I liked poems and collected books. My parents gave me money to buy books. I also borrowed books from libraries or my friends. I knew many poems by heart. I often recited poems at school concerts. There was a corner in the room where I had my desk. There was a lamp with a green shade on it. My parents didn't have books. My mother liked buying little things that she put on the shelf, but she didn't buy books. My parents had a record player and many records. There were Jewish songs and music and pop music. In the evening my parents often listened to records. They were very tired after work, and it was their rest. They hardly ever left the house in the evenings.
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Major events (political and historical)
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Displaying 1021 - 1050 of 50826 results
raissa smelaya
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In the 1st grade I became a Young Octobrist 14. I began to attend the Forpost club for children and teenagers in a basement. There were several rooms in the basement and a sports field in the yard. In the Forpost club I had folk dancing classes and sang in the choir. Our choir took part at a concert in the Philharmonic. There was a volleyball-ground in our yard and we played volleyball when it was warm. The leaders of Young Octobrist groups were senior pupils. They seemed very mature to us. In winter a skating-rink was arranged in the yard of the building next to ours. There was music playing. My mother made me a suit and knitted a hat. I tied my skates together with a rope to go to the skating rink. I was a 'street girl', so to speak. My parents spent a lot of time at work and I spent time with my friends. We went to ballet performances and shows at the Drama Institute. They were free and we didn't miss one single performance.
Before 1917 according to the law of the Russian Empire Jews could only settle down within special restricted residential area [Jewish Pale of Settlement] 6 and they weren't allowed to live in bigger towns. Exceptions were made for doctors, merchants and lawyers. After the [Russian] Revolution of 1917 7 many Jewish families moved to cities hoping for a better life and more opportunities for their children to get education. My mother's family moved to Kiev in 1924.
I didn't work after we moved to Chernovtsy. My children studied and my husband worked as a driver in a car pool. He was very tired when he came from work and went to bed. I read in the evening. We occasionally went to the theater or to the cinema. Sometimes we went to see friends. My husband went to work even at weekends to earn more for the family and it was difficult for us to make plans.
We spent vacations with my mother and aunt in Kiev. They were always happy to see us. My mother got along very well with them.
My daughter finished Music Pedagogical School in Chernovtsy. After finishing this school she worked as a violin teacher until her retirement. Now she plays the violin in a symphonic orchestra.
Irina's husband is Ukrainian, but his nationality was of no significance to me. What I cared for was that they were in love and cared about one another.
My granddaughters are musicians: Ludmila is a violinist and Tatiana is a pianist. Ludmila works at the symphonic orchestra.
Although my grandchildren weren't raised religiously they identify themselves as Jews. They care about Jewish culture and traditions. My granddaughter Tatiana works at Hesed. She is the art director and concertmaster of a Jewish song and and dance group called 'Mazltov!'.
I believe life has got worse significantly after perestroika 24 in the 1980s. If it hadn't been for perestroika the great and powerful Soviet Union wouldn't have fallen apart. Young people have nothing sacred nowadays. Lenin and Stalin were our idols and we loved our people and our country while young people now don't believe in anything, but money.
Jewish life has revived in the past decade. Hesed provides great assistance to old people. I live alone and I appreciate the assistance provided by Hesed very much. I receive Jewish newspapers and attend the communication club in Hesed. This helps me to overcome my solitude. I have lunch at the canteen of the Jewish Charity Committee every day. It's not only a big support for me, but also an opportunity to communicate. I know that I will see people that have become close to me. There are 50 of us and we feel like a family. In recent years I've identified myself as a Jew thanks to Hesed. I attend lectures on Jewish history, go to performances of the Jewish drama studio in Hesed and to the communication club for elderly people, where we often watch Jewish movies or listen to life stories of outstanding Jews. It's all very interesting. Regretfully, my memory is getting worse and I can't study Hebrew any more. I've got new friends at Hesed that help me to overcome my solitude.
I have lunch at the canteen of the Jewish Charity Committee every day. It's not only a big support for me, but also an opportunity to communicate. I know that I will see people that have become close to me. There are 50 of us and we feel like a family. In recent years I've identified myself as a Jew thanks to Hesed. I attend lectures on Jewish history, go to performances of the Jewish drama studio in Hesed and to the communication club for elderly people, where we often watch Jewish movies or listen to life stories of outstanding Jews. It's all very interesting. Regretfully, my memory is getting worse and I can't study Hebrew any more. I've got new friends at Hesed that help me to overcome my solitude.
I worked and took part in amateur art activities: I sang in a choir and attended a folk dance club.
My mother left for Kiev. My aunt wrote to her saying that she knew a Jewish man whose family had perished during the war and who wanted to meet a Jewish woman. The most important factor for my mother was that he had an apartment. She moved to Kiev and got married. My mother's husband, Solomon, was almost 20 years older than my mother. He was a very nice and decent man. My mother wasn't in love with him, but she got along well with him. Solomon fell in love with my mother and she treated him with respect and care. They got along well and went to the cinema and theater together.
They didn't observe Jewish traditions. After the war very few people observed Jewish traditions.
Every summer my children and I spent two weeks with her. She was very happy to see her grandchildren and me.
In 1953 the Doctors' Plot 21 began. There were talks about doctors that intended to poison Stalin. I think anti-Semitism got stronger then. Most of the people had no doubts that newspapers published the truth. Jews had problems with employment. Patients in polyclinics refused to visit Jewish doctors. I didn't face any anti-Semitism personally, but it was certainly there.
I remember what a terrible tragedy the death of Stalin was for me. I listened to bulletins about his condition every day when on 5th March they announced that he had died. How terrible it was! There was a big sculpture of Lenin and Stalin in the central avenue in Dnepropetrovsk. When Stalin died people got together near this monument. They were crying and grieving. There was a memorial celebration and it seemed to me that life was over and there was only uncertainty ahead of us. The railway in Dnepropetrovsk was overcrowded with those willing to go to Moscow to Stalin's funeral. Many of them traveled on the roofs of the railcars.
I was very upset to hear Khrushchev's 22 speech at the Twentieth Party Congress 23. Well, yes, people were arrested and sent into exile before and after the war. Don't they do the same now? Well, there might have been innocent people among them. Perhaps, it might have been difficult to find out that they were innocent. But it wasn't Stalin in person that sentenced them! Life was much better during the rule of Stalin and we won in the name of Stalin. And then all of a sudden he became a criminal... He is accused of having deported whole nations. Yes, he deported Chechen people, but I saw that they were bandits and rapists. Besides, he didn't shoot them. After the Twentieth Party Congress the statue of Stalin was removed.
I married a Ukrainian man in 1958. My second husband's name was Petr Smely. We met at our acquaintances' and Petr began to court me. I was afraid that my children would have problems with their stepfather, but they liked him at once. Petr was a very nice man and I agreed to marry him. I took his last name when we got married.
My friends were my colleagues for the most part and there were Jews among them. I didn't care about nationality. I was raised that way. After I quit work I didn't see them often, but I was busy at home and didn't have time to get bored.
I didn't celebrate Jewish holidays with my first or second husband. This wasn't just because both of my husbands were Ukrainian. They were raised in the spirit of internationalism. I was raised an atheist. I couldn't even imagine what could make a grown-up person believe in fairy tales about God or Elijah the Prophet. I raised my children in the same manner. They didn't make a difference between nations. Personality is important for them. They didn't identify themselves as Jews, but they knew that I was a Jew, of course.
We celebrated Soviet holidays in our family. Soviet holidays always were days off and I cooked a festive meal. My husband's friends and colleagues and my children's friends visited us. In the morning we went to the parade and in the afternoon we had lunch at home. We had a good time and enjoyed ourselves, sang and danced.
We moved to Chernovtsy in 1959. My husband got a job assignment there and my children and I followed him. We exchanged our apartment in Dnepropetrovsk for one in Chernovtsy.
Chernovtsy is a nice town. There are beautiful old houses in the central part of the town, which have their own history. I felt at home in this town.
I was very surprised to hear Jews speaking Yiddish in the streets. Jews observed Jewish traditions and celebrated holidays. And they weren't old people, they were the same age as I. There were many Jews living in Chernovtsy. After the Great Patriotic War many Jews moved to Romania from Chernovtsy and from there they moved to Israel, but there were still many Jews left in the town.
I was very surprised to hear Jews speaking Yiddish in the streets. Jews observed Jewish traditions and celebrated holidays. And they weren't old people, they were the same age as I. There were many Jews living in Chernovtsy. After the Great Patriotic War many Jews moved to Romania from Chernovtsy and from there they moved to Israel, but there were still many Jews left in the town.
When Jews began to move to Israel in the 1970s I didn't even consider this possibility. I was married to a Ukrainian man and my children were Ukrainian, even though they were aware that their mother was Jewish. Many of my friends left then. I wished them a happy life, but I didn't understand why they were leaving their own country for a different one. The non-Jewish population was very loyal to Jews.
I wasn't a member of the Communist Party. I was a housewife and had nothing to do with any public activities. However, I always believed that our country became so powerful because of the guidance of the Communist Party. Like the majority of people I believed that we had a better life than people in capitalist countries.
max shykler
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There were many weird things happening at that time. But the weirdest thing was that it all happened within ten days before the war. There was a feeling of war in the air, but Stalin was adamant about his policies. My parents, my brother and my sister were also deported. I wasn't aware of it. I visited my family in May 1941 and returned to work in Chernovtsy. My family was accused of being wealthy cattle dealers, and that was sufficient for the deportation to Siberia. I learned about it after the war.
All hopes for a better life under the Soviet power failed. The deportation of people was a brutal act. The people that had lived under the Soviet power since 1917 knew more about it, but to us it was a shock. A huge number of people was deported from Bukovina in one night.
I was in Chernovtsy in June 1941. We heard about the beginning of the war on the radio. A German fighter was shot on the first day of the war, but then things became quiet. There were rumors that the Soviet armies had occupied Warsaw, Sophia and Bucharest, but then we heard that the Soviet forces were retreating. This was at the beginning of July 1941. I worked at the stocking factory and was on a night shift. I went into the yard and saw our director getting into the car, ready to move. I asked him, 'What shall we do?'. He said, 'You have to escape'. He gave me 500 rubles. He left and took all money from the factory with him.
Young people of the stocking and knitwear factories gathered for a meeting the following morning. The majority of the employees were Jews. There were about a hundred of us. We decided to escape. It was impossible to get on the train. It was a hot summer, and we decided to walk. We left wearing shorts and summer shoes. We walked as far as Kamenets-Podolsk, about 150 kilometers from Chernovtsy. We saw trains that were heading for the front. One officer, a Jew, called us and asked whether we were from Chernovtsy. We were surprised and asked him how he could tell. He said that idiots, who were stupid enough to evacuate in their shorts and speak Yiddish on the way, could only come from Chernovtsy. He said that we were on the territory of Ukraine where nobody wore shorts. [Editor's note: such clothing was believed to be immoral, and nobody in the USSR wore these kind of clothes.] He said that the locals could take us for Germans and even kill us. We were lucky. He gave us trousers, and we proceeded on our way. We didn't have any luggage, only some money. We didn't need money, though, because villagers gave us food for free. We walked for about 15 days avoiding the main roads. The Germans were bombing the main roads. We walked as far as Uman, 350 kilometers from Kamenets-Podolsk. In Uman men were recruited to the army. I don't know where the girls went.
Regretfully, people that had met Germans during World War I remembered them as being very friendly towards Jews. These people were sure that the Germans weren't going to hurt them. On our way from Chernovtsy to Uman we passed smaller towns where the majority of the population was Jewish. At that time the Germans concentrated on areas in the direction to Moscow, and Ukrainian Jews had every opportunity to evacuate. Wherever we spoke with someone we told them to hurry up, but they replied that they remembered the attitude of Germans towards Jews during World War I. The Jews hoped to open their stores and synagogues and return to their habitual way of life when the Germans came. We were trying to explain that those were different Germans. We had heard from refugees from Germany and Poland about how the Germans treated the Jews, but people didn't believe what we were saying. They stayed and so many of them perished.
We were sent to the military unit in Zolotonosha near Uman. We stayed there for a short while when Stalin issued an order to release those that came from the Western areas from the front-line forces. Stalin didn't trust people that had lived under the Soviet power for less than a year. We were sent to the construction units; every one of us to a different one, just in case. We were upset, but other officers were telling us that Stalin was rescuing our life by sending us to the rear. Of course, it wasn't his goal to save our lives - the authorities were concerned about desertion and betrayal on our part. I was sent to the construction unit in Kamyshin, Saratov region, and from there to Saratov in Russia. We didn't have anything to do in this construction unit. There were military men of various nationalities from different parts of the USSR, but we were all 'not to be trusted and not worthy of the trust of the most fair Soviet power'. There were the former camp prisoners, political prisoners and young people from the parts of the country that had recently joined the USSR. First sergeants stole our food, and we stole from collective farms. The locals mockingly called us 'defenders of the motherland'.
There was a doctor with the military unit, Mergenier, a Jew from Chernovtsy. He was also transferred to this unit from the front. He called me once and said, 'There are only two of us from Chernovtsy in this unit: you and I. You make trenches here, but nobody needs them. So, let them do it, but lets say you will have dysentery the whole winter'. I stayed in his field hospital the whole winter. I could read and sleep as much as I wanted. In the spring the chairman of the local collective farm requested a few soldiers to help him during the seeding period. The doctor submitted his report to the commander of the regiment informing him that I could be sent to the collective farm. I became a water carrier at the collective farm. We had sufficient food there. I stayed at the collective farm until 1944.
All hopes for a better life under the Soviet power failed. The deportation of people was a brutal act. The people that had lived under the Soviet power since 1917 knew more about it, but to us it was a shock. A huge number of people was deported from Bukovina in one night.
I was in Chernovtsy in June 1941. We heard about the beginning of the war on the radio. A German fighter was shot on the first day of the war, but then things became quiet. There were rumors that the Soviet armies had occupied Warsaw, Sophia and Bucharest, but then we heard that the Soviet forces were retreating. This was at the beginning of July 1941. I worked at the stocking factory and was on a night shift. I went into the yard and saw our director getting into the car, ready to move. I asked him, 'What shall we do?'. He said, 'You have to escape'. He gave me 500 rubles. He left and took all money from the factory with him.
Young people of the stocking and knitwear factories gathered for a meeting the following morning. The majority of the employees were Jews. There were about a hundred of us. We decided to escape. It was impossible to get on the train. It was a hot summer, and we decided to walk. We left wearing shorts and summer shoes. We walked as far as Kamenets-Podolsk, about 150 kilometers from Chernovtsy. We saw trains that were heading for the front. One officer, a Jew, called us and asked whether we were from Chernovtsy. We were surprised and asked him how he could tell. He said that idiots, who were stupid enough to evacuate in their shorts and speak Yiddish on the way, could only come from Chernovtsy. He said that we were on the territory of Ukraine where nobody wore shorts. [Editor's note: such clothing was believed to be immoral, and nobody in the USSR wore these kind of clothes.] He said that the locals could take us for Germans and even kill us. We were lucky. He gave us trousers, and we proceeded on our way. We didn't have any luggage, only some money. We didn't need money, though, because villagers gave us food for free. We walked for about 15 days avoiding the main roads. The Germans were bombing the main roads. We walked as far as Uman, 350 kilometers from Kamenets-Podolsk. In Uman men were recruited to the army. I don't know where the girls went.
Regretfully, people that had met Germans during World War I remembered them as being very friendly towards Jews. These people were sure that the Germans weren't going to hurt them. On our way from Chernovtsy to Uman we passed smaller towns where the majority of the population was Jewish. At that time the Germans concentrated on areas in the direction to Moscow, and Ukrainian Jews had every opportunity to evacuate. Wherever we spoke with someone we told them to hurry up, but they replied that they remembered the attitude of Germans towards Jews during World War I. The Jews hoped to open their stores and synagogues and return to their habitual way of life when the Germans came. We were trying to explain that those were different Germans. We had heard from refugees from Germany and Poland about how the Germans treated the Jews, but people didn't believe what we were saying. They stayed and so many of them perished.
We were sent to the military unit in Zolotonosha near Uman. We stayed there for a short while when Stalin issued an order to release those that came from the Western areas from the front-line forces. Stalin didn't trust people that had lived under the Soviet power for less than a year. We were sent to the construction units; every one of us to a different one, just in case. We were upset, but other officers were telling us that Stalin was rescuing our life by sending us to the rear. Of course, it wasn't his goal to save our lives - the authorities were concerned about desertion and betrayal on our part. I was sent to the construction unit in Kamyshin, Saratov region, and from there to Saratov in Russia. We didn't have anything to do in this construction unit. There were military men of various nationalities from different parts of the USSR, but we were all 'not to be trusted and not worthy of the trust of the most fair Soviet power'. There were the former camp prisoners, political prisoners and young people from the parts of the country that had recently joined the USSR. First sergeants stole our food, and we stole from collective farms. The locals mockingly called us 'defenders of the motherland'.
There was a doctor with the military unit, Mergenier, a Jew from Chernovtsy. He was also transferred to this unit from the front. He called me once and said, 'There are only two of us from Chernovtsy in this unit: you and I. You make trenches here, but nobody needs them. So, let them do it, but lets say you will have dysentery the whole winter'. I stayed in his field hospital the whole winter. I could read and sleep as much as I wanted. In the spring the chairman of the local collective farm requested a few soldiers to help him during the seeding period. The doctor submitted his report to the commander of the regiment informing him that I could be sent to the collective farm. I became a water carrier at the collective farm. We had sufficient food there. I stayed at the collective farm until 1944.
, Ukraine
I finished grammar school in 1938. I was 19 years old. I became an apprentice at the Chernovtsy stocking factory. I still lived with my aunt's family. Late I became a professional knitter. In the evenings I met up with my former co-students. We went to a youth club. We also went on tours, hiking in the woods and in the mountains, and we met up with girls.
In 1940 Stalin threatened the Romanian government to start a war if Romania didn't transfer its western regions, Moldavia, Bessarabia [5], the Carpathian Mountains and Bukovina, to the USSR. Romania agreed and all these areas joined the USSR. I was on vacation visiting my parents in Putila when the 'liberators' came to town. The Romanian army had just left and the Soviet army was expected at any moment. Within a day the Soviet tanks came to Bukovina, and it became part of the Soviet territory. The locals, who supported the Soviet power, were appointed as heads of village and town councils.
There were many communists among the Jews. They believed in the communist ideals of equal rights for everybody, a happy future for their children and the possibility to study. However strange it may sound, there were communists even among richer Jews. There was a very rich Jew in our town. He owned a soap factory and was a communist. During the Soviet power he became the director of the soap factory. It was strange that wealthy Jews became communists, but that's what happened.
There were different views on the Soviet power. The Jews believed it was their liberation from the Romanians. Jews accepted the Soviet power hoping for a better life because the Soviet propaganda was very strong before the war. Although the Communist Party was officially banned, the communists became members of the Social Democratic Party, the Bund [6]. The Bund was practically a disguise for communists.
There was a rich Jewish attorney named Grayev, who lived in the center of Putila. He was a communist and looked forward to the establishment of the Soviet power. I helped him to make a poster reading, 'Long live the Red Army'. He put it on his house. The following events were horrific. In 1941, ten days before the war, a bigger part of the - not only - Jewish population of Bukovina was deported to the North of Siberia on Stalin's orders. Wealthy and rich people were deported, including attorneys, lawyers and doctors. They also deported Grayev and his family. After the war somebody told me that he and his wife hanged themselves in the railcar on the way into exile. Another case was the story of a doctor in Putila, Gary Winkler, a Jew. When the Romanians were in power he spent 4 or 5 years in prison for his communist views. The Soviet authorities released all political prisoners, and Gary went to visit his father in Putila. He even held a greeting speech in the central square of the town in honor of the Soviet army. His father was an attorney. He was deported and so was Gary. Somebody told me later that he was in Aktyubinsk in the North during the war and managed to reach Austria after the war.
In 1940 Stalin threatened the Romanian government to start a war if Romania didn't transfer its western regions, Moldavia, Bessarabia [5], the Carpathian Mountains and Bukovina, to the USSR. Romania agreed and all these areas joined the USSR. I was on vacation visiting my parents in Putila when the 'liberators' came to town. The Romanian army had just left and the Soviet army was expected at any moment. Within a day the Soviet tanks came to Bukovina, and it became part of the Soviet territory. The locals, who supported the Soviet power, were appointed as heads of village and town councils.
There were many communists among the Jews. They believed in the communist ideals of equal rights for everybody, a happy future for their children and the possibility to study. However strange it may sound, there were communists even among richer Jews. There was a very rich Jew in our town. He owned a soap factory and was a communist. During the Soviet power he became the director of the soap factory. It was strange that wealthy Jews became communists, but that's what happened.
There were different views on the Soviet power. The Jews believed it was their liberation from the Romanians. Jews accepted the Soviet power hoping for a better life because the Soviet propaganda was very strong before the war. Although the Communist Party was officially banned, the communists became members of the Social Democratic Party, the Bund [6]. The Bund was practically a disguise for communists.
There was a rich Jewish attorney named Grayev, who lived in the center of Putila. He was a communist and looked forward to the establishment of the Soviet power. I helped him to make a poster reading, 'Long live the Red Army'. He put it on his house. The following events were horrific. In 1941, ten days before the war, a bigger part of the - not only - Jewish population of Bukovina was deported to the North of Siberia on Stalin's orders. Wealthy and rich people were deported, including attorneys, lawyers and doctors. They also deported Grayev and his family. After the war somebody told me that he and his wife hanged themselves in the railcar on the way into exile. Another case was the story of a doctor in Putila, Gary Winkler, a Jew. When the Romanians were in power he spent 4 or 5 years in prison for his communist views. The Soviet authorities released all political prisoners, and Gary went to visit his father in Putila. He even held a greeting speech in the central square of the town in honor of the Soviet army. His father was an attorney. He was deported and so was Gary. Somebody told me later that he was in Aktyubinsk in the North during the war and managed to reach Austria after the war.
, Ukraine
Senior members of the Betar wanted to go to Palestine. Those who wanted to move there had to work for a landlord for about a year to learn farming. Upon completion of this course they obtained a certificate and could move to Israel. The British Embassy issued those certificates. It was their requirement to have this certificate attached to the package of submittals. However, this was just another requirement to restrict entrance to Palestine. They actually wanted to turn Palestine into their colony. The borders of Arabian countries were open, and Jewish capitalist entrepreneurs went to Palestine creating new jobs. Arabs were free to go to Palestine, but Jews had restrictions. We can witness the consequences of this policy now. It's the fault of the English. The League of Nations issued the mandate to England to found a Jewish state, but it failed to perform this task.
One could go to Palestine from the age of 18. Some of my acquaintances from Betar left. I don't remember their names, though. There was a hakhsharah center in Chernovtsy, up the street from the Town Council. Those, who intended to move to Palestine, got registered there and waited for a permit because only a restricted number of people could go to Palestine. There were many people willing to go there, but only few obtained permission. I didn't want to leave my family and friends and my country. Our friends from Palestine wrote about their hard life and work, the difficult climate, malaria, the lack of water and the simplest comforts. But they came to like this country and were enthusiastic about changing their lives for the better.
One could go to Palestine from the age of 18. Some of my acquaintances from Betar left. I don't remember their names, though. There was a hakhsharah center in Chernovtsy, up the street from the Town Council. Those, who intended to move to Palestine, got registered there and waited for a permit because only a restricted number of people could go to Palestine. There were many people willing to go there, but only few obtained permission. I didn't want to leave my family and friends and my country. Our friends from Palestine wrote about their hard life and work, the difficult climate, malaria, the lack of water and the simplest comforts. But they came to like this country and were enthusiastic about changing their lives for the better.
, Ukraine