My father read a lot and studied Russian. He successfully passed his exams for the Russian grammar school in Kamenets-Podolsk in 1908. He lived in the hostel and came home on vacations. My father was the only one of the family to finish grammar school. Iosif entered the same grammar school in 1912, but he didn't finish it due to the Revolution of 1917.
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Major events (political and historical)
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Displaying 12091 - 12120 of 50826 results
faina shlemovich
In the early 1920s the authorities established a collective farm [4] in Zhvantsy. My father was well educated and was offered the position of the chairman of the village council, the head of the collective farm. He got this responsible post, although he was only in his early twenties then.
My mother's family lived in Mohilev-Podolsk. It was a fairly big town at that time. There were brick and stone buildings, stores, a theater and a restaurant. More than 50,000 people lived in the town. There was a big market. Vendors from all the surrounding villages were selling their food products and crops there. There were many Jews in Mohilev-Podolsk. Jews constituted approximately half of the population. Basically, the inhabitants of Mohilev-Podolsk were craftsmen and farmers. All tailors and shoemakers in Mohilev-Podolsk were Jews. Jews also kept small stores selling food products, clothing, shoes, and so on. They lived in peace with the Moldavians and Ukrainians. There were no nationality conflicts. There was also a Christian Orthodox church. People in Mohilev-Podolsk respected the traditions of each other.
My grandparents were religious people. They wore traditional Jewish clothes. My grandfather wore a long black jacket and a black hat. My grandmother always wore long black gowns and a wig.
My grandparents celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and went to the synagogue every week.
The boys studied at cheder and the girls were educated at home.
They spoke Yiddish in the family, but all children also spoke fluent Russian.
Mohilev-Podolsk was a pretty big town, and my mother and her sisters and brothers socialized with many young people. Of all my mother's sisters and brothers only her older sister, Sima, grew up to be religious.
Martin Glas
In 1960 they caught Eichmann [32] in Argentina. A colleague of mine at the time, also a Jew, the foreign editor Vladimír Tosek, lent me a book about Eichmann's kidnapping. I read it, and because I myself didn't remember Eichmann much, I wanted to see if my mother knew the name. There was a lot written about Eichmann in the papers, but my mother didn't read papers, didn't have a TV, and on the radio listened only to music broadcasts from Vienna, so she didn't know anything about what was going on with him. I came over to her and asked: 'Mom, does the name Eichmann mean anything to you?' She turned deathly pale, and just whispered, almost inaudibly: 'That's transports, that's transports.
When my brother worked in that foreign trade company, he was in the Party [31] for some time, then when he went on disability no one was really interested whether he was or wasn't. I was never in the Party. They probably would have pressured me when I worked in news, because when someone was in a management position, he had to be a party member. But before the pressure started, they'd transferred me to construction at Kavci Hory, and there they didn't care about me, because I was no longer a manager. I had them record in my cadre materials that I wasn't interested in a management position, so whoever was above me could remain calm, he knew that I wasn't interested in his position, and I was also left in peace.
My brother never spoke with them about the concentration camp, what they know, I told them.
The concentration camp may have affected my brother differently, but even worse. He told me how once he went to see the movie 'Some Like It Hot.' It's this comedy and gangster movie, and the film's opening scene is from real life. One gang kills another gang on St. Valentine's day in a garage, and then what happens after that is that a couple of men accidentally saw it, and the gangsters try to catch them. My brother told me that with this scene, the film was over for him, that he couldn't watch it any further. To shoot people in a garage... What he'd gone through in Auschwitz and Kaufering returned to him again.
In 1961 they transferred me into the development and building of CST [Czecho-slovak Television], where I then worked as a consultant on projects for the new TV center in Kavci Hory. I was regularly and frequently required to travel to Bratislava to consult on projects.
After school, I started working at the Prague Central Television Studio. I'd already been working there during summer holidays. Then I transferred over to the news offices. There I spent six years, and always experienced something new. For example, when Gagarin [28] was in Prague, I was preparing a live broadcast from the airport. Gagarin flew into space in 1961, so this anecdote took place sometime shortly thereafter. I was the first to arrive at the airport, and the last to leave, because I wanted to be sure that everything was in order, even though by myself I probably wouldn't have saved anything.
After the wedding, my wife and I went on vacation. We were pulling along a wagon with our suitcases, and I heard some locals saying: 'What's this? Are they brother and sister? Or father and daughter?' It didn't at all occur to them that we might be husband and wife.
Our wedding, which was at the Old Town Hall, was quite a big embarrassment, because the ensemble arranged a little surprise for us, and plenty of them participated. After the usual ceremony at the town hall, they strung up a clothesline, hung various things on it, and I had to take them down.
She got a work placement at some physical education school in Nymburk, where she was supposed to teach Marxism-Leninism. She refused that, worked as a secretary, and then went to the Pioneer House and worked in the mass- media department. Later they let her go during a reorganization, that though she was a party member, she'd become obdurately anti-Party. So she got a secretarial job in Chemapol, a company that exported chemical products. She wasn't there long either, she then worked for the House of Culture in Branik in Prague 4, but after 1969 [27] there were purges, like everywhere, and she had to leave and started working at the Regional Cultural Center for Prague West. There she stayed until 1990.
I was born into a German-speaking family from Prague, so my mother tongue was German. When I was supposed to begin attending school, my parents decided that I'd attend a Czech school, because we weren't Germans and wouldn't continue in increasing the number of German-speaking inhabitants of Prague. We then spoke Czech at home as well. While my father did know Czech spelling and grammar, he had a problem with pronunciation. My mother, on the other hand, learned the language through everyday conversation on the street, and had perfect pronunciation, but made errors in writing until the end of her life.
She was, however, very intelligent, and not only had she graduated from lyceum, just that being exceptional in a girl's case in those days, but she even absolved four semesters of chemistry at university in Vienna. She told me that during her studies, she much rather spent money on culture instead of food, and got to know and associated with many young, later well-known artists, one name that will speak for all is Josef Schildkraut [(1896-1964): Academy Award-winning Austrian stage and film actor], whom I've seen in the American film 'The Rains Came' [1939].
Because Grandpa worked as a chief clerk for a sawmill in Dreveny Mlyn near Jihlava, the family was definitely among the more well-off.
During World War I he lost his left arm, for which he received a medal. Actually, it helped him during the second war, because, though a Jew, he was despite that a war hero, and so in Terezin wasn't allowed to be put on a transport, and stayed there the whole time. Otherwise, with one arm he wouldn't have had any chance of survival.
During World War I my father fought on the Eastern Front. He fell into captivity, from which he managed to escape, and on 28th October 1918 he arrived in Vienna - right on the day that Czechoslovakia proclaimed its independence, and the old monarchy was falling apart. Because they were counting on him to take over my uncle's law practice, he began studying law at the university in Vienna. I personally think that that type of work wasn't right for him. Because my father was too upright and honest, which is why I can't imagine him defending all sorts of scoundrels, or on the contrary sullying an honest person. One way or the other, after four semesters my father ended his studies, went into finance, and became a managing clerk at a bank.
On the other hand, he didn't know sports at all - my grandpa was so afraid for him that he didn't allow him to attend gym class. I remember that in water my father used to do all sorts of hijinks, somersaults, but didn't know how to swim - as opposed to my mother, who was an excellent swimmer.
My father attended a classical academic high school for eight years, always with straight A's. He was oriented towards the humanities and wrote poems, but didn't publish them.
After moving to Vienna, my grandma and grandpa got divorced. Because my grandpa caught her in flagrante with a certain Mr. Hoffmann, the owner of a real estate agency, who she then married. Because Mr. Hoffmann was an Aryan, this marriage saved her life.
So while my grandfather was from Bohemia, I have no clue whether he spoke Czech, perhaps as a child. Later he spoke German, and most likely probably also Italian. He worked as a bank clerk, and moved to Terst [Trieste] because of work.
My wife didn't have anything to do with Jews, except for marrying one. And also that she had a Jewish girlfriend during childhood. When they wanted to go for a walk together, that friend of hers would lend her a star [26], she had two of them, and off they'd go. After the war, her friend didn't return.
In the ensemble I met my future wife, Hana Mazánková, who sang in the choir. My wife always looked very young. When we met in 1953, she was 23, and I was 22. But I thought that she was around 13 or 14. I didn't talk to her at all, I thought she was a kid.
The ensemble had several components, a vocal group, a dance group, an orchestra and a variety show group, which is where I was. The choir was the biggest, the orchestra and dance group were relatively small. When we were traveling to go perform somewhere, there were as many as a hundred of us. I did puppet theater there, and other various such tomfoolery for the amusement of others.
When I was in my graduating year, I wanted to study production at FAMU [Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague]. I knew, however, that this subject wasn't taught at FAMU. Despite that, when there was a presentation on what subjects it was possible to study there, I went to have a look at it. And so I hear: camera, dramaturgy, production! I woke up and went to the lecturer to ask about the details. Not only he, but no one knew what exactly was going to be taught. I was the first who applied for that year, and they accepted me.