Our grandson Mikhail serves in the Israeli fleet. When he was about to be drafted I told him to come to Ukraine to escape army service. Then my son had a talk with me and said that in Israel army service was honorable, and he was happy that Mikhail would serve Israel. He believed Israel needed them, and that was the reason for their immigration. My son is a real Israeli patriot.
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Displaying 40381 - 40410 of 50826 results
Molka Mirskaya
Now we live in independent Moldova. Many people took the breakup of the Soviet Union very negatively. But I think there is something positive in it. After gaining independence, we have the conditions to develop our Jewish culture.
We have Hesed [13], the association of the Jewish organizations, which unites all Jewish organizations. I also found my purpose there, working as a health visitor and a kindergartner. I liked my job. My deteriorating health made me leave it. Now I am a Hesed client. My husband still works. He is the head of the automobile department in a Polyclinic. We often attend Hesed’s events, celebrate holidays with our Jewish friends. Symbolic as it may be, after gaining independence and getting my original name back, I turned to the Jewish life and remembered my roots.
Ida Voliovich
Nikolay was working in forestry in Western Ukraine. Some Bandera [26] partisans robbed the storage, but the court accused Nikolay. I hired an attorney for my husband, but he failed to have my husband discharged. He was sentenced to ten years in a high security camp. This happened in 1952. I had to take care of the two children and my mother-in-law. I found an additional job in a pedagogical school out of town and my mother-in-law rented out one room: we needed money.
However, trouble never comes alone. In 1954, after Stalin’s death – by the way my husband told me how happy the prisoners were about Stalin’s death after he was released – during summer vacations I was summoned to the public education department. Its head, Makarov, a Russian man, told me that though he knew me as a good employee they wanted to have the national staff working for them – that such was the requirement of the time – and offered me a job in an evening school. This was the second time that I faced state-level anti-Semitism in my life, but the first time it happened in the Fascist Romania, while this second time it occurred in the country claiming that it followed the Communist principles of equality. I refused, telling him that I had been sent to strengthen the Moldovan school as a national employee.
I was furious. I went to see Chara, who lived nearby, and instantaneously wrote a letter addressed to Beriya [27] in Moscow. I addressed him as an ideologist in national issues, requesting him to review my case. I sent this letter to my cousin, requesting her to take it to the Ministry of Home Affairs. A few days later I heard about Beriya’s arrest and was horrified that now they would arrest me. A few weeks later I received letters from Moscow and from Kishinev. They stated that the officials had no right to fire me. When I returned to work after the summer vacations the director of my school apologized. I worked at this school till I retired. Now I am chairman of the council of veterans.
I was furious. I went to see Chara, who lived nearby, and instantaneously wrote a letter addressed to Beriya [27] in Moscow. I addressed him as an ideologist in national issues, requesting him to review my case. I sent this letter to my cousin, requesting her to take it to the Ministry of Home Affairs. A few days later I heard about Beriya’s arrest and was horrified that now they would arrest me. A few weeks later I received letters from Moscow and from Kishinev. They stated that the officials had no right to fire me. When I returned to work after the summer vacations the director of my school apologized. I worked at this school till I retired. Now I am chairman of the council of veterans.
Nikolay was released following an amnesty. [Prisoners were granted freedom before term for appropriate work performance, proper conduct, at the discretion of their chief wardens, upon review of their relatives’ requests or for other reasons]. He was kept in the camp near Kotlas, where he was chief of the cultural department. He was treated fairly well. In 1955 I went to see my husband. When I arrived there, the prisoners had made a little hut by the gate of the camp for us to stay there, while I was visiting. It was a surprise for me.
In 1956 Nikolay was released. He started work at an artificial leather factory, where he worked until his last day. Nikolay earned well and we were doing all right. We had no car or dacha, though, but in summer we often went to the seashore with the children or rented a dacha [28]. Nikolay was fond of hunting. He often went hunting with his friends and brought home trophies. We had many friends – they were mainly those whom we had known since our young years. We celebrated Soviet holidays together and went to parades. In the evening we went to theaters and followed whatever new publications were available. We were living a full life.
My sons Vladislav and Yuri chose their father’s nationality. [In the USSR the ethnic identity was indicated in citizens’ passports. The situation in the Soviet Union was such that Jews had problems with entering higher educational institutions, finding jobs, traveling to foreign countries [29]. It was a natural decision if they wanted to enter colleges. However, they identify themselves as Jews.
Vladislav has written poems and articles since his childhood. He decided to dedicate himself to journalism. When he was in the army, he had publications in the army newspaper. Vladislav graduated from the Spanish department of the Faculty of Foreign languages of Moscow University [M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, the best University in the Soviet Union, also well known abroad for its high level of education and research]. He has worked as a journalist in newspapers and magazines and now he works for the television.
We’ve always taken a great interest in Israel. Firstly, my husband and I never failed to understand that Jews needed a state of their own and secondly, because gradually our friends happened to have moved there. Emigration had never been an issue for us: Nikolay loved Bessarabia, his own country.
Yuri took my documents to Moscow to arrange a trip to Israel for me. I went to visit my dear friend Chara. I’ve been to Israel five times, visiting my friends and relatives. I love Israel, but Moldova is my homeland. I also loved the huge Soviet Union.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
Yuri took my documents to Moscow to arrange a trip to Israel for me. I went to visit my dear friend Chara. I’ve been to Israel five times, visiting my friends and relatives. I love Israel, but Moldova is my homeland. I also loved the huge Soviet Union.
I didn’t observe Jewish traditions after the war. Nowadays many of my compatriots and I are rediscovering our Jewish roots. I am a client and a volunteer for Hesed [31], I often read lectures in the daytime center. I took much interest in the history of my kin and I’ve spent a great deal of time in the archives, looking for information about my relatives. I’ve written a few articles about my ancestors for Jewish newspapers and digests, but my biggest pride is that I’ve immortalized the name of Princess Dadiani.
My brother found me soon. He was demobilized from the army like many other Bessarabians, whom the Soviet military didn’t trust.
Some time later my brother wrote to me that they had sent Mama to an elderly people’s home. In early 1944 Mama died. Shortly afterward my brother Kelman died from enteric fever. Before he died he wrote that Bessarabia would be liberated soon and then we would see each other again.
We celebrated the liberation of Odessa in 1943: there were students from Odessa at our course.
The Soviet army liberated Kishinev on 24th August 1944. In September we boarded a train and arrived in our hometown on 30th September. The town was quiet and ruined. There were other people living in our apartment. I had lost my mother and brother to the war. However, I was quite optimistic. I went to see Frida and Alexei Fesenko. They were happy to see me and invited me to stay with them. Alexei offered me a job. I went to work as a history teacher at the conservatory and music school.
Nikolay finished an agricultural college and worked as a zoo technician [responsible for the implementation of new technical innovations in cattle breeding, health care, vaccination], in a kolkhoz before the Great Patriotic War. When the Great Patriotic War began, he evacuated the cattle and transferred it to the authorities in Rostov [today Russia]. He was wounded during a bombing and taken to hospital. After the hospital he was acknowledged to be unfit for military service. He moved to Georgia, where he worked as a zoo technician.
Nikolay and I registered our marriage in November 1944, and that evening Frania Petrovna arranged a wedding party. My dowry was an aluminum spoon and a plate and a pair of fancy shoes that I had bought on my miserable savings in Buguruslan. Frida and Alexei gave me a pillow. Nikolay and his mother lived in two rooms in a private house. They kept hens, ducks, a vegetable garden, a dog, a cat, and finally I felt at home.
My husband worked in a kolkhoz about 50 kilometers from Kishinev and he left shortly after our wedding, while I stayed to live with my mother-in-law.
After his birth, I started work as a history teacher in the higher party school [24] of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Moldovan Communist Party. The ideology secretary of the Central Committee of the Party, my good acquaintance, whom I met in Buguruslan, helped me to get this job. It’s amazing, though, that they employed a non-partisan Jewish woman. This job was a great support to us. In 1946-1947, during the famine, when my mother-in-law went to stand in lines at five o’clock in the morning to get bread for our bread cards [25], I brought home rationed Party food packages including red and black caviar, ham, etc., besides common food products.
At this party school I had a nice group of future Moldovan Soviet Party officials and writers, whom I taught the history of the CPSU in Moldovan. A year later the Moldovan department was closed. I worked the following two years in a Russian secondary school near our house and then switched to a Moldovan school, where I was deputy director for teaching work.
Early in the morning I heard explosions – many buildings were blasted. Mama and I grabbed our documents and left the house. Mama only made me put on my coat that my uncle had sent from Belgium. She also had her coat on. This was all we had. On our way we came by aunt Tsypa, trying to convince her to join us. She refused, saying that I had to evacuate being a Komsomol member, while they were fed up with the Soviet power and were going to wait for the Romanians. My brother Kelman was in the army. His wife Dora and her child also stayed. She and my nephew Mikhail as well as Dora Fridman’s father perished in the Kishinev ghetto in 1941.
We were sent to Kinel station, where we were given some food and sent to a kolkhoz [23] in Bashkiria [today Russia, about 3000 km from Kishinev]. The kolkhoz accommodated us in a spacious room. Mama stayed at home and Tyusha, Haya and I went to work at the threshing machine, feeding it sheaves.
August was ending and Tyusha, the smart girl, mentioned: ‘Girls, are we going to continue our studies?’ We switched to working at the elevator, where we were paid money and grain for work. Tyusha went to Birsk, the nearest town, where she found a college. Mama, I, Tyusha, Haya and Nyuma took a bag of grain each, and moved to Birsk up the Belaya River. And we got lucky again: we met Nathalia Agasina, the instructional pro-rector of the Kishinev College, in the corridor. She was happy to see us and invited us to stay with her for a few days. We were admitted to the college and accommodated in the dormitory. Mama was employed as a janitor. We washed ourselves and did our hair – life was going on. When the first semester was over, Agasina told us that the Kishinev Pedagogical College was being reorganized in Buguruslan [today Russia] and it invited its former students. In summer 1942 we arrived in Buguruslan. There were other students from Kishinev, Leningrad and other towns there.
My grandfather Kelman Voliovich was born in the 1830-1840s in the Bessarabian [1] town of Orgeyev [Orhei in Moldovan] and spent his youth there. Later he and my grandmother Hina, a few years younger than him, moved to Kishinev, where Kelman became a grain dealer, a wealthy and respected man. My grandfather owned a big three-storied house in the center of the town, on Gostinaya Street [today Schmidtoskaya Street]. Grandmother Hina took care of the children and the household. She had housemaids to help her around. They were a religious family. My grandfather had a seat in the synagogue of butchers [there were 65 synagogues and prayer houses in Kishinev before 1940. There were bigger synagogues for all and smaller synagogues: a synagogue of tailors, leather tanners, butchers, etc. maintained by guild unions], a big and beautiful one, on Izmailskaya Street. My grandfather got along well with his Jewish and Moldovan neighbors, never refusing to lend them money or give advice.
Therefore, when on the Pesach day in 1903 [2] his neighbor and his Ukrainian friend, who had arrived from Nikolaev the day before, came into his yard, Kelman went towards them, to greet his guests. And his daughters Ita and Hava, young beautiful girls with long black hair, came out with him. However, their neighbors, who were intoxicated by alcohol, didn’t come there with good intentions – they knew that Jews were being beaten and robbed in the town and wanted to take advantage of Kelman’s wealth. When they saw the girls, they went for them. Grandfather stood up for his daughters. The ‘good neighbors’ beat him mercilessly, and the man from Nikolaev, whose name was Pyotr Kaverin, struck my grandfather on his head with an iron bar. Grandfather Kelman was taken to the Jewish hospital where all victims of this ‘Bloody Easter’ were taken. He died the following day. The bandits raped the girls and beat Ita brutally – she was ill for a while afterward.
My father Moishe, born in 1883, assisted his father in the grain trade. He studied in cheder like his brothers. Moishe was raised to respect Jewish traditions like his brothers and sisters. So his brothers and sisters were shocked when he got married after the pogrom, ignoring the tradition. He was head over heels in love with my mother, whom he had known before the pogrom.
My mother’s family was also wealthy. Grandfather Itl Kniazer, born in Kishinev in the 1850s, owned a butcher’s shop, the first one in the butchers’ line at the biggest market in Kishinev on Armianskaya Street. My grandfather had an employee to cut meat, and my grandmother Nesia was also there helping my grandfather. She was a cashier since she wouldn’t have entrusted counting money to anybody else.
My grandfather and grandmother went to the synagogue and observed Jewish traditions, followed the kashrut and celebrated Saturday [Sabbath]. However, business came first with my grandfather, so the family didn’t consider it a sin to sell meat to their customers on Saturday.