We hardly recovered from this disaster in 1947-48, when we were covered by the wave of anti-Semitism . It was especially clearly felt in Kiev. This started with the campaign of the Soviet government against cosmopolitans. [10] The intelligentsia suffered the most from it. Arrests began anew in our Writers' Building, but this time they were arresting the Jewish writers. Gofstein, a famous writer, was arrested, and our friend Riva Baliasnaya, a poet. After few years in prison camps she remained an invalid for the rest of her life.
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Displaying 12901 - 12930 of 50826 results
frieda stoyanovskaya
Fortunately, I got a job teaching history. That was what I wanted. But Semyon Moiseyevich didn't have any official posts. Nominally he remained a member of the Union of Soviet Writers, but actually he was a free artist. Naturally, free from his salary as well. I became the main breadwinner at home.
The change of attitude of the people surrounding me came as a sad surprise. They turned into anti-Semites almost from one day to the next. Many of our Ukrainian friends among writers just pretended they didn't know us and divorced their Jewish wives. The rumor was actively spread that NKVD [11] officers were mainly Jews. I found out that Mr. Shtepa, my favorite professor from the Pedagogical Institute, was at the head of the anti- Semitic press in occupied Kiev. It looked as if the Soviet government didn't blame him for it.
The situation became aggravated because the rumors appeared that Jewish doctors didn't give proper care to people. This was the Doctors' Plot [12] - because of it we were afraid to go out into the streets. The Jews in Kiev were actively getting ready to be moved to the remote areas of the Soviet Union. [The interviewee refers to the planned deportation of Jews to Birobidzhan.] [13] Therefore, the establishment of Israel, the Jewish State, went almost unnoticed for us. Besides, even if we wanted to leave, we didn't have any physical opportunity to do this.
Ida got married for the second time. Hers wasn't a happy marriage. Perhaps, this pushed her to emigration. She went to Israel in the early 1970s, lived many years there, and died in Netanya several years ago.
Victor and then Leonid studied at my school. This caused some problems and helped to get rid of others. They took their daddy's pseudonym for their last name and became the Gordeyevs. This was a trick to conceal their Jewish identity. But it was equivocal, as I didn't conceal that I was Jewish at all. In their passports, under Item 5 [14] it was also written that their nationality was Jewish.
Victor chose the humanities direction after finishing school. But in the 1960s higher education in the humanities was closed for him, as he was a Jew. The only institute in Kiev that he could enter was the Institute of Light Industry. This institute gave him the profession that he didn't like at all.
Victor began to identify himself as a Jew in 1940 when he saw Doctor Mamlock. It was our mistake to take him with us. After the film he suffered from psychological shock. Later he was overtaken by the tragedy of the unloved profession. He saw the way out of the crisis in running away from his Jewish identity. He married a Russian girl. He wanted his children to have no problems with nationality in the future. He couldn't make up his mind about leaving the Soviet Union, either in the 1970s or the 1980s.
Leonid, our younger son, entered the Odessa Communications Institute after finishing school. It wasn't his choice either, but he didn't suffer from it. Perhaps he had a more solid position in life and national consciousness than my older son. He was standing on the ground with his both feet.
Nevertheless, he decided to emigrate in 1992. But he didn't choose the far- away United States or Israel, with its national orientation. He went to Germany. He and his wife and my grandchildren live in Munich now.
Besides, I am 95 and I believe that the only land where I can feel free and happy is the land where I was born. I remember my husband was of the same opinion.
Regrettably, I have never been to Israel. In general I haven't traveled much. I wanted very much to visit this country, to see how my natives live there, but it has never been really possible.
The only thing that disturbs me is the cemetery in Vienna where my brother was buried. The Soviet authorities never allowed my husband and me to go there and put flowers on his grave. I feel guilty about it.
I am happy about the perspectives opening for the Jews. I am pleased that there are so many possibilities in Ukraine now to develop Jewish consciousness.
, Ukraine
I am a very Soviet person and regrettably, never kept Jewish traditions and holidays.
They observed Jewish traditions and all of them spoke Yiddish.
We got married in July 1931. My sister Ida and I got married at the same time at the registration office of Podol district in Kiev. We had two weddings at a time. We had dinner after our wedding. There were no special guests or special rituals.
My sister and her husband stayed at my mother's place, and I moved in with the Goldfine family. We lived there for several years in a little room, one of the two that the family occupied.
Later he perished on the front in the first days of World War II.
Our son Victor was born in this little room. We lived there until 1938, when Semyon Gordeyev, my husband, became a member of the Union of Soviet Writers and we received our apartment in Lenin Street, in the so-called Writer's Building in Kiev.
I worked as a history teacher in a lower secondary, and then a higher secondary school.
I studied at the Kiev Pedagogical Institute from 1932-35.
My husband had over 10 books published by that time. Our life improved a little. Our circle of friends became wider and more interesting. But this was after 1935.
Our son was born in 1933 and that was an awful period in our life, the period of collectivization [7], i.e., the period of collective farms formation, and the 1933 famine in the Ukraine. The Soviet government took all the grain and bread away from the peasants and farmers to force them into joining the collective farms. This was called the 'state grain procurements'. My husband had to go to villages and describe these processes in the newspaper. He was a Soviet writer. His business trips to villages were very long. This work was not just psychologically hard, but also dangerous - the starved people hated those who were doing this to them and often fought for their bread and families with pitchforks in their hands. Ukrainian villages were full of rumors about cannibalism. My husband returned from these trips morally depressed and physically ill. In Kiev or other bigger towns of Ukraine the situation was not so adverse. Townsfolk were getting rationed food. Our family also got rationed food. But I saw women dying from hunger in the streets. They were coming from villages but didn't get any help. This lasted until the end of 1934. Until 1934 we also got meals in the special canteen at the Regional Committee of the Communist Party. I took food for my family from there. This food supported our family and my mother. She was still working and also received rationed food. I also gave some food to my husband's mother - she wasn't working and couldn't earn her living. My sister Ida and her husband were in Donbass then. They managed, more or less.
1935-1936 was the time of repression [the so-called Great Terror] [8]. They were chasing after the 'enemies of the people'. They didn't find any in my school. But in the Union of Soviet Writers arrests began in 1936. There was a rule that before a writer was arrested, they expelled him from the Party. My husband, Semyon Gordeyev, was Deputy First Secretary of the Communist Party Committee at the Union of Soviet Writers. He had to conduct these meetings. It was all so scary that he didn't tell me anything about them. The writers often committed suicide, knowing the procedure after they were expelled from the Party. Semyon suffered all his life for being involved in all this. He expected to be arrested, too. When we heard about the Great Patriotic War [9], the first thing that he said was, 'Thank God, they won't arrest me, and I will be killed on the front.' Arrests of the writers continued until the start of the war and afterwards. They happened almost every night and we were aware of them.
We lived in the Writers' Building. The war with the Germans became an escape from the fear of arrest for many people. This war was a surprise for us. It is difficult to imagine this now. We had known that it might begin since the end of 1939. There was a map in our teachers' room at school, and every day our geography teacher marked the areas occupied by Hitler. The circle was getting narrower and narrower. But we still believed that it would not happen to us. We also knew about the German attitude towards the Jewish people from newspapers. In 1938 they showed Doctor Mamlock in Kiev. [This was a German film about a remarkable Jewish physician who hoped for salvation. He was killed because he was Jewish.] We were struck by what we saw, but again, we thought it wouldn't happen to us. It was so far from me then that I didn't even associate Denikin's pogrom with what I saw. My husband and I were so far from this kind of development that we planned a second baby. Our second son was born in February 1941.
, Ukraine
At the beginning of the war Kiev was full of the people from the western parts of Ukraine. There were many Jews among them; there were some that we knew. They stayed with us. It was from them that I heard about the Germans' attitude towards the Jews. But again, this resulted in our decision to leave Kiev as soon as possible. On 6th July we left on the writers' train to be evacuated to Ufa, Bashkyria. We were running away from the war with one little suitcase, full of photographs and diapers. We had our 4-month- old Lyonechka [Leonid] and 6-year-old Victor with us, as well as my mother. We were running away from the raids and had no idea what occupation was like. We couldn't imagine the horrors of it. So, the four of us left. My sister Ida, her husband and their two daughters were in Zhytomir at the beginning of the war. They found us in Bashkyria later.
My brother Semyon was mobilized to the front. He went through the whole war with military units. He had finished the Russian State Institute of Cinematography, the famous VGIK, in Moscow by that time, and was sent to serve in the army at the beginning of 1940. He was on the front line until his tragic death in Vienna at the end of April 1945.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
He had finished the Russian State Institute of Cinematography, the famous VGIK, in Moscow by that time, and was sent to serve in the army at the beginning of 1940.
During the war, until the summer of 1944, I worked as a history teacher in the small village of Chishmy in the vicinity of Ufa.