However, as a matter of fact, my parents didn’t follow Jewish traditions at home, they mainly celebrated Soviet holidays, and Father wasn’t a religious person, not at all.
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Displaying 26341 - 26370 of 50826 results
Anna Dremlug
However, my friend Rebecca and I were in the last grade and we decided to enter the Philological Faculty of Leningrad University and even had a chance to send them some of our documents.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
And then the Great Patriotic War came: we had the graduation party in June, on 17th June 1941, and the war started on 22nd June.
We had always been at the very center of life, not paying attention to the fact that we were Jews.
I recall with pleasure both the pioneer camps and military games: we had to find a hidden flag and so on. At the pioneer camps military games were popular. They had to prepare the youth for defending their Motherland, usually children were separated into two teams, put on different uniforms and were ‘fighting.’ Their goal was to find the headquarters of the enemies and to take their flag.
I never went to a kindergarten; my mother raised me and my sister herself. Later, when already a schoolgirl, I often went to pioneer camps [14]. I started school, when I was eight. I studied at the school #11 [15], which was called ‘eleventh railway.’ There were only three schools in town: ours, twelfth railway and the ordinary one. Our school was the state one, but the railway union supported it.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Well, there weren’t many Jews in our town in total, maybe, about one hundred people. And the town was a small one. All Jews knew each other and communicated with one another, since they all lived nearby.
When Grandfather came over from Belarus he ate only kosher food, and it was necessary to kosher the chicken, so my mother especially went to the local shochet in Vyshniy Volochek to do so. And later she said she would go to Volochek, but Father koshered the chicken himself – in principle, he knew what to do.
We lived there in an ordinary wooden house with two floors. The owner, Naum Abramovich, lived on the second floor, and we rented one of the apartments on the first floor. We lived in that house till the Great Patriotic War [7] began. And even later, in 1948, after Dad came back from the front, my parents bought a quarter of that building.
There was a small garden in front of the house. In general Bologoye was a green town, with its nice park and public garden.
There was a small garden in front of the house. In general Bologoye was a green town, with its nice park and public garden.
During the evacuation they went to Chuvashia, to Tarkhany [small village in the south of Chuvashia]. First, we lived there all together: my grandparents, my mother and my sisters, my aunt and her daughter, my cousin. Then they stayed in Tarkhany together with Aunt Zhenya, and we left for another village after I got a job in a kolkhoz. We all came back home in 1943.
But when we went into evacuation we found out that he wasn’t such an Orthodox Jew. While we were travelling in heated goods van, Mother made us sandwiches with lard and onions.
Grandfather asked us, ‘Children, what tasty things do you eat?’ We replied, ‘Grandfather, this is bread with lard.’ – ‘Ah, it smells very nice.’ – ‘Grandfather, just try it.’ He hesitated and then said, ‘We [the Jews] can’t eat pork.’ – ‘Don’t worry, Grandfather.’ And finally we gave him some sandwiches. Later, when we came to Chuvashia [an autonomous republic in the central Volga region] he bought two small pigs and began to eat pork heartily.
Grandfather asked us, ‘Children, what tasty things do you eat?’ We replied, ‘Grandfather, this is bread with lard.’ – ‘Ah, it smells very nice.’ – ‘Grandfather, just try it.’ He hesitated and then said, ‘We [the Jews] can’t eat pork.’ – ‘Don’t worry, Grandfather.’ And finally we gave him some sandwiches. Later, when we came to Chuvashia [an autonomous republic in the central Volga region] he bought two small pigs and began to eat pork heartily.
Grandfather wore tallit. And he had tefillin too. No doubt, that he and Grandmother Itka followed Jewish traditions.
After the Soviet power was established, my grandfather was among the first peasants to join the kolkhoz [6]. He didn’t go to the army.
The family lived in an ordinary peasant house, divided into two parts: the summer part and the winter one. The summer one was cold, and there was only one room in it. At the same time, there was a Russian stove [5] in the winter rooms. Grandfather’s bed, closed off with a pink curtain, stood beyond the stove. There was no electricity, and the well was in the yard. Everything they grew, they ate, and nothing was sold. There was no garden in the usual sense, only the kitchen garden, and the only animals they had were a cow and a horse.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
In 1905 his elder children from the first wife left for America [after the Revolution of 1905 [4] many Jews emigrated from Russia to the USA or Palestine].
,
1905
See text in interview
They buried her in the Jewish cemetery [the only Jewish cemetery in Leningrad is the Preobrazhenskoe cemetery].
They spoke mainly Yiddish in the family, but they knew Russian too.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
My mother’s father Zusya Bogorad or Zakhar, as it was written in his passport, was a craftsman, and he owned a small lemonade and soda factory. Staraya Russa was a spa place, so they sold their soda and lemonade in the recreation parts of the town.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
I can say only that, possibly, my maternal grandfather and grandmother lived on the territory of the Jewish Pale of Settlement [1] and my mother Ghindah Zusevna Alperovich, nee Bogorad, or Zinaida Zakharovna, as it was written in her passport [2], was born in Gorodok [small town in Belarus, 50 kilometers north of Vitebsk]. That was quite a remote, out-of-the-way place; however, many Jews lived there.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Later someone introduced her to Lev Moiseevich Tylkin, the brother of Aunt Ida’s second husband [mother’ sister, who married for the second time, after her husband died]. He lived in Moscow and was a widower. Mother sold her apartment in Bologoye, moved to Moscow and together with her new husband built a one-room ‘cooperative’ there [in the USSR apartments weren’t private, the state decided itself where citizens should live].
,
After WW2
See text in interview
It is hard to say what kind of relations they had. Mother thought that Father was unfaithful to her. I don’t know if she was right or not, but sometimes she was jealous for no reason. I recall such an incident: in Bologoye some Jewish family lived not far from us, and the wife, apparently, liked my dad and invited him to some birthday party. Father bought a box of sweets and hid it somewhere in the house, but Mom found the box, and there was a big scandal.
On Soviet holidays, such as 1st May, for example, when everyone gathered, Father sang both Jewish and Ukrainian songs.
Once in their life my parents went on vacation with a voucher – Father got this voucher as a civil servant: before World War II, when they just built the Belomorsko-Baltiyskiy Channel [connecting the White Sea with Lake Onega, was built in the 1930s, political prisoners actively participated in its creation]. And we stayed at home – we never spent holidays all together, never ever in our lives, we just didn’t have such an opportunity.
Then Father went to a recreation center in Eysk [small town in Krasnodar district] at the Azov Sea coast before World War II. He also went to Moscow, when the VDNH [Exhibition of People’s Economic Achievements] was just opened. And mainly they spent time in Bologoye, there was a lake, and we went for walks to Putyatin garden, and organized dances in the evenings.
Then Father went to a recreation center in Eysk [small town in Krasnodar district] at the Azov Sea coast before World War II. He also went to Moscow, when the VDNH [Exhibition of People’s Economic Achievements] was just opened. And mainly they spent time in Bologoye, there was a lake, and we went for walks to Putyatin garden, and organized dances in the evenings.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Father wasn’t a Komsomol member, however in 1938 he joined the Communist Party – maybe, not on his own initiative, I think, they made him join. At that time Stalin’s terror [13] had begun already, and it was less dangerous if you were a Communist, especially for Jews.
Father wasn’t a Komsomol member, however in 1938 he joined the Communist Party – maybe, not on his own initiative, I think, they made him join. At that time Stalin’s terror [13] had begun already, and it was less dangerous if you were a Communist, especially for Jews.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Father was the director of ‘Koghsyrie’ – a small organization, part of Prom cooperation, where peasants from neighborhood villages brought animal skins. A man responsible for raw materials worked there too, together with my father, who, as a matter of fact, only admitted the skins. The job was very poorly paid, we lived very modestly. We had neighbors, who worked at the railway and got better rations [food help for state employees [12]] than my father. We mainly bought food and stuff at the market, then we got a goat, a pig, chicken, and, for some period of time, even a cow, so we managed somehow.
Mother was unemployed: children on her hands, and no place to work. She hated her profession as a knitter, sewed only stocks and scarves from time to time, but, apparently, she didn’t like to sew at all.
Mother was unemployed: children on her hands, and no place to work. She hated her profession as a knitter, sewed only stocks and scarves from time to time, but, apparently, she didn’t like to sew at all.
Then we settled in Bologoye, where we rented an apartment from a dentist: two rooms and a kitchen.
There was electricity and a radio in the house, but we had to bring the water from outside. The kitchen was very cold, and there was a great demand for firewood to warm it up.
There was electricity and a radio in the house, but we had to bring the water from outside. The kitchen was very cold, and there was a great demand for firewood to warm it up.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
There Father got a job as a regular employee in Prom cooperation [so-called Industrial cooperation, state unit of stores and small businesses].
There they registered their relations in 1922, but the large Jewish wedding happened in Staraya Russa later, some time in 1923, even after my birth. Probably, they didn’t organize the wedding in Belarus, because they didn’t have the money to afford it. And my maternal grandparents were richer than the paternal ones, and maybe Mother asked her parents to help her with a big celebration.
My parents got to know each other during the Civil War [11]. My father was in the army; he served in a sanitary company. Their sanitary train went to Staraya Russa; Father went for a walk, found a place, where they sold kvass, and went inside the house. Mother washed the floors; she interrupted her work, washed her hands and gave him some kvass. So they met, and began to talk.
Then, together with his unit, he left, but they continued to write to each other. And, after he was demobilized from army, Mother went to Belarus, to that village called Lipsk.
Then, together with his unit, he left, but they continued to write to each other. And, after he was demobilized from army, Mother went to Belarus, to that village called Lipsk.