Lev’s older daughter finished three years of the Pedagogical College. She went to work at the local primary school. I went to work as a teacher in a kindergarten. The rest went to work in a kolkhoz. Lev became director of the kolkhoz farm and he helped his daughter to get the position of assistant accountant at the farm. His wife Golda stayed at home. It was cold. There were frozen potatoes and cabbages left in the fields. We picked potatoes for the winter. It tasted awful, but we had no choice. They were supposed to pay for work in the kolkhoz with bread, but it was rarely delivered to the village and there was little of it. Sometimes Golda could stand in line for a day and came home with no bread. Almost a year passed. Lev and his wife were like parents taking care of me.
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Major events (political and historical)
4256
- Armenian genocide 2
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- 151 Hospital 1
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- The German invasion of Poland (1939) 94
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- Romanian Annexation of Bessarabia (1918) 25
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Holocaust
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Communism
4468
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Displaying 35821 - 35850 of 50826 results
Rachil Lemberg
When I heard that my sister was near Tashkent I decided to accept Dora’s invitation to go to Tashkent. I attended classes in the morning and in the afternoon I went to work as Dora’s replacement in the passport office. We didn’t have enough food, but grapes supported us. During the grape harvesting season we went to pick grapes in a nearby kolkhoz and the kolkhoz paid us with grapes. We ate some and took the rest to fruit traders at the market. We bought bread for the money we got. I finished the fourth year of studies in college in Tashkent.
I worked at the construction site in Samarkand until the end of the war. They paid more and I had sufficient food for the first time in 4 years of war. I corresponded with my brother and sister. On 9 May 1945 I was at work. I stood on a hill when I saw a crowd of people marching from the construction site with flags. I understood right away that it was the victory. We hugged greeting each other. There were fireworks in the evening.
I returned to Ananiev. Our house wasn’t ruined and there were no other tenants in it.
My neighbors told me what happened after I left Ananiev. On that same day when I left with Lev Sheinberg’s carriage Germans dropped bombs on the outskirt of Ananiev. Many people perished on the roads. My mother was terrified thing that I might have been one of them. Then Germans came to the town. They established a Jewish ghetto in Zheltkovo station in 15 km from Ananiev. My mother and father were taken to the ghetto and Semyon remained at home. Germans did not allow people to enter Jewish houses. When one of our neighbors dared to come into our house he saw my brother lying dead on the floor. Our neighbors buried Semyon. My parents were killed in the ghetto among other Jews. I don’t even know where their grave is.
Then I moved to Odessa. I received my college record book from Tashkent. I needed it to continue my studies in the Construction College. However, I was admitted to the second semester of the third year in college in 1946 while in Tashkent I was a 4-year student. I missed a lot and such was their decision. I rented a room. My share of the money I received for selling our house lasted for half a year of my life in Odessa. Food was very expensive after the war and the only place one could buy food products was at the market. A slice of bread cost 10 rubles.
In 1946 my childhood friend Yevgeni Stepanov found me in Odessa. He was still on service in a town in the Eastern Germany. There was a housing area for Soviet military. It was a nice cozy town called Galle. It stood on the Zalle River ( Galle-under-Zalle). He wrote me long tender letters every day. Our correspondence lasted half a year. In summer Yevgeni came on leave and registered our marriage in a registry office. He came on a 45-day leave and then he had to go back to Germany. He sent me money.
In 1948 after finishing the college I received a job assignment to Bolekhov village in Ivano-Frankovsk region [550 km from Kiev], in Western Ukraine. My husband submitted a report for transfer to the military unit in Bolekhov. His report was approved. We received a room in Bolekhov and I went to work as superintendent at a construction site.
In 1958 I worked to work at the Giprograd construction design institute. I didn’t change my surname after I got married. I didn’t want anyone to think that I wanted to disguise my nationality with the Russian surname of Stepanov. I kept my typically Jewish surname of Lemberg. I had no problems with getting a job. I never faced anti-Semitism at work. I got along well with my colleagues and management. I worked in Giprograd until I retired in 1977.
In 1953 Stalin died. I remember that it was a great shock for me. It was also hard for Yevgeni. It seemed like the end of the world to us. My husband and I asked the same question as many other people: how we should live on and whether it was possible to live without Stalin.
Then the 20th Party Congress 17 took place. Nikita Khruschev 18 spoke about Stalin’s crimes and the regime of terror that ruled in the USSR. Yevgeni was a Party member. They discussed the speech of Khruschev before it was published in central newspapers. I cannot say that I believed what Khruschev said at once, but later I understood that everything he said was true.
My husband and I were atheists and our children were raised like all other Soviet children knowing nothing about religion. We tried to spend as much time with our children as possible. In the evening our family dined together. My husband and I discussed what happened at work during a day and our children spoke about their school. On weekends we went for walks or out of town, to the woods or to the riverbank. We spent vacations in the Crimea or picturesque spots of Subcarpathia. We celebrated Soviet holidays at home. Our favorite holidays were New Year and Victory Day 19. We also celebrated the Soviet Army Day 20 since Yevgeni was a military. We had guests in the evening and I cooked for these parties. We also invited friends to birthday parties. We talked and danced. Yevgeni and I went to school concerts on Soviet holidays.
When perestroika 22 began in the USSR I was a pensioner. I didn’t care that much. I never cared about politics. However, I noted the changes. Newspapers and magazines began to publish information that one could only hear on foreign radio before. They also began to publish books by authors who were not allowed in the former USSR like Alexandr Solzhenitsyn 23. Anti-Semitism mitigated. USSR residents were allowed to travel abroad and correspond with their relatives and friends living abroad. One couldn’t imagine it might be possible before.
After Ukraine declared its independence rebirth of the Jewish life began. There were Jewish associations established and newspapers and magazines published. They began to stage Jewish plays in theaters and there are concerts of Jewish music and dances arranged.
In 1999 Hesed was established in Uzhhorod. It’s hard to imagine our life without Hesed now. These people do so much good. I am grateful to all Jews who care about us across the world! They support us a lot. They particularly care about older people and I can feel their care. I receive food packages. They pick my laundry and send a doctor to visit me. They also provide medications. I receive Jewish newspapers for free. They celebrate Jewish holidays and birthdays in Hesed. Unfortunately, I cannot attend these events in Hesed due to my health condition. Other people call me to tell me what’s new. Hesed has given me an opportunity to socialize with people. It’s very important for me. I’ve never been religious and I won’t become one. This is alien and strange to me, but I am interested in the Jewish history and culture and I read books about this.
I have dim memories about my paternal grandmother. Her name was Feiga Lemberg. Her non-Jewish neighbors called her Fania. I don’t know her date or place of birth, or her maiden name. She was a short thin woman. She wore dark clothes, long skirts and a dark kerchief on her head. My grandmother lived in the small town of Ananiev in Odessa region [320 km from Kiev, 160 km from Odessa 1, where our family lived. My grandmother lived with my father’s sister. I don’t know how deeply religious my grandmother was. She talked with me in poor Russian and she spoke Yiddish with my parents.
Ananiev was quite a big town for its time. Its population constituted about 50 thousand people. There was Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish population and a minor number of Romanians and Moldavians. Jews didn’t have their own neighborhood. They lived among non-Jewish neighbors. There was no anti-Semitism in Ananiev. All people were good neighbors and supported each other. There was a synagogue and a Jewish school in the town and there was a shochet. The majority of Jews were craftsmen and tradesmen. I don’t think there were orthodox Jews, but the situation might have been different when my father was a child I just don’t know. My father told me little about his childhood and youth.
My father and his brother Bencion finished a Jewish 7-year school in Ananiev. It wasn’t a religious school. I don’t know whether my father and his brother attended cheder. My father was very smart. When he was young he got enthusiastic about revolutionary ideas. My father told me that he and his friend, a Jewish boy, used to go to the attic where they read books of communist ideologists. Actually, my father didn’t go farther than reading. He never got involved with any revolutionary groups. My father had beautiful handwriting. He could write in Russian and read and write in Yiddish. However, neither my father nor his brother could continue their education since they had to go to work to support the family. I don’t know who was breadwinner in the family before my father went to work at the age of 13. He became a worker at a buttery.
My mother never told me about her childhood. I don’t know whether her family was religious, but I think it was. My mother was religious. She observed traditions more strictly than my father. I think she was raised this way. She could read prayers in Hebrew. She had an old book of prayers. I guess she received it when a child. My mother had some education. She could read and write in Yiddish and Russian.
My parents were neighbors. They knew each other and got married in 1909. I think they had a traditional Jewish wedding. This was common at the time.
My father went to work for an owner of a mill and my mother was a housewife. After the revolution of 1917 5 the mill was expropriated 6 by the state. My father began to earn much less and his earnings were not enough to support the family.
After moving to Ananiev my parents rented an apartment until they managed to buy an apartment in a small house with the money their relatives helped them to collect. In another section of the house an old Jewish woman and her daughter lived. We had three rooms and big kitchen with a Russian stove 7 in our section of the house. There were smaller stoves to heat the rooms. Since coal was much too expensive the stoves were stoked with wood. There were few fruit trees, a vegetable garden and few facilities in the backyard of the house. We fetched water from a well not far from the house.
There was a children’s room, my parents’ bedroom and the third room was occupied by my mother’s single sisters Haika and Munia. There was plain furniture in the apartment. The only expensive piece in the house was my parents’ bed of dark wood with carved curved back. My father was a scale operator at the mill. My mother was a housewife. She did all housework by herself. However, she wanted to have additional earnings and she bought a “Singer” sewing machine to sew at home. Other villagers paid her with food or money. I remember that our Ukrainian neighbor gave us milk for my mother’s sewing. It was hard to buy food products at the time. My mother made bread from corn flour for a week. She covered it with linen napkins and it didn’t get stale for a while.
There was a children’s room, my parents’ bedroom and the third room was occupied by my mother’s single sisters Haika and Munia. There was plain furniture in the apartment. The only expensive piece in the house was my parents’ bed of dark wood with carved curved back. My father was a scale operator at the mill. My mother was a housewife. She did all housework by herself. However, she wanted to have additional earnings and she bought a “Singer” sewing machine to sew at home. Other villagers paid her with food or money. I remember that our Ukrainian neighbor gave us milk for my mother’s sewing. It was hard to buy food products at the time. My mother made bread from corn flour for a week. She covered it with linen napkins and it didn’t get stale for a while.
Semyon Levbarg
Grandfather Solomon, my father’s father, was a Synagogue Elder in a small Jewish town in Kiev region. I can’t remember where exactly he lived. My father told me that my grandfather spent all days through at the synagogue. They were a poor family living in a small decrepit house.
My father Ovsey Levbarg, born in 1883 in that same town grew up in the religious environment of his home. He studied at cheder and later had classes at home with a melamed. My father got a religious Jewish education. He knew prayers and read the Torah and the Talmud in Hebrew. My father didn’t study any crafts. He was preparing to be a religious activist.
My mother Hana Myshelovskaya, born in approximately 1890, finished a Jewish primary school. She married my father approximately in 1908. I believe they met each other through matchmakers and their parents’ agreement that was a usual procedure at that time. Shortly after they got married my parents moved to Kiev where my father bought a small two-room apartment on the 2nd floor of a 4-storied building in Elenovskaia Street in Podol [1] after he sold his parents house.
One of my first memories was how we were hiding in the basement of our house from pogrom makers [2] during the Civil War [3]. I couldn’t understand why we had to be quiet and my sister literally clogged my mouth with a piece of bread or other food to make me sit quiet.
From the first years of my life I was used to traditional Jewish way of life that our family led. My father was a gabbai at the synagogue in Schekavitskaia street in Podol [the only functioning synagogue in Kiev during the Soviet times] and a shochet at the kosher slaughterhouse near the synagogue. Early in the morning my father put on his tallit and miniature boxes with parts of the Torah on his hand and forehead - tefillin- and prayed in his room for a long time and then he went to the synagogue. He spent at the synagogue all day. My mother was also very religious. She prayed at home and went to synagogue on Saturday and on holidays. On Friday my mother and sister thoroughly cleaned our apartment, washed the floor and polished wooden furniture with kerosene and the nickel beds – with chalk. She covered the table with a fancy tablecloth and cooked a meal in the Russian stove [4]: Gefilte fish, chicken, stew, little pies and doughnuts and sweet fruit drink. On Friday evening we waited for our father to come back from the synagogue wearing clean clothes. My mother always wore a kerchief or a lace shawl recited a prayer, lit candles and we celebrated Sabbath. My mother and father didn’t do any work on Saturday and we, kids, walked in the yard. There was a warm meal in the oven that we had after our parents came home from the synagogue. There were always one or two visitors sharing a meal with us on Saturday. They were poor Jews.
My parents observed kashrut: we had separate utensils for meat and dairy products and never mixed these.
When I turned six I went to the synagogue with my parents on Saturday. My father and I were on the first floor and my mother went up to the gallery where she stayed with other women. We celebrated all Jewish holidays at home. At Yom Kippur my father and mother fasted and my father stayed at the synagogue a whole day. My sister and I also fasted after we turned 6.
I remember Pesach best. The house was thoroughly cleaned. Our everyday utensils and crockery were replaced with special dishes for Pesach. We got rid of chametz: leftovers of bread and yeast products, that were burnt in the oven. Matzah was brought from synagogue in big baskets covered with flax cloth. My mother cooked a festive meal with puddings and pancakes from matzah. Our father conducted the first seder reclining on pillows. I asked him traditional questions. I remember only one of them: ‘Why do we usually eat bread and matzah while today we only eat matzah?’ I remember looking for a piece of matzah that my father hid from me and this was a part of the ritual. When I found it I was praised and given something delicious.