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I started school in 1950. It was an ordinary Russian school for girls. I remember the children teasing me. They called me “Leiba Muhamed – kerosinschik” instead of calling me by my name Zina. Leiba was from my last name Leibovich, Muhamed – because I had been in Tashkent (it is a very popular name in Uzbekistan), and kerosinschik – because we lived not far from and kerosene store. I took this teasing in my stride. But later, if somebody called me “zhydovka”, I found it offensive and ended any communication with those people. Quite often I faced anti-Semitism in my life, but it was at a later period, not while I was at school.
We had a wonderful Russian teacher at school. She was Ukrainian and her name was Anna Vassilievna. She was the first person to tell us about Babi Yar. She asked whether we children, had any relatives that had been exterminated there. I asked my mother and she told me that every town or village in Ukraine had its own Yar [Yar in Ukrainian means a pit.] and that my grandmother and grandfather perished in Kamenets-Podolsk. This teacher was different from all the others. Nobody ever mentioned Babi Yar1 in those years – it was as if it had never happened. There was no monument or place where people could go to mourn for their lost ones. When I was 11, my mother and I went to Kamenets-Podolsk, my mother’s hometown. It was a small provincial town, very clean and nice. There were hardly any Jews left - most of them were killed in 1941 and the rest of them moved to other towns. There was a small monument to the Victims of the Holocaust, and I found the names of my relatives on it.
In 1953 Stalin died. I remember everybody around crying, and I cried, too, although I couldn’t understand or explain why, but as everybody else was crying, I couldn’t help crying either.
We had a wonderful Russian teacher at school. She was Ukrainian and her name was Anna Vassilievna. She was the first person to tell us about Babi Yar. She asked whether we children, had any relatives that had been exterminated there. I asked my mother and she told me that every town or village in Ukraine had its own Yar [Yar in Ukrainian means a pit.] and that my grandmother and grandfather perished in Kamenets-Podolsk. This teacher was different from all the others. Nobody ever mentioned Babi Yar1 in those years – it was as if it had never happened. There was no monument or place where people could go to mourn for their lost ones. When I was 11, my mother and I went to Kamenets-Podolsk, my mother’s hometown. It was a small provincial town, very clean and nice. There were hardly any Jews left - most of them were killed in 1941 and the rest of them moved to other towns. There was a small monument to the Victims of the Holocaust, and I found the names of my relatives on it.
In 1953 Stalin died. I remember everybody around crying, and I cried, too, although I couldn’t understand or explain why, but as everybody else was crying, I couldn’t help crying either.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Zinaida Leibovich