He was Vitaliy Nikiforenko. He was a student of the Institute of Food Industry in Kiev.
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Sarra Nikiforenko
I worked at the laboratory at the sugar factory and my husband was an engineer at the same factory. We worked there a few months since Vitaliy got a job offer in Kremenchug in the same year of 1930 [an industrial town on the bank of the Dnepr River in Poltava region, 240 km from Kiev].
We worked there a few months since Vitaliy got a job offer in Kremenchug in the same year of 1930 [an industrial town on the bank of the Dnepr River in Poltava region, 240 km from Kiev]. There was a military laboratory responsible for monitoring strategic stocks of grain and later it was involved in the development of food stock storage conditions. My husband and I went to work in Kremenchug.
There were beautiful Jewish weddings in our town in summer when everything was in blossom. We had a big garden where a big silk shawl was spread over blooming branches to make a chuppah. Of course, the rabbi came to a wedding: he respected our family a lot. He said a prayer and a bride and bridegroom went around the chuppah: all Jewish customs were observed. My sisters got married in this way and we all sang songs at their weddings.
When the revolution took place in 1917 I was 8 years old and I don’t remember much of this period. My mother didn’t allow me to go far from home. Sometimes gangs 9 came to town. People said they were Petlura bands 10. People were afraid of them. I remember mother made my older sisters stay in bed. She wrapped their heads in shawls and told them to stay quiet. When somebody approached our house she yelled ‘Typhoid, typhoid!’ The bandits got scared and left or grounds. Several times we hid in our cellar. The situation was very scaring and when the soviet power was established our family perceived it as liberation and beginning of a quiet life. However, my father didn’t put much trust in Bolsheviks since he referred them to big talkers rather than doers.
There was order established in the town. A number of new institutions were opened where Jews were getting managerial positions there. There was a popular song ‘Who was a nobody will become a man of substance’. Many people were happy. My father didn’t get much for his work Our living standards became considerably lower. Nobody needed good furniture. He mainly fixed old furniture in schools, cultural centers and canteens.
There was order established in the town. A number of new institutions were opened where Jews were getting managerial positions there. There was a popular song ‘Who was a nobody will become a man of substance’. Many people were happy. My father didn’t get much for his work Our living standards became considerably lower. Nobody needed good furniture. He mainly fixed old furniture in schools, cultural centers and canteens.
There was a Jewish school named after Sholem Aleichem 11 opened in Smela. There were all subjects taught in Yiddish and there were Russian and Ukrainian classes in it. We read Sholem Aleichem’s stories about a hard life of Jewish children within restricted residential areas – the Pale of Settlement 12 We felt happy that nothing like that would ever happen in our country again. There were portraits of Lenin in each classroom. We were told that only thanks to him we got everything that we had. When in January 1924 it was announced that he died we cried a lot. We couldn’t imagine life without him. I remember it was freezing on that day and when I was running home tears from my eyes were turning into ice. I don’t think my mother or father cared about Lenin’s death. I studied well at school. I was praised for my successes. I didn’t become a pioneer at school since I was older than the age of 14 until when children could become pioneers. I didn’t join the Komsomol, either 13. I didn’t participate in any activities, besides, my origin was far from proletariat: I was an entrepreneur’s daughter. I wasn’t ‘politically educated’ or active and I didn’t care about Komsomol.
I was very fond of singing. My friends and I used to go to the bank of Tismin River where we sang Russian and Ukrainian songs, but mostly Yiddish, of course. My voice has lost its strength, but I remember songs:
[sings in Yiddish]
‘Girl Hannushka went to the woods and unbraided her hair. All of a sudden she met a young man that asked her ‘Hannushka, what are you doing in the forest? What are you looking for, did you lose something?’ She says ‘I’m looking for daisy flowers’. He said ‘Well, you are on the way there while I have already found the most beautiful and interesting flower with lovely hair and beautiful eyes. May I stroke your hair and hold your hand?’ ‘No, you can’t. My mother wouldn’t allow it. My mother is old and ill and I won’t do things that she forbids’. He was hurt and left and she goes on looking for a daisy, tra-la-la’ .
Many boys fell in love with me when they heard me singing. Young people used to get together in the evening: there was quite a bunch of us. We played lotto – it was a popular game then, [the players got 3 cards each with numbers in them written in rows. The game master took wooden casks with numbers out of a bag and a player having this or that number took a cask and put it on a card. The winner was the one that was the first to fill up his card] went to the park – there was a big park in Smela. In summer we went boating on the Tiasmin River. We liked going to the cinema at weekends: there were silent movies, but we liked comedies, especially the ones with Charlie Chaplin. I had Jewish friends. We spoke Yiddish, but we had fluent Russian as well.
[sings in Yiddish]
‘Girl Hannushka went to the woods and unbraided her hair. All of a sudden she met a young man that asked her ‘Hannushka, what are you doing in the forest? What are you looking for, did you lose something?’ She says ‘I’m looking for daisy flowers’. He said ‘Well, you are on the way there while I have already found the most beautiful and interesting flower with lovely hair and beautiful eyes. May I stroke your hair and hold your hand?’ ‘No, you can’t. My mother wouldn’t allow it. My mother is old and ill and I won’t do things that she forbids’. He was hurt and left and she goes on looking for a daisy, tra-la-la’ .
Many boys fell in love with me when they heard me singing. Young people used to get together in the evening: there was quite a bunch of us. We played lotto – it was a popular game then, [the players got 3 cards each with numbers in them written in rows. The game master took wooden casks with numbers out of a bag and a player having this or that number took a cask and put it on a card. The winner was the one that was the first to fill up his card] went to the park – there was a big park in Smela. In summer we went boating on the Tiasmin River. We liked going to the cinema at weekends: there were silent movies, but we liked comedies, especially the ones with Charlie Chaplin. I had Jewish friends. We spoke Yiddish, but we had fluent Russian as well.
In 1931, soon after we left, my parents moved to Baku where my brother Solomon resided. He always said this was a nice and hospitable town and there was always a lot of food. There were no problems with getting a place to live or a job in Baku. There was a big Jewish community and a synagogue in the town. Gradually all of my relatives moved to Baku. There is a big area at the Jewish cemetery in Baku where my relatives were buried. Baku is the capital of Azerbaijan in Zakavkaziye. It stands on the Caspian Sea, and is the center of oil industry that enriched this town at the beginning of 20th century. The town is located in 2700 km from Kiev.
We got a room in Kremenchug. We cooked on the primus stove 15 and there was a wood stoked stove for heating. I went to work and didn’t spend much time doing the housework.
Vitaliy was manager of the laboratory and I was a lab assistant at the same laboratory. My husband held an important position related to restricted information and he just had to join the Communist Party. Besides, since this was a military laboratory he was given a rank.
We were expecting a child in 1932. This was a hard period in Ukraine. Although we received food packages as a military family I was still concerned and went to Baku to be with my mother when the baby was due.
My parents had neighbors of all nationalities: Azerbaijan, Armenian, Russian and Jewish. They were friendly with each other and felt comfortable speaking their own languages. When my father went to synagogue all non-Jewish neighbors greeted him with Jewish holidays. My mother treated them to some Jewish food and they treated us to their traditional food.
In 1932 my older daughter Ludmila was born. In his letters Vitaliy talked me out of returning to Ukraine. This was the period of forced famine in Ukraine while there was plenty of food in Baku: lots of vegetables and fruit. My husband was involved in a very important mission: filling strategic stocks of grain. Vitaliy was a very responsible employee.
In 1933 he wrote me that he got an invitation to the military Academy in Kharkov. This was a good offer and he moved to Kharkov. He became head of the laboratory involved in scientific research of strategic food storage conditions. Vitaliy was also invited to teach politics and some technical subjects at the Military Academy.
Kharkov was the capital of Ukraine before 1934. It was a big industrial center.
He received a nice two-room apartment in the apartment building for military officials and lecturers of the military Academy. I arrived from Baku with our little daughter. I liked the apartment and our neighbors. It was a new house with a bathroom, toilet and electricity. In 1938 we got gas in the house. Wives of commanders of the Red army treated me nicely.
My husband provided well for us and I didn’t have to go to work. My husband worked a lot preparing for lectures and writing a textbook in chemistry.
I was involved in public activities. Wives of military officials didn’t work, but attended sport and amateur art clubs. I took part in sport competitions. I took the first place in shooting. I also took part in concerts singing Ukrainian and Russian songs. Once I was invited to study in Odessa Conservatory, a teacher heard me singing, but Vitaliy was against it. He didn’t want to part with me.
The prewar period can be determined with one word – ‘enthusiasm’. We sang, laughed and believed in the wonderful future. We had little free time, but when we had some we went to the cinema. We got together with friends, had tea and sang Soviet songs from the movies we saw.
Thank God none of our relatives suffered from repression in 1930s 16. We were aware of the ongoing arrests and exiling people, but we believed that things were going right and the Soviet power was just. We had Jewish friends and neighbors and they didn’t face any mistreats.
Military officers realized that the war was inevitable, but even then, the day of 22 June 1941 when the war began came as a big surprise. Vitaliy was recruited to the front right away and I kept listening to the radio that kept announcing that the Soviet troops were leaving towns to Germans.
The front was approaching Kharkov. All big shots and officials in our house sent their families away. There were only few of us left: wives whose husbands were at the front and their children. I wrote my husband that all other officials evacuated their families and there were enough of us left to make cutlets for Hitler. I was aware of the brutality of Germans since mass media published this information [editor’s note: it is known that no Soviet mass media published anything about extermination of Jews by Nazi, but this is what Sarra said]. In few days a general called me to his office: he even sent a car to take me there. I thought that something was wrong with my husband. When I came to his office he asked ‘Where is your husband?’ I said ‘At the front’. ‘Do you correspond with him?’ I said ‘Yes, I do’. ‘Why is he there?’ ‘What do you mean – why? He’s struggling’. – ‘Then why do you make him feel bad?’ What happened was that they intercepted my letter . I said ‘Then why did all other families leave? Look, there are only few of us left’. ‘A bus will pick you up tonight. Go get ready’. In the evening a bus arrived and took us – 5 families that were left – to the station where we got on a freight train for transportation of horses and taken to Saratov region, one of the biggest regions in Povolzhiye, on the Volga. [The eastern part of Saratov region is located in Zavolzhiye steppe areas with continental climate in about 2000 km from Kiev] Pirpilovo village in 40 kms from railway.
We were accommodated in local houses. I met a woman on the train. She had two girls and we decided to keep together. Our landlady had three children. We called her by her patronymic – Stepanovna. She let us stay in her biggest room. She treated us as if we were her family.
Zhenia, the woman I met, and I worked at the collective farm. I was strong and took to any work to earn sufficient food for my children. I had never done any farm work before, but at this collective farm I did mowing and stacking working with scythe and pitchfork and singing. I sang beautiful songs like ‘Katyusha’, a song about a ‘blue kerchief’, ‘four steps to death’. They were very popular at that time. These were Russian songs, but they were close to my patriotic spirit. Once I fell from haystack and got injured by a pitchfork. Other women dressed the wound with some rags and I got back to work. I still have a scar. I also worked with grass cutter. I was the only Jew in the village and people respected me.
God helped me: I had work to do and my children had sufficient food. Zhenia and I went to cut sunflower stems in winter. There was waist-high snow in the steppe. We cut stems to stoke them in the oven. Winters were severe. I had a pair of my husband’s boots and his trousers that rescued me from frost. We earned coupons for grain or flour and cereals. In towns people received bread coupons for work. As an officer’s wife I had a certificate for money allowances that I could receive at a registry office, but the nearest one was located in 40 km and there was no transportation there. I received the total amount after the war.
Ludmila went to school in the village. Although she was a spoiled town girl in Kharkov, there, in the village she was like all other village children, wearing her winter coat and wrapped in a big shawl. I gave all my clothes to villagers: I would have done anything to make them like us. Tamara was small. She and other children waited for us to come home from work sitting on the stove in winter or playing in the yard in summer. The children were used to being on their own.
The most important events for me were letters from my husband and relatives from Baku. Vitaliy was a major in logistics services – he was responsible for soldiers’ meals. Although he was not at the frontline he was shell-shocked twice and rescued from a pile that fell on him. He had an injury of his back, but he remained in service.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
My younger brother Boris, his son and my sister Polia’s husband Boris perished at the front. Polia couldn’t bear that he died .
,
During WW2
See text in interview
In 1945 Vitaliy got a job assignment to Prikarpatiye regiment. He was a colonel. In Lvov he received a big apartment in the house for high-rank officers. His messenger arrived to pick us up in Saratov region. We didn’t even have clothes to put on. I made a pinafore dress from a rucksack for me and wore it over my husband’s shirt. We didn’t have any luggage with us and traveled light. I was very excited about seeing my husband: we hadn’t seen each other for four years. Vitaliy didn’t change: he was handsome and kind and loved me much. He would have done anything for me.
He continued his service in logistics units. He was responsible for keeping food stocks in the army.