Tag #140033 - Interview #90530 (Ella Lukatskaya)

In 1952 I got married. My husband Daniil Itskovich Narovlianskiy was a student of the Kiev Institute of Communications. His family was a patriarchal Jewish family with clear anti-Soviet spirits. I heard for the first time “The Voice of America” and “The Voice of Israel” in their family. Their broadcasts were jammed by the Soviet radars, but sometimes at night it was possible to hear some news from the free world. They were telling the truth about the Soviet power, anti-Semitism, prison camps for political prisoners, suppression of human rights. They were telling us all about what we were not supposed to know. In my husband’s family I came to know the Jewish holidays and traditions. They had matsa for holidays, went to the synagogue, celebrated Hanukkah, and fasted at Yom Kippur. They didn’t follow the kashrut. It was impossible during the Soviet regime and total poverty. My mother-in-law was a housewife and cooked Jewish stew with prunes, stuffed fish and Jewish strudel with cherry jam and nuts. My husband had an older sister. They all lived in one room. After the wedding we lived with my mother. We didn’t have a wedding, just a dinner at my home. We had four neighbors in our apartment, and the four of us (my mother, my sister, my husband and I) were sharing one room. We lived so for 2 years. We rarely visited my husband’s parents. Although we had many relatives we didn’t have any family gatherings.