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My parents had practically no education. I have some of their letters and I can see that they were not very well educated. But my father knew literature very well. Mother liked to read very much. During military communism we lived in a house in Proreznaya Street and when there were shootings we hid in the basement. There was no light in the basement, and my father would recite works by different writers by heart to all who hid with us. I should add that all the Ratmanskys were very talented; it was a wonderful family, where each member felt the need to learn always more and more.
My mother read Russian literature. She couldn't read in Yiddish. She spoke Yiddish very well and knew about Mendele Moykher Sforim [7] and Bialik [8]. She told me that in our room in Proreznaya Street the portraits of her parents hang on one wall and the portrait of Mendele Moykher Sforim, on the opposite wall.
When my brother went to school I was very jealous and I insisted on going to school as well. I was 6 years old when I first went to school. I went to school at a young age and at first they didn't want to admit me. The school was Russian, but there were many Jewish children. I remember that the director treated me very nicely.
I also remember that we had to wear school uniforms: a brown dress and an apron, first white and then black. We didn't have money to buy the uniform, so my mother sewed me a uniform from two pieces of material. But when I - being very proud of my new uniform - came to school in it, my director told me, 'Don't wear it anymore. It's not supposed to look like that.' With tears in my eyes I came home and my mother said, 'Oh, right, I forgot.' There were several children who didn't wear uniforms.
The director was a good woman. I liked her. I only got very worried when she checked how clean we were. During those checks we had to take off our clothes and I was very ashamed of having old underwear, sewn from different pieces because there were other children with beautiful new underwear. I hated those checks. They took place three times a year and they brought me severe sufferings.
We had good old teachers there. One of them, Yekaterina Alexandrovna, organized balls at school and taught us to dance. Once my father came to watch the ball and danced mazurka with this teacher! Can you imagine? Neither he nor my mother ever learned how to dance but they could dance all the fashionable dances.
There were many interesting things for me at school. I wasn't very good at mathematics. I was the weakest student, probably because I was the youngest. But my teacher, Feofan Kondratyevich, drew the class' attention to how I asked questions and didn't pay much attention to how I solved mathematical problems. He treated me very well. He once even asked my parents to come to school (closer to my graduation) and told them that I should go to the theatrical college. But my parents were skeptical about it; moreover, I was already studying in the music school.
But I was very good at reciting poems. Once, the son of a watchmaker invited my friend, Sarah Shkurovich, who was from quite a rich Jewish family, to take part in a competition of reciting poems. She refused to go alone and said she would take her friends. So, she took Sonya Grif, me, and I took my sister Vera, and we all went to the competition. And all of us recited poems. And I won the first prize. I was awarded a book for this, but it remained in Kiev and was certainly destroyed during the war. My teacher of mathematics gathered children who could recite poems at school. And he invited me too. He gave me poems to learn and I recited them at different competitions.
My mother read Russian literature. She couldn't read in Yiddish. She spoke Yiddish very well and knew about Mendele Moykher Sforim [7] and Bialik [8]. She told me that in our room in Proreznaya Street the portraits of her parents hang on one wall and the portrait of Mendele Moykher Sforim, on the opposite wall.
When my brother went to school I was very jealous and I insisted on going to school as well. I was 6 years old when I first went to school. I went to school at a young age and at first they didn't want to admit me. The school was Russian, but there were many Jewish children. I remember that the director treated me very nicely.
I also remember that we had to wear school uniforms: a brown dress and an apron, first white and then black. We didn't have money to buy the uniform, so my mother sewed me a uniform from two pieces of material. But when I - being very proud of my new uniform - came to school in it, my director told me, 'Don't wear it anymore. It's not supposed to look like that.' With tears in my eyes I came home and my mother said, 'Oh, right, I forgot.' There were several children who didn't wear uniforms.
The director was a good woman. I liked her. I only got very worried when she checked how clean we were. During those checks we had to take off our clothes and I was very ashamed of having old underwear, sewn from different pieces because there were other children with beautiful new underwear. I hated those checks. They took place three times a year and they brought me severe sufferings.
We had good old teachers there. One of them, Yekaterina Alexandrovna, organized balls at school and taught us to dance. Once my father came to watch the ball and danced mazurka with this teacher! Can you imagine? Neither he nor my mother ever learned how to dance but they could dance all the fashionable dances.
There were many interesting things for me at school. I wasn't very good at mathematics. I was the weakest student, probably because I was the youngest. But my teacher, Feofan Kondratyevich, drew the class' attention to how I asked questions and didn't pay much attention to how I solved mathematical problems. He treated me very well. He once even asked my parents to come to school (closer to my graduation) and told them that I should go to the theatrical college. But my parents were skeptical about it; moreover, I was already studying in the music school.
But I was very good at reciting poems. Once, the son of a watchmaker invited my friend, Sarah Shkurovich, who was from quite a rich Jewish family, to take part in a competition of reciting poems. She refused to go alone and said she would take her friends. So, she took Sonya Grif, me, and I took my sister Vera, and we all went to the competition. And all of us recited poems. And I won the first prize. I was awarded a book for this, but it remained in Kiev and was certainly destroyed during the war. My teacher of mathematics gathered children who could recite poems at school. And he invited me too. He gave me poems to learn and I recited them at different competitions.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
lubov ratmanskaya