Stalin died in 1953. I cried for him along with many other people not because I loved him, but because I was afraid that things might get worse.
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Displaying 8851 - 8880 of 50826 results
Moisey Goihberg
In 1954 they found a possibility to get rid of me. There was a party decree about strengthening the villages. I was called to the district health department and ordered to become head of the district health department in the town of Stavysche near Kiev. I had my objections, saying that I was a practicing surgeon doing scientific research and had never been an administrator. But I was told, 'You have worked enough in Kiev. Somebody else will take up your job.' Only I and another Jewish woman were sent to the village from our clinic. I worked for a year in Stavysche and did well. I also performed surgeries at the local hospital. After a year I was allowed to return to Kiev. I don't know whether it happened because I was a talented surgeon, or because my tutor Polonskiy pulled strings for me, or whether it was due to a general improvement of the situation.
We were enthusiastic about the decisions of the Twentieth Party Congress [23] denouncing the cult of Stalin. I was secretary of the party unit and received a letter at the district party committee that I had to read to the communists concerning the murderous deeds of Stalin and his colleagues. I did this with pleasure. I stopped doing anything for the party at that time.
I defended my candidate's thesis although I was an ordinary doctor-registrar. In 1965 the Institute of Urology was established in Kiev and I was a successful applicant for the position of senior researcher. I worked successfully in that post until 1984. After I turned sixty I went to work as a consultant at the Kiev Oncological Clinic.
Before we met Mara had graduated from the Philology Faculty of Kiev State University and worked as a schoolteacher of Russian language and literature. We had much in common: we both loved literature and poetry, and were fond of theater and classical music.
My daughter Natalia was born in 1956. She was an ordinary Soviet child. She became a pioneer at school and then a Komsomol member. In the summer she went to pioneer camps. She had many friends. She knew that she was a Jew from early childhood, but we didn't follow any Jewish traditions or lead a Jewish way of life. She tried to enter the Kiev Conservatory after finishing music school. But this was the period when it was next to impossible to enter a cultural institution, especially in Ukraine. My daughter went to Russia and entered the Sverdlovsk Conservatory. She graduated successfully. Upon graduation she returned to Kiev. She is a pianist and works at a concert organization.
After the war it was not safe to be a Jew and celebrate Jewish holidays. We went to my parents' to celebrate. My parents celebrated Jewish holidays until the end of their lives. They didn't go to synagogue or pray, but my mother always laid a fancy dinner table and had matzah at Pesach. They bought matzah secretly from some people in Podol, and fasted on Yom Kippur.
In recent years the attitude towards Jews in independent Ukraine has changed dramatically. We have an opportunity to observe traditions and study the language, history and religion. There are many Jewish charity, cultural, religious and youth organizations in Kiev. I have the opportunity to compensate for all those years when we were just Soviet people without any nationality. I read a lot, attend lectures and sometimes make speeches at various Jewish organizations.
Ivanovka was a very picturesque village on the bank of the Murafa River. Ivanovka was a small village with a population of 500 people. There were 3 Jewish families in the village, including my grandfather's family. The Jewish families earned their living in the retail trade of essential goods, fuel, grain, etc. They had good neighborly relationships with the Ukrainian population.
My grandfather Moisey was a decent and honest businessman. He was an orderly man. He wore a small beard. My grandfather owned a store where he sold haberdashery, tools and all other essential commodities. He often went to purchase merchandise in Mohilev. In such cases my grandmother Zlata was his replacement in the store. Farmers greatly respected my grandfather's family. My grandfather often gave them food products on credit and sometimes lent them money without charging them interest. They always paid their debts on time.
My grandfather's family observed all the Jewish traditions and celebrated the Jewish holidays. They honored the Sabbath and tried to follow the laws of kashrut. I don't know whether other Jewish families in Ivanovka had a similar level of religiosity. However, I wouldn't say that my grandparents were really religious. They didn't pray and they didn't go to the synagogue in Mohilev, which was about 20 km from Ivanovka. They only went there once a year, at Rosh Hashanah. There was no synagogue in the village. My grandfather kept his store open even on Saturday if it was necessary.
There was no school or cheder in Ivanovka and the children received their religious and secular education in Mohilev. The boys finished cheder and Russian elementary school. Rachel also went to the Russian school. This was all the education my father and his brothers got. But they were very intelligent people and achieved many successes in life although they didn't have a classical education. They spoke Yiddish at home and Ukrainian with their neighbors.
Sometime in 1918, during the Civil War [1], my grandfather went from Mohilev to sell merchandise. He was coming back with 2 or 3 farmers from his village when they were attacked by either Petliura [2] or Denikin [3] units. They beat my grandfather and stole his commodities. The farmers begged the bandits to leave my grandfather alone and tried to convince them that he was a very nice man, but it didn't help. They killed my grandfather and threw his body into the Dnestr River. This happened in the fall, and the following morning the river froze. My father and his brothers went to the river to search for my grandfather's body, but they couldn't find it. My grandfather Moisey wasn't even buried.
My father was married by the time of his mother's departure. This was one of the reasons why he stayed in the Soviet Union. In 1918 or 1919, soon after my grandfather was killed, my father was captured by members of a gang, who wanted to kill him. They took him to Yaruga, the neighboring town. Then all the men of Ivanovka, Jews and Ukrainians, went to Yaruga to fight for my father. They came to the ataman [headman or leading cossack official of a town] and demanded that he released Iosif. However strange it may seem they managed to rescue my father. I don't know how they managed this. The bandits probably released my father because so many people came to ask for him.
That same year my father met my mother, Lisa Voloshyna. She lived in Yaruga, this typical town within the Jewish Pale of Settlement [5]. There were many Jews in Yaruga. They lived in peace with the Ukrainians. There were no national conflicts. There were 3 synagogues and rabbis in Yaruga. There also was a Christian church. People in Yaruga respected the national traditions of one another.
My grandfather Gersh Voloshyn was a vine grower. I don't think the wine his vineyard produced was kosher wine. He sold it to Jewish and non-Jewish customers. He owned 2 hectares of vineyard, which enabled him to have a comfortable life. His sons helped him with the work at the vineyard. They all worked very hard, but my grandfather was a very cheerful and merry man and there was always a lot of laughter in my grandparents' house. My grandfather's wife, Blima, was a housewife.
Their family wasn't very religious. They went to synagogue and celebrated all the Jewish holidays, mainly in tribute to tradition. They spoke Yiddish at home, but they were fluent in Russian and Ukrainian. My parents also spoke Yiddish to one another, but they spoke Russian to me.
My mother's younger sister Rachel was born in 1898. Her husband, Moisey Serson, their two daughters, Dusia and Riva, and their son Naum lived in Yaruga and worked at my grandfather's vineyard. My grandmother Blima lived with them. The Germans occupied Yaruga in the summer of 1941. They exterminated some of the Jews there and moved on. Yaruga, as well as the rest of Vinnitsa province, was in Transnistria [7]. All the Jews of Yaruga were taken to the ghetto. Rachel, her husband Moisey, their daughters and my grandmother Blima were in the ghetto. Life there was horrible, with starvation, cold, diseases, tortures and raids. The Jews in the ghetto surrendered their jewelry or other valuables in order to ransom themselves from the Romanians. Rachel's family survived. They were liberated in 1944. My poor grandmother Blima starved to death in the ghetto. After the war Rachel's family stayed in Yaruga.
My mother was born in 1894. My mother only finished elementary school, but she read a lot, mainly Russian and foreign classics in Russian. She was an intelligent person for her time. She worked at the vineyard along with the other children.
My parents married in 1920. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah in Yaruga. But they didn't have a big wedding party. They just arranged a dinner for guests. This was a difficult time when the remnants of gangs attacked the villages.
Simon Gutman
We studied in a secondary Jewish school in Dvinsk. All subjects were taught in the Russian language. Of course we had to pay for the school. My brother and I participated in the Komsomol movement in school. The Komsomol had a very strong influence in Latgalia. The Komsomol organization was underground. Only the youth clubs were legal; we attended those as well. I wasn't the most active member, but I was in prison for some time, nonetheless! I was in Riga's Central prison, in the solitary cell, but only for one month. In Daugavpils [formerly called Dvinsk] I served a short term, too. I had close connections with one comrade; we rented a room together. And when the members of our central committee were arrested, they were searching apartments and I was also put under arrest. They finally released me, but I remained under the supervision of the police. Later I was acquitted! In Riga, when I started to work, I had no links with the Komsomol any more. But the police knew me. I was always shadowed.
In Berdyansk we sympathized with the White troops, the environment was wholly bourgeois - shop-keepers, small retailers. And when from 1921 to 1923 we again lived in Pavlovski Posad, I became 'Red' under the influence of my comrades. We were publishing a newspaper! We collected money for the construction of planes, when Curzon [6] announced the ultimatum to the Red Russia. What a joy it was, when mum had finally taken our money to Moscow, and they printed a list of our names in the newspaper Izvestiya.
In Pavlovski Posad we went to a secondary school, and in Berdyansk to a grammar school. During the four years in Berdyansk I saw everything - the Civil War, the landing of troops, the anarchists of Makhno [4], the Red army, the White army [5], bombings. If I could recollect it all, you could shoot a whole film about it. In our Berdyansk home we met very interesting people. The second studio of MHAT [the Moscow Academic Arts Theater] came for guest performances, and the famous actors used to stay in our house - Stanitsyn [Viktor (1897-1976), real name Geze], Khmelev and so on. The elite of the Russian theatre. We had never been to the theater before, and they used to take us. Fantastic impressions!
We went to the synagogue when daddy died. My brother and me would go there daily, three times a day, to recite the Kaddish - the prayer of repentance. My elder brother, Yakov, didn't go. There were situations during the Civil War, when there was shooting, but all the same we used to attend the synagogue. My brother Solomon was fanatically religious in those years. He even read prayers for the night, lying in bed. But, you see, to offer a prayer you need a kippah! So he pulled a blanket over his head to say the prayer. Mum was religious, too. That was her family feature. She spoke extremely good Yiddish. And we haven't learned to speak Yiddish, whereas she taught all of her sons Hebrew. Wherever we lived, a teacher came to us, we always had a teacher of Hebrew. Many words I know up until today. A comrade taught us to read in Yiddish, when we were in the Komsomol [3]. He was a highly principled, noble lad. He had taught us, and I felt somewhat comfortable at once. I still read in Yiddish today.
In 1917 daddy took us from Pavlovski Posad to a resort on the coast of the Azov sea, in Berdyansk, for six weeks, and there we ended up staying for four years - during the revolution [see Russian Revolution of 1917] [1] and the Civil War [2] in Russia. We lived poorly, having taken to Berdyansk almost nothing, only my mother's fur coat, a coat of seal skin, which we sold, and just enough food for the winter. Daddy wasn't a religious man, but it was a generally accepted rule to visit the synagogue. When he occasionally went to Berdyansk, where there was a choral synagogue, he used to attend the service. He had a special silk cloak. I remember, he would point towards us in the synagogue and say in Yiddish, 'These are the performers of my funeral rites'.
Our language at home was exclusively Russian. However, mum spoke good Yiddish. As she was going to go abroad to bring my sister home, she attended courses in French.
My uncle's name was Solomon Velvel - they also called him Solomon Vladimirovich - Israeltan. The state of Israel wasn't yet established, but the surname already existed. We called him Uncle Sam. He had been to the USA several times and spoke good English. They lived on ?ntonievskaya Street in Riga, in a large beautiful apartment with wall-paintings, ornaments and pictures. It is he who gave shelter to Nyuta after she returned from Switzerland in 1921. And whenever I went to Riga, I stayed in their apartment. He was the manager of a large textiles shop, owned by Kazatsky, a Jew. This big shop was situated on the corner of Krishyan Baron and Elizavetinskaya Streets. When the Soviet power was established, he was appointed the shop's manager. The relatives of his wife - the Rabinovich family - lived in Dvinsk and were engaged in the trading business. Uncle Sam sent them the goods.
My mum's name was Berta Borisovna; her maiden name Aronovich. Her mother, my grandmother Sheina Aronovich, was married three times. All her husbands died one after the other. Mum was a single child from my grandmother's first marriage. With her second husband, Velvel Israeltan, my grandmother had a whole bunch of children - my mother's stepbrothers and stepsisters. She lived with her last husband in Copenhagen, Denmark, but returned to her daughter from the second husband, Aunt Tirtsa Koldobskaya, nee Israeltan, to Vilnius. There she lived and there she died. Aunt Tirtsa's husband was a prominent businessman. Grandmother died in the summer of 1931. Mum went to Vilnius to attend the funeral. Aunt Tirts? died in Vilnius in 1936, before the war.
I know very little about my grandfathers and grandmothers. They traded in wood and lumber, mainly in Latgalia. About my daddy I can say that he was a good businessman. He wore rimless glasses, smoked Zefir cigarettes, and always knocked down a small glass of vodka before dinner. He was a lumber trader, but then he bought a cinema in Dvinsk. It was called Grand Electro. He bought the equipment for his cinema in Germany.
1941 - the smell of a thunder-storm hung in the air! I remember that morning, Sunday, 22nd June [the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War] [12], I was in our office. I remember the speech delivered by Molotov [13]. And then we hid in a cellar as the Germans were bombing the city. On Wednesday the 25th the Fifth Column riflemen started to fire from roofs! From all roofs! It was horrible! Everything was prepared! We were sitting and asking each other, especially Jews, 'What now?!' Everyone was panic- stricken!