Besides school I also attended my violin and piano classes and hardly had any leisure time left. In the rare moments of leisure my parents didn't allow me to play with other children in the yard who probably had a different mentality. Instead, they took me to the confectionery shop on Alexandrovskaya Street, the main street of Kishinev, where we had ice cream.
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zlata tkach
Alexandrovskaya Street was paved with gravel like the majority of the streets in Kishinev, and there was a tram running there. There were one- storied houses, some of them were nice. There were many shops owned by Jews on Alexandrovskaya Street. There were a few markets and many gardens and parks in Kishinev. One of the oldest parks was the park with the monument of Stephan the Great [the ruler of the Moldova principality from 1457-1504, who conducted the policy of centralization]. I remember there was a terrible earthquake in Kishinev in 1940. It happened at night. I was sleeping in my corner by the outer wall. My father grabbed me and rushed outside, when the wall collapsed right on my bed. My father saved my life.
I remember that the late 1930s, when the Cuzists [3] came to power, were troublesome years. My parents were very concerned as the elements of anti- Semitism began to emerge. Young people marched in the streets and there were collisions.
Perhaps for this reason our family was happy when Bessarabia was annexed to the USSR [see Annexation of Bessarabia to the Soviet Union] [4]. Besides, we had no idea what the USSR was like. We were told that everybody was equal there, but this sounded so naive. I, a twelve- year-old girl, was just curious. I remember watching the Red army troops marching along the streets, when they came into town. There was new administration. There were jokes told about the wives of the military who bought olives to make jam. Of course, the Soviet military and their wives weren't highly cultural. It seemed to me that the life of our family didn't change. My father was a teacher and we lived in our apartment.
On 22nd June 1941 the war began.
Our family had different views regarding evacuation: some were for it and some were against it. My uncle Mordekhai was adamantly against evacuation. He said, 'I'm not leaving here.' They stayed and perished in a ghetto in Transnistria [5]. Their son Aron was mobilized to the Soviet army on the first days of the war and this saved his life. He was at the front during the war, survived and met the Victory Day in Hungary.
My father demonstrated strength and activity. He arranged for my mother and I and my grandmother Kenia, to leave Kishinev by railroad. There was an air raid near Kishinev and the refugees grabbed their bales and jumped off the train. Somebody said that it was best to hide under the railcars, but my father dragged us to the field and this saved our lives. A bomb hit our railcar. Then, I remember this well, we headed to the Northern Caucasus in open platforms. On our way we ate whatever we could get trading our belongings for food. We got off in Ordzhonikidze. My father was mobilized to the army and sent to a distribution point in the town of Prohladnoye near Ordzhonikidze. My mother went there to see him. The front line was approaching Ordzhonikidze and we had to move on.
I got off in Krasnovodsk [today Turkmenbashi - 575 km from Makhachkala]. From there we were taken to an aul village. I stayed with this family but I don't remember their names. It was thought that they would send me to a children's home later. There were low saxaul trees in this aul. Their branches served for stoking in this area. There was flat bread made on the fire. There was little food, even mill cake [milled and pressed sunflower oil production wastes] were hard to get. I decided to leave this family and go to Namangan [1625 km from Krasnovodsk], which was about 30 kilometers from this village to find a children's home there. When I got to Namangan I fortunately bumped into a Jewish woman. She happened to be the director of a children's home in Drogobych [Lvov region]. Her name was Rosa Abramovna, but I've forgotten her surname. She was arrested in 1945 or 1946, I don't know for what charges. She had a rare kind heart. She took me with her.
So I began to live in the children's home and go to school.
So I began to live in the children's home and go to school.
Rosa Abramovna helped me to search for my mother and grandmother. She wrote to Buguruslan in Orenburg region [today Russia], where they opened an evacuation inquiry office, and my mother finally responded in 1943. As it happened, my mother and grandmother were in Kokand [about 100 km away] near Namangan. My mother had been looking for me all that time. She and my grandmother were exhausted and miserable. They moved to Namangan. Rosa Abramovna employed my mother as a tutor in the children's home. My mother had meals in the children's home and took food for my grandmother. They rented a room and I lived with them.
My father served in an orchestra platoon. However, he had venous congestion and wasn't fit for military service and they demobilized him in 1943. He went to Tashkent where he was hoping to find us, but it wasn't that easy.
In Namangan my father went to work in the School of Military Musicians evacuated from Moscow [today Russia]. He taught the tuba, French horn and horn: he was much valued for knowing to play brass instruments.
' In August 1944 the Soviet army liberated Kishinev and we returned home, but there was no home left. Kishinev was ruined. There was a pile of stones left from my grandmother Kenia's house. In the house across the street, a Moldovan woman kept chicken in a room with a window in the ceiling. She let us live in this room. We cleaned it, whitewashed the walls and moved in there. Later, we had another small room built. It looked like a corridor, but there was a window in it. Our prewar tradition to set the table covered with a snow- white tablecloth faded away and Jewish traditions were forgotten: we were just surviving. My father went to teach in a music school, he had no private classes, and our life was hard.
So I went to the tenth grade in this school, and also, began to work in kindergartens as a music tutor. They didn't pay well but they provided meals and I could even take some food home with me.
The war was over. Victory Day [8] is a big, a very big holiday. There was a meeting at school. However, for me Victory Day is associated with the song 'The Day of Victory' by Tukhmanov [David Tukhmanov, a Jew, a popular Soviet composer of popular songs]. I think it's just a brilliant song.
. I finished school with a golden medal and decided that my vocation was to be the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. I had no problems with entering Kishinev University, which had just been founded [1945]. However, it was a disappointment. Probably, the lecturers there weren't so good.
At that time Leonid Simonovich Gurov, a renowned pedagogue and composer, came to work in the Kishinev Conservatory from Odessa. My second cousin sister Dora Fridman was a musician and advised me to show my compositions to him and I did so. Leonid Simonovich listened to my songs. They were probably naive but they came from my heart and had nice tunes. He liked them and told me to enter the Preparatory Faculty of the Conservatory. I tried to study at both the University and Conservatory, but it was too hard and I quit the University.
After finishing the Preparatory Faculty I entered two Faculties at the Conservatory: the violin class of Iosif Lvovich Dailis, and the Music History Faculty. Unfortunately, I couldn't get in Gurov's class of composition: his class was full. I was hoping that later there might be a chance, but there wasn't.
After finishing the Preparatory Faculty I entered two Faculties at the Conservatory: the violin class of Iosif Lvovich Dailis, and the Music History Faculty. Unfortunately, I couldn't get in Gurov's class of composition: his class was full. I was hoping that later there might be a chance, but there wasn't.
There were two anti-Semitic campaigns: the struggle [campaign] against cosmopolitans [9] and the Doctors' Plot [10], when I studied in the Conservatory. We understood that these were fabricated campaigns and we followed the events, but we were more bothered about our hard life.
The Jews we knew were happy about Stalin's death [1953]. There were talks in Kishinev that there were trains waiting to deport all Jews to Birobidzhan [11]. However, on the outside this was mourning. There were fanatics who thought that nothing could happen without Stalin. I still believe that we can't cross out this figure. Besides all cruel features he did a lot of good. Well, perhaps if he hadn't done them, the others would, but there were things about the Soviet regime that are gone for good: free medicine and free education. One can't forget such things. As for what Beriya [12] was doing, I don't think it was a secret to Stalin. I think he knew. This was Soviet fascism. Speaking about this subject I can say that when at the Twentieth Party Congress [13] Khrushchev [14] denounced Stalin, it wasn't staggering news for my husband or me. We knew it at the back of our minds.
Yefim was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Beltsy in 1926. His father, Mark Tkach, was a fur specialist, and his mother, Nehama, helped him. Yefim studied in a grammar school. His younger brother Yevgeniy graduated from elementary school. When the war began, they left Beltsy on foot. The German troops caught up with them in Kryzhopol in Vinnitsa region and they were taken to the ghetto in Kryzhopol. They survived since they knew Romanian and there were Romanian guards in the ghetto. Yefim's mother was a cook for a Romanian officer and his father also worked for somebody. When in 1944 Soviet troops approached Kryzhopol, the Romanians escaped. Yefim's family returned to Beltsy. Yefim finished school and studied at the Pedagogical College in Beltsy. He didn't like it and went to Kishinev where he entered the flute class at the Conservatory.
Yefim and I got married two years after we met, on 4th December 1949. We just registered our marriage and our closest relatives got together at home. I didn't have a veil or a white gown. We had a modest dinner.
In 1952, I finished the Conservatory and got a mandatory job assignment [15] to teach in a music school. I worked there for a few years.
In 1957 I entered the Faculty of Composers to Gurov's class and I only studied my specialty. In 1962 I graduated from this faculty and went to work at the Conservatory. I lectured on solfeggio, harmony, analysis of music works and reading of symphonic scores. Later, I gave up teaching solfeggio since I had to sing a lot with students and developed a catarrh. Now I teach composition, orchestra, instruments for symphonic orchestras, and choir arrangement which I like so much.
In 1967 I wrote my first opera for children: 'A nanny goat and three kids'. It was staged in our Opera Theater. I joined the Association of Composers of Moldova [a professional creative association of composers]. The chairman of our union was Vasiliy Georgievich Zagorskiy, a student of Lev Gurov. He was Russian, born in Bessarabia and he knew Romanian well. He was a nice person. It was to his credit that there was no anti-Semitism in the Association of Composers. He created a very good creative atmosphere. There were many Jewish composers: Shapiro, Aranov, Fedov, Mooler. There were hardly any Moldovan composers. Since we lived in a very small apartment, I enjoyed trips to the House of Creativity of Composers [specialized recreation homes to create conditions for creative work], where I could forget about everyday routines and dedicate myself to work. We communicated with composers all over the Soviet Union at congresses of composers. I traveled a lot to hear the works by Georgian, Armenian, Moscow and Kiev composers. Soviet composers and performers arrived in Kishinev. I was fortunate to meet Dmitriy Shostakovich [Shostakovich, Dmitriy Dmitrievich, (1906-1975): one of the foremost 20th-century Soviet composers] at a meeting in the 1960s. He wasn't only a genius, but also, a wonderful, humble, and intelligent person.
One can say that I've accomplished a lot, but I took a huge effort to reach it, it was very hard. Firstly, because there were many jealous people, which happens in the creative environment, secondly, because I'm a woman, and there aren't many women composers, and thirdly, because I'm a Jew. This became a problem for me when numbers of Jews began to move to Israel, but I must say that Yefim and I never considered departure. It's hard to say why, perhaps, it's just an inner conviction that a person must live where he was born and where his ancestors were buried. Perhaps, one lives with this never questioning it. The establishment of Israel in 1948 instigated the feeling of happiness and inner pride that Jews got their own country, finally. Since then I've considered Israel to be my country.
After he graduated from the Conservatory Lyova was taken to the army. He served in the music band of the Moscow regiment.
We were used to the Soviet way of life. I didn't care about politics and I didn't join the Party. As for our spiritual life, Yefim or I never felt any suppression. My husband collected classical literature. I'm very fond of foreign classics. My creative activities were closely connected with Moldovan literature and we often discussed works by Moldovan writers: Aureliu Busyok [Moldovan Soviet writer, based on his novel 'My Parisian Uncle', Zlata Tkach wrote an opera in 1988], Dumitriu Matkovskiy, a Moldovan writer and poet, and Grigore Vieru - a Moldovan poet, who was a friend of our family for many years. We went to all the performances in the Opera Theater, and symphonic concerts. Many popular musicians came on tours to Kishinev, I remember Yevgeniy, Mravinskiy, a conductor from Leningrad, Oleg Krysa, a violinist, Soviet composers: Khachaturian [Khachaturian, Aram (1903-1978): Soviet-Armenian composer], and Khrennikov [Khrennikov, Tikhon NIkolaevich (1913): Soviet-Russian composer, public activist]. We didn't often go to drama theaters in Kishinev as Yefim wasn't fond of them. We only went there when producers whom we knew invited us to the first nights.
Yefim taught in the music school for many years and later worked in the Philharmonic. He lectured on the history of Moldovan music in the Kishinev College of Arts. He specialized in Moldovan music, wrote many articles for the press, presented regular radio programs in Moldovan that he knew well.
When Gorbachev [16] came to power and perestroika [17] began, for me it was a possibility to give freedom to my thoughts and turn 180 degrees to Jewish life. I've composed music my whole life. I was born in a Moldovan village, lived in Moldova and had an ear for Moldovan music, while I've never had an expressed need to write Jewish music. Life was difficult: the war, evacuation, and the Soviet reality kept me within certain frames. As soon as I felt free for expressing myself, I felt like writing music for my own people. Music is always in the genes. My husband helped me with it. He found a rare book by Berezovskiy for me: 'Jewish folklore.' I began to use arrangements of Jewish pop songs in my works.
Therefore, I began to write Jewish music in vocal cycles, instrumental music, music for a quartet and an orchestra. I have a number of pieces of Jewish music that I composed.
My son worked in the Bureau of Propaganda of Soviet Music till the breakup of the USSR in 1991. The Bureau was closed and Lyova was jobless for almost three years. By that time it was my turn in the line to buy a car. [In the USSR people who wanted to buy a car had to wait in line for years before their turn came.] I bought it, and Lyova took it to Moscow and earned money by working as a cabdriver in a cooperative. Later, he worked as a director of the collection fund of musical instruments, and now he works in the Glinka [18] State Central Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow.