I remember that, during Pesach, we went to my grandfather’s for seder. I remember that once the seder was carried out by Grandfather Kleinstein, аnd another time by Grandfather Solomin. I wasn’t deeply impressed by the celebration of Pesach and I took it like an ordinary delicious dinner. There was matzah and tasty dishes for Pesach, but my parents didn’t conduct seder. I also vaguely remember other Jewish holidays, as they weren’t celebrated in our house. I think my parents fasted on Yom Kippur, just to pay tribute to the Jewish tradition.
- Traditions 11756
- Language spoken 3019
- Identity 7808
- Description of town 2440
- Education, school 8506
- Economics 8772
- Work 11672
- Love & romance 4929
- Leisure/Social life 4159
- Antisemitism 4822
-
Major events (political and historical)
4256
- Armenian genocide 2
- Doctor's Plot (1953) 178
- Soviet invasion of Poland 31
- Siege of Leningrad 86
- The Six Day War 4
- Yom Kippur War 2
- Ataturk's death 5
- Balkan Wars (1912-1913) 35
- First Soviet-Finnish War 37
- Occupation of Czechoslovakia 1938 83
- Invasion of France 9
- Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact 65
- Varlik Vergisi (Wealth Tax) 36
- First World War (1914-1918) 216
- Spanish flu (1918-1920) 14
- Latvian War of Independence (1918-1920) 4
- The Great Depression (1929-1933) 20
- Hitler comes to power (1933) 127
- 151 Hospital 1
- Fire of Thessaloniki (1917) 9
- Greek Civil War (1946-49) 12
- Thessaloniki International Trade Fair 5
- Annexation of Bukovina to Romania (1918) 7
- Annexation of Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union (1940) 19
- The German invasion of Poland (1939) 94
- Kishinev Pogrom (1903) 7
- Romanian Annexation of Bessarabia (1918) 25
- Returning of the Hungarian rule in Transylvania (1940-1944) 43
- Soviet Occupation of Bessarabia (1940) 59
- Second Vienna Dictate 27
- Estonian war of independence 3
- Warsaw Uprising 2
- Soviet occupation of the Balitc states (1940) 147
- Austrian Civil War (1934) 9
- Anschluss (1938) 71
- Collapse of Habsburg empire 3
- Dollfuß Regime 3
- Emigration to Vienna before WWII 36
- Kolkhoz 131
- KuK - Königlich und Kaiserlich 40
- Mineriade 1
- Post War Allied occupation 7
- Waldheim affair 5
- Trianon Peace Treaty 12
- NEP 56
- Russian Revolution 351
- Ukrainian Famine 199
- The Great Terror 283
- Perestroika 233
- 22nd June 1941 468
- Molotov's radio speech 115
- Victory Day 147
- Stalin's death 365
- Khrushchev's speech at 20th Congress 148
- KGB 62
- NKVD 153
- German occupation of Hungary (18-19 March 1944) 45
- Józef Pilsudski (until 1935) 33
- 1956 revolution 84
- Prague Spring (1968) 73
- 1989 change of regime 174
- Gomulka campaign (1968) 81
-
Holocaust
9685
- Holocaust (in general) 2789
- Concentration camp / Work camp 1235
- Mass shooting operations 337
- Ghetto 1183
- Death / extermination camp 647
- Deportation 1063
- Forced labor 791
- Flight 1410
- Hiding 594
- Resistance 121
- 1941 evacuations 866
- Novemberpogrom / Kristallnacht 34
- Eleftherias Square 10
- Kasztner group 1
- Pogrom in Iasi and the Death Train 21
- Sammelwohnungen 9
- Strohmann system 11
- Struma ship 17
- Life under occupation 803
- Yellow star house 72
- Protected house 15
- Arrow Cross ("nyilasok") 42
- Danube bank shots 6
- Kindertransport 26
- Schutzpass / false papers 95
- Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943) 24
- Warsaw Uprising (1944) 23
- Helpers 521
- Righteous Gentiles 269
- Returning home 1090
- Holocaust compensation 112
- Restitution 109
- Property (loss of property) 595
- Loss of loved ones 1724
- Trauma 1029
- Talking about what happened 1807
- Liberation 558
- Military 3322
- Politics 2640
-
Communism
4468
- Life in the Soviet Union/under Communism (in general) 2592
- Anti-communist resistance in general 63
- Nationalization under Communism 221
- Illegal communist movements 98
- Systematic demolitions under communism 45
- Communist holidays 311
- Sentiments about the communist rule 930
- Collectivization 94
- Experiences with state police 349
- Prison/Forced labor under communist/socialist rule 449
- Lack or violation of human and citizen rights 483
- Life after the change of the regime (1989) 493
- Israel / Palestine 2190
- Zionism 847
- Jewish Organizations 1200
Displaying 24991 - 25020 of 50826 results
Ranana Malkhanova
In the period 1935-36 a new Jewish school was built in Vilkaviskis and my father got a spacious apartment from the school, as he was the headmaster. This apartment was even better than the previous one. There were five rooms, instead of four. Now my brother and I had separate bedrooms. Secondly, there was a sewage system and central heating in the house. There was also a large beautiful bathroom and toilet. In this house there were maids as well who took care of us and the house. Our apartment was on the school premises.
It turned out that I became a schoolgirl at the age of five. I made friends with the Jewish schoolgirls and my life became more interesting. I didn’t have a lot in common with my brother. He was an adolescent and went to the Lithuanian state lyceum in Vilkaviskis. By summer 1940, I had finished the second grade of the school.
In 1940 many things changed for our family. The Red Army came to Lithuania and our town as well. It’s difficult for me to say what my parents’ attitude towards the Soviets was, as I was too little. I know that the Jewish people expected the Soviet regime to free them from poverty and oppression. Our family had a great living. I doubt that we welcomed the Soviets. The wave of change took place on the very first day. The Jewish school was converted into a common school where the subjects were taught in Lithuanian. My father was fired and we were evicted from the school apartment. We went back to our house, which hadn’t been nationalized yet. Then they were after my father. The book on the municipal self-government of Vilkaviskis, containing the photographs of its members, including my father’s, was displayed in the window case of the town book store.
I don’t know what happened to the other members, but my father was mildly repressed. He was sent to teach at a Lithuanian school in a small town, Lazdijai [about 110km from Vilnius]. My father came home on Saturday and left on Sunday. Our life changed as well. My mother fired the maids and did work about the house by herself. She didn’t want to be blamed for exploitation. A Soviet officer moved into our apartment and he was given the best room. It was harder and harder to do things about the house. Not only did my favorite, bananas and oranges, vanish from the stores, but the primary products as well. There were only two types of bread, compared to about 20 types. The officials who came from the USSR bought everything from the stores. Nothing was left: there were no sausages, butter, food, cakes, and manufactured goods.
There was a deficit of the usual tights, linen, soap, and soda. I remember the officers pulling huge bales and packages to the post-offices. They must have been sending presents to their families. My grandfathers’ stores were nationalized. Fortunately, none of us were exiled, though our surnames were in the list of people to be exiled [see Deportations from the Baltics] [7].
I kept on studying at the same school which was turned into Lithuanian from Jewish. In 1941 my brother Zeyev finished a ten-year school, former lyceum, with honors.
On the night of 22nd June 1941 the town had been bombed from 3.30am. Our frontier town was one of the first to be hit by the fascists [German Nazis]. There was a terrible panic. People were trying to escape to wherever they could. It was good that it was Sunday and my father wasn’t at work. He managed to get a cart with a horse. All of us got on it taking only a small suitcase and left the town.
Мy father and brother didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to us; they were arrested. My mother and I headed to our house, but it was in shambles. My mother found some Jewish people she knew, whose house was miraculously safe. I don’t remember what we were living on at that time. My mother must have sold her precious things which she managed to take with her.
During the first days of the occupation there was an order saying that Jews were supposed to wear clothes with a yellow star on the sleeve. Those who disobeyed were to be shot at once. It was hard to find yellow cloth, but my mother managed and embroidered Jewish stars on the clothes.
There were a lot of bans. A curfew was introduced for the Jews which was earlier than the other citizens. We weren’t allowed to go into the stores and walk on the pavements. The mournful Jewish figures walked along the sidewalk, and the poor Jews were to walk on the road. If any of the rules were violated, Jews would be executed.
Once, when we were coming back from the printing house, my mother and I overlooked the order and walked on the sidewalk. A bigwig fascist, accompanied by his aides, was moving ahead of us. He was an elderly man, corpulent and paunchy. Having seen my mother and me, the fascist started stamping, spitting and crying out some German words. I understood some of the words and was able to understand that he was threatening all the Jews, saying that he would crash and smear us. My mother and I then moved to the road.
Some of the neighbors informed us that the men had been told to leave the basement and run towards the barracks. Many ladies followed them, but my mother was petrified. We were told that there were all the young men and lads who hadn’t managed to escape. They were told to take off their clothes and leave their precious things in the barracks. Then they were given spades to dig their graves. The area was encircled with barbed wire. Naked men were forced to go under that wire. Then some Lithuanian pal said to my mother that my father refused to do it and he was hit by the spades and then shot dead.
After some time, the remaining Jews in the town were taken to those barracks. [On 28th July 1941, the systematic murder of the Jews in Vilkaviskis began. At first about 900 men were murdered. A ghetto was established for the remaining Jews, most of them women and children, in the local barracks, close to the mass graves of the executed men. The Jews in the ghetto were killed on the day after Rosh Hashanah, 24th September 1941. Only a few survived until the liberation.] I didn’t see my grandfather and his sisters. They were most likely killed.
I don’t remember how much time we spent in those barracks: a month or a month and a half. It was like a bad dream. The Lithuanians we knew brought us food. I remember the feeling of constant hunger and thirst. We went to the toilet in the same room of the barrack, crammed with wretched and frightened women, children and elderly people. There was a terrible stench. It was summer and we had no chance to take a bath.
Craftsmen were selected among the Jews: seamstress, watch repairers, cobblers. The rest of the Jews: elderly men, women and children, were murdered. My mother turned out to be rather swift, which wasn’t unusual for her before the war. In an extreme situation, a person has to be ready to do things beyond his/her capacity. She met the family of the tailors and managed to introduce us as their relatives. Owing to that we remained untouched. In late August all of us had survived.
The Jewish craftsmen were aligned and told to walk on foot. We were convoyed by the local polizei [see Lithuanian Polizei] [8]. Those beasts tried to curry favor and tortured the poor even worse than the fascists: beat them, insulted them, made them run without giving them a break. They even made people do their toilet calls on the spot. Those who were behind were shot on the spot. I stayed close to my mother and she tried to comfort me.
We were taken to Pilviskiai, my mother’s hometown, the place where my grandparents lived. Their house was vacant. They were most likely killed during one of the actions in Pilviskiai. There were a lot of vacant houses in the town, as their dwellers had been shot. We were shown where to live. My mother and I settled in one house with the family of the tailor. Thus, Pilviskiai was transformed into a small ghetto. We stayed there for about three months.
I had curly and fair hair, blue eyes, and didn’t look like a Jew at all. I was fluent in Lithuanian. That’s why I ran around the town without the yellow star, as I was taken to be a Lithuanian girl. The reason why I had a chance to move freely in the streets was because I was able to notice a lot.
On the evening of 13th November, I was in a hurry to get home, as it was fall, and it gets dark early. I saw polizei men knocking on the doors of the houses where Jews found temporary lodging and heard them swearing. Some old people, sobbing women and children were ousted to the central square. I wasn’t that joyful kid I used to be some months ago. Tribulation made me grow up and become observant. I understood immediately that the most terrible and last action against Jews was underway. The remaining Jews would be murdered. I went home and cried out, ‘Mother, let’s run!’ In a few words I told her what I had seen and my mother packed soap, towel and underwear in the punnet. We put on warm knitted jackets and headed out to nowhere in particular. We tried to convince the family of the tailor to go with us, but they refused, saying that there was no escape from those beasts and didn’t believe in the rescue.
My mother and I were dragging along the soft shoulder and reached an estate. We did take a risk to knock on the door. We saw a barn and went there. We slept there until dawn. I was sleeping, while my mother kept her eyes wide open. In the morning I knocked on the door. A Lithuanian opened it and let us in. There was no need of introducing ourselves, as my mother looked like a typical Jew. The host said that he would gladly give us a hand, but his neighbors weren’t very good men and would stooge on all of us. He said that he would let us stay for one day and then we would have to leave.
The host gave us a lot of food to eat until we were full and then we stayed in the barn the whole day. At dawn the host came and told my mother where to go. During the day he had managed to talk to somebody regarding a shelter for us. We went to a tiny hamlet, which didn’t even have a name. An elderly Lithuanian peasant couple lived there. Lithuanians were tacit people. Nobody asked us any questions. They silently put a bowl with food on the table and heated the bath.
The host gave us a lot of food to eat until we were full and then we stayed in the barn the whole day. At dawn the host came and told my mother where to go. During the day he had managed to talk to somebody regarding a shelter for us. We went to a tiny hamlet, which didn’t even have a name. An elderly Lithuanian peasant couple lived there. Lithuanians were tacit people. Nobody asked us any questions. They silently put a bowl with food on the table and heated the bath.
We slept in the attic on the haystack. We stayed there for about three weeks, and then we started wandering. It’s hard, even impossible, to restore those years in my memory. We constantly changed places. At times we stayed in one place for only a couple of days, but sometimes we stayed for a couple of months. Almost nobody refused in giving us a hand. There were cases when people were scared to shelter us because of their neighbors or polizei men, but still they tried to find a place for us and directed us where to go. Now I think back to how we ran for our lives and the horror of the fascist occupation. We didn’t stay in the peasants’ house for very long, as there wasn’t enough room, and besides it was dangerous for us to stay there. Garrets, basements, sheds and barns were the places for us to stay. We were very well fed. People gave us the best they had. I think the hosts didn’t let themselves eat an extra piece, but gave us milk, sour cream, a full bowl of thick soup and a piece of pig’s fat on a slice of bread.
In one peasant house they even suggested that I should be adopted, baptized and raised as their own daughter, but my mother objected to that of course and wanted to leave that house as soon as possible. When we left, the peasant woman gave me a rosary, and I said the rosary when I was in the shelters.
The best place where we lived was in the hamlet of the Lithuanian family Strimaitis. They were very well-off. They owned 40 hectares of land, which was a lot for a small Lithuanian family.
By that time the Soviets hadn’t managed to take away their land.
By that time the Soviets hadn’t managed to take away their land.
We were lucky. We mostly came across good people. Only once we got into trouble. It happened in summer 1943. As usual, we went from one hamlet to another. We were pointed towards the hamlet where a good elderly couple lived. We went to the hamlet and saw the following: a half-naked young man was taking a bath over a basin by the well. An elderly woman was pouring water on him from the pitcher. We noticed at once that the guy was wearing pants of the polizei uniform and boots. We wanted to leave, but it was too late. ‘Hey Yids!’ he cried out. All of a sudden he started pointing a pistol and moved towards us threatening us with it. His mother tried to hold her son back, and burst into tears and besought him not to take a sin on his soul and let us go. This lasted for a few minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘I’ll take you to the police station!’
He went to put his clothes on while we waited for him for quite some time. We didn’t dare to escape. If we had, he would have killed us at once. He let us run in front of him on the road. After some time we met a man on the way. It turned out that he was a district headman. He asked who we were and where he was taking us. He said that he wanted to shoot the Yids, but because of his mother he was taking us to the police station. They had a vivacious talk along the road. We followed them. There was rye-grass on the left side of the road and at that unforgettable moment, the man turned back, pointed at the grass and said, ‘Run!’ My mother and I dashed off. I don’t remember for how long we had been running, panting and falling. When we crossed the field, we saw the orchard of the Strimaitis’.
He went to put his clothes on while we waited for him for quite some time. We didn’t dare to escape. If we had, he would have killed us at once. He let us run in front of him on the road. After some time we met a man on the way. It turned out that he was a district headman. He asked who we were and where he was taking us. He said that he wanted to shoot the Yids, but because of his mother he was taking us to the police station. They had a vivacious talk along the road. We followed them. There was rye-grass on the left side of the road and at that unforgettable moment, the man turned back, pointed at the grass and said, ‘Run!’ My mother and I dashed off. I don’t remember for how long we had been running, panting and falling. When we crossed the field, we saw the orchard of the Strimaitis’.
In summer 1944 we happened to stay with the Strimaitis once again. Three years had passed since the fascist occupation. We knew that the Soviet Army had already liberated Vilnius and were looking forward to welcoming it. We spent the last days before the occupation in a small coppice by the yard. Mildei brought us food. When it got dark we went to their house and spent the night there. Once, when we were in the forest, I heard a noise from the road. I rushed to the road and saw a soldier in uniform which wasn’t familiar to me. I understood that the Soviet soldiers had arrived. I rushed to the forest and told my mother, ‘Russian soldiers have come!’ My mother came out with me, first cautiously, and then when she was sure that those were Soviet soldiers, she went out in the open. We cried tears of joy and hugged each other. It was the end of the war for my mother and me.
So we had to get to Vilnius and start a new life. We were given a lift by passing cars, to Kaunas [about 90km from Vilnius], wherefrom we reached the small town Kaisiadorys [about 50km from Vilnius]. There was a good train connection there. My mother and I took a goods train and on 24th August 1944, we got off at the Vilnius train station.
We walked along an empty city. We were surrounded by annihilated houses and apartments, wherein people had lived, planned, hoped, loved and envied. We could take any empty apartment. We inhabited a house on Georgievskiy Avenue, which later became Stalin Avenue, and is currently Gedemin Avenue. There were doors which separated the apartments in the long corridor. We got a three-room apartment. It was well furnished. There were sets of dishes in the cupboards, and some garments in the wardrobes. We felt miserable. It seemed to us that we were illegitimate intruders. Then the employees of the communal organization went to all the apartments and made lists of the things in the house. We were supposed to pay some money for the furniture and dishes, but were totally broke. We were given all that for free.
My mother found a job as a cashier in a canteen.
In September I went to the fifth grade of a Russian school without knowing any Russian words, but by the end of the fifth grade I wrote dictations better than anybody else.