settlement not far from Uman, there was a school there. I was surprised that I had never heard about the place before, although I knew the vicinity very well. I found a cart man at the local market place in Uman to give me a ride to the settlement and the cart man first dropped me at a book-store where I bought some school books with the money provided by the inspector.
The place turned out to be even smaller than my native Tyrlitsa. A terrible massacre took place in Yustingrad in 1920, and only those who hid in the neighboring houses of Ukrainian peasants survived. For two years I lived in Yustingrad and shared a rented apartment with a Ukrainian teacher working in the same school. I was paid a good salary for those times, I got over 50 rubles with all bonuses, and I spent only ten rubles for boarding – accommodation and food. Until that time I was poor and miserable, and in Yustingrad I could afford to buy clothes and footwear and even send something to my parents.
The place turned out to be even smaller than my native Tyrlitsa. A terrible massacre took place in Yustingrad in 1920, and only those who hid in the neighboring houses of Ukrainian peasants survived. For two years I lived in Yustingrad and shared a rented apartment with a Ukrainian teacher working in the same school. I was paid a good salary for those times, I got over 50 rubles with all bonuses, and I spent only ten rubles for boarding – accommodation and food. Until that time I was poor and miserable, and in Yustingrad I could afford to buy clothes and footwear and even send something to my parents.
,
1927
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In 1929 I read in the Jewish newspaper ‘Shtern’ [Star] that a Jewish sector was soon to be opened at Kiev University. And I rushed there at once without any preparations. I passed all exams and was admitted to the Faculty of History and Economics. But I wasn’t qualified for receiving a state grant for the period of studies, because I lacked half a year of working experience. I had only four-and-a-half years, whereas one needed five. To obtain the grant I had to work as a porter at the doors of the university and it helped me very much in my studies – it was an easy job and I could just sit and scrutinize my textbooks in the porter’s room.
I was released from Vorkuta, and that was great luck, because with the beginning of the Finnish war [23] many prisoners wouldn’t be freed at all, and psychologically I was prepared for that. But I was lucky to get my freedom back. It was on 3rd March 1941.
In 1941 I came back to my parents in Tyrlitsa. We were all together exiled to the area of German settlements in Volga region, the village of Gusenbakh. When we came we were allowed to settle in any house! The place was empty, houses open, furniture, home utensils – everything in its place, as if the owners had just come out and would soon be back. Even potatoes remained undug in the kitchen gardens. No people at all except for the exiled like us. All Germans [24] were deported to Kazakhstan by then even without a chance to change clothes.
In 1941 I came back to my parents in Tyrlitsa. We were all together exiled to the area of German settlements in Volga region, the village of Gusenbakh. When we came we were allowed to settle in any house! The place was empty, houses open, furniture, home utensils – everything in its place, as if the owners had just come out and would soon be back. Even potatoes remained undug in the kitchen gardens. No people at all except for the exiled like us. All Germans [24] were deported to Kazakhstan by then even without a chance to change clothes.
After one year, in 1942, I was arrested again upon the accusation per the same article 39 – ‘enemy of the people’ – and exiled for lifetime to Kazakhstan. My parents remained in the German settlement area of Volga region. As a matter of fact, I had no serious incidents. Even in the prison camp, I enjoyed the warmest attitude from the brigade of porters, which consisted of the dispossessed men. I wouldn’t say that there existed any anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic laws that affected my family and me. The entire official system was such, all of it wasn’t very friendly. We tried to think about it as little as possible. Each of us did our own business, that’s all.