Tag #140054 - Interview #78250 (ivan moshkovich)

I only wanted to marry a Jewish girl, I couldn't imagine otherwise, but there were hardly any single girls in Uzhgorod. I was sent to work in the small town of Solotvin in Subcarpathia. There were some nice Jews that became my friends there. They said they knew a nice Jewish girl in Chernovtsy. I went to Chernovtsy and met my future wife Faina Shystman, Fania in Jewish. Faina was born in the village of Ozarintsy, Vinnitsa region, in 1937. My wife's father, Zamvel Shystman, was a shoemaker and her mother, Etia Shystman, was a dressmaker. They had five children. My wife was their third child. She has two older sisters, born in 1931 and 1933, a younger brother, born in 1940, and a younger sister, born in 1944. My wife's parents were religious and she was raised religiously, too.

Faina was four when the war began. The fascists occupied Ozarintsy and sent all Jews to the ghetto in Shargorod [12], Vinnitsa region. In March 1944 the Soviet army liberated the inmates of the ghetto in Shargorod and my wife's family returned home. My wife's uncle, her father's brother, lived in Chernovtsy. He took Faina there. He thought that it would be easier for Faina to find a job in a bigger town as well as accommodate her personal life. After finishing school at 16 Faina went to work at the glove factory. We met in Chernovtsy and got married on 7th December 1958. We had a traditional Jewish wedding in Solotvin. The rabbi conducted the ceremony and there was a chuppah. My wife and I lived in Solotvin for two years and then returned to Uzhgorod. I received an apartment from the enterprise where I worked.