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My brother Efim Leibovich finished school in 1961 with excellent grades. He passed his entrance exams to commerce school but didn’t find his name on the lists. It turned out that a Deputy Minister’s son was admitted instead of him. My brother kept filing complaints with the Ministry and finally he was admitted. After he graduated, he entered the Department of “Refrigeration equipment” at the Institute of Commerce and Economy. Then he worked as chief production engineer for refrigeration equipment at the Kiev blood transfusion facility. He works there to this day. My brother has a family: a wife and two sons – Mikhail and Dmitriy.
I have no family of my own. I had close relationships with a few men, but I never got married. When I realized that I would probably never get married, I decided to have a baby on my own. My daughter was born in 1983 when I was over 40 years old. Her name is Maria, Masha, and she is a very smart and beautiful girl. When she was in kindergarten she was chosen to study at a modeling school. She also finished the school of applied art and went in for gymnastics. Masha graduated from the Jewish school in Kiev and went to study in Israel under a program organized by the Kiev Rabbi Yakov Bleich.
She has also been in America and visited the Lubavitch rabbi. He gave her $1000 to continue her education. Unfortunately, I deposited this money into a commercial bank, and this bank went bankrupt like many other banks in Ukraine in the 1990s. We lost all our money. Nowadays Masha is married to a Ukrainian man. He doesn’t support her interest in Jewish life and keeps her away from it.
As for me, I feel my Jewish identity as never before. I go to the synagogue and services each Saturday. They have opened a synagogue at the Transsignal plant – the one where my father’s parents used to work. I’m so happy that the time has come when one can openly go to synagogue, study Hebrew and go to Jewish concerts and performances. I try to read Jewish newspapers. I go to the Hesed Jewish center “Hesed” where I can get charity meals and other assistance. Sometimes I hear anti-Semitic statements in the street, but this happens rarely and doesn’t feel as offensive as it did before, when we couldn’t lead a Jewish way of life and heard such statements about Jews everywhere: in the traffic, in stores or in the street. Everyday expression of anti-Semitism still exists, but it has nothing to do with state policy and I hope there will be no more anti-Semitism in Ukraine. Unfortunately, I have never been in Israel. It was impossible in the past, and then, when they opened the border in the 1990s I never had enough money for the trip. I would love to see this country and visit its holy historical places.
I have no family of my own. I had close relationships with a few men, but I never got married. When I realized that I would probably never get married, I decided to have a baby on my own. My daughter was born in 1983 when I was over 40 years old. Her name is Maria, Masha, and she is a very smart and beautiful girl. When she was in kindergarten she was chosen to study at a modeling school. She also finished the school of applied art and went in for gymnastics. Masha graduated from the Jewish school in Kiev and went to study in Israel under a program organized by the Kiev Rabbi Yakov Bleich.
She has also been in America and visited the Lubavitch rabbi. He gave her $1000 to continue her education. Unfortunately, I deposited this money into a commercial bank, and this bank went bankrupt like many other banks in Ukraine in the 1990s. We lost all our money. Nowadays Masha is married to a Ukrainian man. He doesn’t support her interest in Jewish life and keeps her away from it.
As for me, I feel my Jewish identity as never before. I go to the synagogue and services each Saturday. They have opened a synagogue at the Transsignal plant – the one where my father’s parents used to work. I’m so happy that the time has come when one can openly go to synagogue, study Hebrew and go to Jewish concerts and performances. I try to read Jewish newspapers. I go to the Hesed Jewish center “Hesed” where I can get charity meals and other assistance. Sometimes I hear anti-Semitic statements in the street, but this happens rarely and doesn’t feel as offensive as it did before, when we couldn’t lead a Jewish way of life and heard such statements about Jews everywhere: in the traffic, in stores or in the street. Everyday expression of anti-Semitism still exists, but it has nothing to do with state policy and I hope there will be no more anti-Semitism in Ukraine. Unfortunately, I have never been in Israel. It was impossible in the past, and then, when they opened the border in the 1990s I never had enough money for the trip. I would love to see this country and visit its holy historical places.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Zinaida Leibovich
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