We celebrated all holidays with my grandmother: I remember fancy crockery on Pesach, my grandmother kept it in a box, delicious potato pancakes on Chanukkah and hamantashen on Purim. We didn’t have any of these at our home because our mother was ill.
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Displaying 36601 - 36630 of 50826 results
Frieda Rudometova
I went to the Russian school on the fifth floor of a standard apartment house near our houses in 1927. After finishing the third form we were taken to a big school in Vladimirskaya Street. There were many Jewish children in my class. I had Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish friends. We got along well and I never heard ay abusive words against Jews from my classmates. The teachers also made no segregation among us. As for me, they were particularly sympathetic.
During the famine in Ukraine in the early 1930s [11] our family was probably in a more miserable situation than the others. In summer 1932 my father moved to his sister in Balaklava (a town near Sevastopol). He explained that he wanted to find a good job there to support us better, but when I grew up I realized that just left my mother; he got tired of her disease, fault-finding and of the misery of life. He probably intended to support us, but he couldn’t find a decent job there. My mother, during intervals between attacks of her disease and her retirement to the hospital worked in a cafeteria washing dishes and peeling potatoes and vegetables. We probably wouldn’t have survived the hungry years, if it hadn’t been for my father brothers’ support. I often ran to uncle Grisha’s beautiful 3-storied house in Kreschatik Street [Kreschatik is the main street of Kiev]. They always had a good dinner at home. Uncle Abram sent us dried brown crust that my mother soaked in water for us. Our everyday food on these days was plum jam made from the plums that I picked from trees in summer and soup with a bit of flour.
It was hard for my mother to raise the two of us and I went to live with grandmother Pesia. I liked it more with my grandmother, she was very kind to me. I remember that she took some spoons to the torgsin store [12] to buy me food. Once she bought me a fancy red beret that was in fashion then. My grandmother also cooked for my mother and Lisa and I took the food to them. We exchanged our two-bedroom apartment for a room in Krasnoarmeyskaya Street near where grandmother lived.
I studied well at school and took an active part in Pioneer and Komsomol [13] activities: I mainly helped those who had problems with their studies. I also participated in preparations to the school meetings dedicated to anniversaries of the October revolution and 1 May. I liked going to parades with my classmates.
We didn’t celebrate revolutionary holidays at my grandmother’s home, but I knew all Jewish holidays. She celebrated Sabbath and this was sacred for her, and other holidays, and I went to the synagogue with her. However, sometimes I became naughty and brought home the pork sausage that my friends treated me to. My grandmother got angry with me and I laughed.
I finished my 7th form in 1935. I could continue my studies, but I knew I had to go to work to support my mother. My grandmother’s neighbor working in the security of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR, took me there to get an employment. I talked with Satin, a Jew, who was business manager. I worked as a courier and then went to the school in the Central Committee. I completed my secondary education. When they asked me what profession I wanted to study I almost pronounced that I wanted to be a cook. I was always hungry and my strongest desire was to eat my fill, but I was ashamed to say it and said that I wanted to be a telephone operator. I finished a course of few months and began to work as a telephone operator in the communications department of the central committee. These were the happiest years in my life. I knew all party leaders: Kosior [14], Postyshev [Pavel Postyshev (1887-1939), political activist. In 1926 he became secretary of the Central committee of the Communist party (of Bolsheviks) of Ukraine. In 1930-1933 secretary of the Central committee of the Communist party (of Bolsheviks), 1933 2nd secretary of the Central committee of the Communist party of Ukraine. Arrested in 1934-38. Rehabilitated posthumously], and I knew the voice of Stalin: I connected him through the governmental communication equipment. They were great people and they treated me, a poor Jewish girl so well giving me an opportunity to study. I received food coupons, garment and shoe coupons.
I gained some weight, grew prettier and made many friends. My close friend Lenochka, the daughter of a frontier colonel, and I often went to walk on the Dnieper slopes where there was a brass orchestra playing. I loved dancing and often went to the dancing ground.
The horrific 1930s [15] were on their way. I never thought why the boards on the party boss’ offices were often replaced and the people working in them disappeared to be later declared ‘enemies of the people’ [16]. Kosior and Postyshev disappeared, and so did humble human resource manager Satin and many others. Once I asked Lena’s father about it, and he advised me to never ask these questions, so I didn’t. I was young and didn’t want to think negative: we believed in communist ideas and credibility of everything happening in our great country.
In 1936 I had my first vacation. I took half of it: in May I went to my hometown of Murafa – I felt like visiting the town where I was born. My grandmother Feiga, whom I had never seen before, lived in Murafa. I plunged into the Jewish way of life that still existed in the town. We went to the synagogue, celebrated Sabbath according to all rules, went to the cemetery where grandfather Berl was buried. I was young and wanted to go to the new club to dance. There was an amateur orchestra playing: two Jewish violinists, a pianist and a drummer. The public also danced tango and waltz that had recently become in fashion. However, when they played Jewish music, everybody joined in dancing: freilakh in the circle and other dances. I met my distant relatives: uncle Grigoriy wife’s sister and her children, and we became friends.
I met my distant relatives: uncle Grigoriy wife’s sister and her children, and we became friends. They all perished in Murafa during the Great Patriotic War.
My father Samuel was born in Murafa in 1895. He was named Shloime at birth, but later, before obtaining a Soviet passport he changed his name to Samuel that sounded more familiar to him.
, Ukraine
Being the oldest son in the family he went to work after finishing the cheder. First he worked as a loader at my grandfather’s storage facility while gradually he studied the pharmaceutical business.
My father was subject to military service during WWI, but grandfather Yefim didn’t want his older son to go to the war and paid for him to be released from service.
My father grew up in a very religious family. He went to the synagogue with his father and at the age of 13 he had a bar mitzvah. Therefore, when the Civil War began, my father, being a religious man, strongly believed that it was against the human nature, something that his character and education could never agree to. Many other young men including his brother Grigoriy joined the revolutionary activities, but he stayed with his parents.
Somehow he met my mother, and I think they met with the help of matchmakers, and they got married in 1918.
My mother’s older sister Maria, born in 1899, lived in Kharkov after the revolution. She was director of a kindergarten.
Berl was a craftsmen, but I don’t know what exactly he was doing. His family was rather poor: they rented two little rooms.
Berl and Feiga raised their girls Jewish. They observed Jewish traditions, followed kashrut, celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and fasted on Yom Kippur.
My mother had no education: my grandfather could not afford to pay for a teacher, but she studied in an elementary Jewish school for a year or two.
My parents got married in 1918. Of course, there was a chuppah at the synagogue, but there was no big wedding party due to the hard times: this was the period of the civil war, when the power switched from one group to another resulting in pogroms. After the wedding the newly weds settled down in grandfather Yefim’s house that was bigger and more comfortable than my mother parents’ apartment.
He worked as a night man: he never managed to get a job in a pharmacy by his specialty. I spent two weeks with my father. I never saw him again: he was arrested in 1937. Even night men could be declared enemies of the people or spies at the time for a joke told at the wrong time and at the wrong place. This happened to my father. My father was taken to a camp in Komi ASSR.
My father was taken to a camp in Komi ASSR. My grandmother Pesia wrote him letters, but I was afraid of corresponding with him, and asked her to not even mention anything about me. I understood that I would be fired if this happened. My father started work at the wood cutting ground, but later he was transferred to the pharmacy in the camp.
In 1938 my grandmother went to visit uncle Abram in Leningrad, but then she stayed to live there. From there she sent my father my photograph in 1940. I was immediately invited to the human resource office where they offered me to resign. They never explained for what reason, but it was clear that it happened because of my father. What was surprising was that I had worked three years before they disclosed this information about my father: a daughter of an enemy of the people could not be allowed to work in party organs.
My father died in 1940. My grandmother and I got to know this after the Great Patriotic War, when my father was rehabilitated posthumously in the 1950s.
I went to work as a telephone operator at the shipyard and repair shop ‘Leninskaya Kuznia’.
My sister Lisa went to work at the registry office in a big polyclinic after finishing the 7th form. Lisa’s dream was to become a doctor or at least, a medical nurse.
Here, in the basement of my grandfather’s house I Frieda Ladinzon, was born on 17 June 1919. At this time there were Petlura troops [9], in the town and Jews were hiding away. Our family and few neighbors’ families were hiding in the big basement of my grandfather’s house. My mother’s neighbor Hilia was a midwife for my mother. The woman had many children and was quite capable of helping my mother. In early 1920, when I was a little over six months, my parents, my grandmother and grandfather Ladinzons and my father’s brothers left the house and all their belongings to move for Kiev escaping from continuing pogroms. Actually, by this time the family of my grandfather and father was miserably poor after so many pogroms and robberies.
Uncle Abram lived in Kiev. He was rich and bought a two-bedroom apartment in the center of Kiev in Shota Rustaveli Street for us, and a good big room in an old building in Krasnoarmeyskaya Street. Our family was very poor and if it hadn’t been for my uncle Abram’s support we wouldn’t have survived the famine in the 1920s. My father didn’t have a job.
One of my earliest memories was my grandfather Yefim’s death and funeral. He died in January 1924 around the time when Lenin died [10]. I remember my father and his brothers discussing that they could not make arrangements for my grandfather to be buried due to Lenin’s death. My grandfather’s body was lying on the floor wrapped in cerements. I remember my mother and other women sitting on the floor in torn clothes wailing. A rabbi and cantor from the Brodskiy [Brodski family – Russian sugar manufacturers. They started sugar manufacturing business in 1840s. Organized the 1st sugar syndicate in Russia in (1887). Sponsored construction of hospitals and asylums in Kiev and other towns in Russia, including the biggest and most beautiful synagogue in Kiev] synagogue located in Shota Rustaveli Street came to recite the mourning prayer after my grandfather. My grandfather was carried to the cemetery wrapped in cerements. The other children and I stayed at home.