When we arrived home my father and brother had already received call-up papers from the recruiting office. My father was 44 and the age limit for the army was 45. We said our farewells to my father in the yard of School 124, where all the new recruits were gathered. Misha, along with other young people, was sent to Donbass to harvest the crops. They were trying to save the younger people and sent them to the East rather than to the front. My father’s military unit was sent to Lubny. Somewhere on the way my father met Misha and gave him the photographs that he had with him.
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Major events (political and historical)
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Holocaust
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Displaying 17431 - 17460 of 50826 results
Frieda Portnaya
Just two of us were left at home: my mother and I. I remember air raids in Kiev. During these air raids the airplanes flew very low and shot at people. This was very frightening, and we hid in the entrances of houses. At night my mother sent me down to our neighbor’s basement, as there were raids at night, too.
We received a letter from my father letting us know that he was in Lubny.
My grandfather (my mother's father) Yankel Mandemberg lived in the town of Makarov not far from Kiev. He was a rabbi in the synagogue there and was a widower when he married my grandmother, Frieda, after whom I was named.
They had a private house in Makarov; it was a good house, built of stone with two floors and eight or nine rooms -- very appropriate for a rabbi. It was surrounded by a garden and fruit trees. My grandfather and grandmother were well-to-do people. On Saturday they had a Ukrainian housemaid to do all the housework, as my grandmother didn’t do any work on Saturday.
They had a kosher kitchen, with separate utensils and dishes, and strictly observed all kosher food rules.
My mother told me that all religious Jews in town used to go to her father. They came on the eve of Judgement Day (Yom Kippur) and he swung a rooster over their heads. That was the ritual of purification on the eve of Yom Kippur.
At Pesach my grandfather conducted a seder in the synagogue. My mother and her brothers always attended it.
People did not only go to my grandfather during holidays or to pray. He was a very wise man and people came to ask his advice. He found words of support and consolation for every Jew. He had a good piece of advice for each of them (how to bring up children, how to conduct relations with their wives, how to follow a household budget).
He taught his children a lot of things, too. My mother knew all the prayers. Much later, when we were living in Kiev, people she knew from Makarov used to come to see her, and she explained the prayers to them and told them what her father had taught her: how to greet the Sabbath, how to light candles, how to celebrate Pesach and other religious holidays.
During the Great Patriotic War her daughters were in the evacuation, but Rivka didn’t go with them. She was killed at Babi Yar1 near Kiev along with thousands of other Jews. The way they put it at that time was that she “left for Babi Yar”. My mother’s stepbrother Pinia Mandemberg and his wife and son Yakov also perished at Babi Yar.
Both Lyova and Iosif were laborers, locksmiths at a factory.
My mother loved to sew and wanted to learn this profession. There was a tailor in Makarov and my grandfather arranged for my mother to take lessons from him. Once my grandfather was passing by this tailor’s house and saw my mother babysitting his child. My grandfather got angry at this - he was paying the tailor to teach my mother. He told the tailor that Mandemberg’s daughter could not be a baby sitter for an ordinary tailor’s child. He took my mother home and bought her a sewing machine. He told her to sit down and sew and do whatever she wanted, but she wouldn’t go to study any more. And she learned to sew.
My mother went to the Jewish school in Makarov. Her brothers Lyova and Iosif studied there, too. I don’t know how many years my mother attended this school, but I know that it was all the education she got. She read and wrote well in Yiddish.
Galina Shmuilovna Levina
I was studying all the time. I finished sewing courses, knitting courses, but my main hobbies always were the dogs. I was involved in the dog business very seriously; I finished the courses, organized exhibitions, participated in them, too. All that took a lot of time, money and strength. Twice per week I went to the club. My husband liked my dog activities, too, he ran around on my dog businesses, too. Our fox terrier lived for thirteen years, we went to an exhibition twice, but they needed a field diploma there [fox terrier is a hunting dog], he had to catch a fox and so on, but he demonstrated his hunting skills only if he found chocolate, not a fox… Since we didn’t get any diplomas we stopped exhibiting him. After he died, after a long pause we went on vacations together. Being on holidays we understood that we needed a dog, we couldn’t live without a dog, so we took a miniature schnauzer, which someone offered to us.
David told me this story many times: ‘I’m going in the bus and see a man making fun of an old Jew. He asks why this Jew isn’t in Israel. So I tell him, ‘Why don’t you ask me the same, you’d better ask me, not him.’ And then this man replies, I have no reason to talk to you.’ ‘Of course, it doesn’t make sense to talk to me, I’m tall and strong.’ So my husband usually said, ‘If you don’t wish to, I will talk to you.’ Finally he beat such anti-Semites and left them.
It’s hard to say if there were many Jews among our numerous friends. Two of my close friends are Jewish, they both live abroad. Another friend, who stayed to live here, is half-Jewish, her mother was Jewish and her father was Russian. My very close friend, unfortunately, she died, was absolutely Russian. My dogs’ ‘friends’ are Russians, too. Nelly Bronislavna, with whom I am quite close, is Russian and Catholic. I never paid attention to nationality, my friends were chosen due to other features.
Working at the factory, I never suffered from any anti-Semitic incidents, because I never reached high positions. Maybe, if I had entered an institute, I would have felt more anti-Semitism. I retired upon turning 55; of course, I was very tired and couldn’t continue working. According to our Soviet laws, it was necessary to work two months more, and I remember, some bucket stood near my work place. All that took place in May. So my friends and colleagues came and brought some flowers. They brought these flowers from their dachas: ‘What’s going on? Do you really plan to leave? Please, Galina, stay here. We don’t want you to go.’ Anyway, if I’d had problems or troubles because of my nationality, I wouldn’t have worked there for more than 30 years, what do you think?
Also I never went to demonstrations, I never wanted to go there, I never agreed to. And every time they reproached me: ‘Why haven’t you been to the demonstration?’ I answered, ‘I don’t have time for it.’ They were very surprised, ‘You don’t have children. Why don’t you have time?’ I continued the same: ‘Anyway I don’t want to go.’ So they made a conclusion: ‘So we are refusing to pay the thirteenth salary’ [so-called ‘thirteenth salary’ was paid at the end of the year for good work]. What could I do? So I didn’t get it. And those who agreed to go to the demonstration got some extra pay: 50 rubles for carrying the banner and 100 rubles for carrying the flag. One of our colleagues lived on Nevsky Prospekt, she told me, ‘So I go to the balcony and see people carrying the flags. And I begin to count: this is one hundred rubles; this is fifty rubles and so on.’ David, my husband, never participated in the Communist activities either; he never went to demonstrations and so on. Fortunately, we both never joined the Soviet Communist Party and never liked Soviet authorities either.
While working at the factory and taking trips all over the country I’ve been to Solovki – which is a nice and interesting place; that’s why both nowadays and in Soviet times people go there for short and long trips, they stay there to see wonderful nature and historical sights, too – in the concentration camp [27], so-called SLON [short for so-called ‘concentration camp of special purpose’], where our best people died in the 1930s during the Great Terror, and when people died, other prisoners hid their bodies in snow to get their ration. I stayed there for four days and saw everything preserved there. There is no need to tell me, who worked at the factory her entire life and knows exactly how they made up all those plans etc, what they signed and so on, to tell me how much the sausage cost [i.e. how wonderfully cheap things were]. Old workers told me, what was going on: ‘We are coming for work and aren’t seeing five more people, seven more people. And we couldn’t even ask where they went, why they disappeared.’ Here I’m talking about the 1930s, about the times of the Great Terror, but it also happened just after the Great Patriotic War; of course, it took place more seldom, but still it was horrible.
Really, I can’t understand who is voting for the Communists today, I can’t understand how it is possible?
Even though I’m a pure blooded Jew, perhaps, from those, who were searching for Israel together with Moses, and my husband was a Jew, I live in Russia, and unfortunately, I read nothing of Jewish literature except Sholem Aleichem [28]. After all, I read Russian books, and I speak Russian. I look at Chagall [29] paintings with pleasure, I like Levitan [Levitan, Isaac Ilyich (1860-1900): World famous Russian-Jewish artist, known for his wonderful landscapes] too, but I like other artists just the same, especially the impressionists. Once I went to the synagogue on an excursion, and I’ve never been to the repaired Petersburg synagogue. Besides, we always wore ‘magen David’ on necklaces, we never hide that we are Jewish. However, my husband David always said, ‘Yes, we are a clever people, but if a Jew is a fool, that’s terrible. You would never find such fools among others.’
I don’t participate in the life of the local Jewish community; I don’t even know what’s going on inside it.
I don’t participate in the life of the local Jewish community; I don’t even know what’s going on inside it.
Earlier I got postcards and newspapers from Hesed [30] Abraham Charitable Center. They invited me to get medicines for half the price. I don’t get packages from them; Felix gets them and calls me to offer me something he doesn’t need. The staff from Hesed bring those packages straight to the House of Stage Veterans, and also every year he buys matzah in the synagogue. I like matzah, but as a matter of fact I eat everything edible.
My grandfather and grandmother, my mother’s parents, lived in Kiev [today capital of Ukraine]. Granddad had a shipping business on the Dnepr River, he had six or seven ships; one of them was called ‘Mikhail’ in his honor, and another was named ‘Anna’ after my grandmother. [1] The Jewish name of my grandfather was Mendel, his family name was Makhover, and this family name was very well-known in Ukraine and Belarus. He told me, ‘Galenka [short for Galina], I never signed anything.’ This means everyone trusted in his word, and if he gave his word, the problem was solved. Grandfather taught me: you should live in such a way that your word would be enough for everyone. My maternal grandmother was a beauty, naturally, she never worked, and she kept the house and raised her two children: my mother Debora and her brother Mikhail.
Grandfather was a merchant of the First Guild [2], that’s why if he wanted, he could live in [St.] Petersburg or in Moscow [3] before the [Russian] Revolution [4]. Of course, he was quite a rich man, he had a couple of houses, and he rented them out, and also his ships gave him a certain income. Granddad loved his ships very much, and also he loved dogs and horses and in Soviet times he was very sad for he couldn’t keep pets and horses any more.
Once someone told my grandfather, ‘While you were at sea, your wife got a lover.’ In Jewish families, especially of this kind – I mean rich and well-known – such things happened very seldom. My grandfather was sad about this fact itself, but also he didn’t like that this lover was ginger and small. I don’t know if they knew each other and were introduced, but my grandfather certainly had seen him somewhere. Grandfather himself was a really handsome man. And soon seven Jews, representatives of Ukraine and Belarus, the most honored community members, divorced my grandparents. Their children, Mikhail and Dora – this was my mother’s home name – stayed to live together with their father.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
When the revolutionary events started, Grandfather didn’t emigrate, even though he had an account in one of the Swiss banks. Later he explained his decision to me: ‘It was interesting to watch and see how the entire story with all those down-and-outs would finish. I couldn’t believe that something would come out of it. I thought that since I’d transferred money I would be able to leave in some extreme case.
When the searches started, and someone came, my maternal grandparents put all expensive things like different diamonds and so on, in a sack and threw this sack from their window into the snow. They thought they’d find this sack later. But someone else found all those treasures and took them away. Finally, Grandfather was arrested, and the shipping on the Dnepr stopped. But, after all, the Dnepr isn’t a regular river somewhere in Zhmerinka [small town in Ukraine not far from Vinnitsa]. The workers said, ‘you should prove to us that our owner is alive, otherwise, none of us will go to work, and you wouldn’t be able to do anything with us.’ And how can you stop the shipping? So they held my grandfather for three days, and all his seven ships were anchored, not moving…
Grandfather told me that when the Bolsheviks [6] let him out, all the ships were anchored in the port and met him with loud hooting. All the staff were in their places. Soon the authorities proposed Granddad to become head of the Leningrad Trade Harbor.
Grandfather told me that when the Bolsheviks [6] let him out, all the ships were anchored in the port and met him with loud hooting. All the staff were in their places. Soon the authorities proposed Granddad to become head of the Leningrad Trade Harbor.
,
1917
See text in interview
In Leningrad Grandmother together with Grandfather settled in a big communal apartment [7], which was situated on the corner of Mayakovskaya Street and Baskov Road. Earlier it belonged to one rich Jew, so rich that he was allowed to live in St. Petersburg in Tsarist times. And after the Revolution they divided this apartment into separate rooms. Granddad had some jobs in Leningrad, but, as a matter of fact, he didn’t have any serious job, perhaps, he decided to behave very modestly, not to attract attention to himself. Granny didn’t ever work.
Certainly, my maternal grandparents knew Jewish traditions. Grandfather had a tallit and a prayer book, he knew the prayers, and he read and wrote Hebrew. At home, at ours in Leningrad, they baked matzah. Adults made the dough, made the holes with a fork, and then we, the children, carried this matzah to the stove. We celebrated Pesach: we drank wine, Grandmother always made kneydlakh out of matzah, I remember that you shouldn’t put any fat in these kneydlakh. She cooked other Jewish meals, too: red beef, teyglakh, kugel, tsimes [8].