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In 1931 my family moved to the south of Ukraine looking for a better life. We settled down in a former German colony [10] in Nagaevo, Odessa region. Besides Germans many Jews lived there. They worked in a Jewish kolkhoz [11]. My parents had no luck there either. We arrived in late fall after the harvest. There was no work for my father in the kolkhoz. After a month or two my father and older brother went to Makeevka in Donetsk region where my father’s distant relative Beniamin Usatinskiy lived. He promised to help my father to get a job. My mother, Maria, Srul and I stayed in Nagaevo. We lived in one room in a decrepit house that we had received when we arrived in Nagaevo. We didn’t have any food and wood to heat the room. We stayed on the stove bed under feather blankets with chattering teeth. The other kolkhoz farmers didn’t like us. They even believed my father and brother to be shtreykbrekhers [Yiddish for ‘deserter’, ‘traitor’] because they left the kolkhoz. The chairman of the kolkhoz, an old Jew, sympathized with us and when it grew dark he or his daughter brought us some food. He allowed us to secretly take corn to stoke the stove. My mother and Maria made hats from straw and ropes. They got a dozen eggs, a jar of milk or a loaf of bread for their hats. At the end of summer 1932 my father came to take us to Makeevka, where he and my brother had found jobs.
Makeevka is a town of miners, about 30 kilometers from Donetsk. Its population was mixed like in many other towns in the south of Ukraine: Russian, Ukrainian and those that came from Northern Caucasus. There were many Jews in town, a big synagogue and a Jewish cemetery. We first rented an apartment in Makeevka, and in 1933 my parents bought their own apartment in the basement of an old two-storied house. There were three tiny rooms in a row and a kitchen with a Russian stove. In fall and spring our rooms were flooded after it rained. We were still very poor. My father went to work as a janitor at the bakery and that saved us during the famine in 1933 [the famine in Ukraine] [12]. My father brought us loaves of bread that had fallen apart. I don’t know whether this bread really fell apart or if he helped out a little there, but in any case this bread saved us. We always looked forward to my father coming home from work and putting gray glutinous bread on the table. My mother gave equal pieces to my older brother and sister, Srul and me. My father didn’t eat any bread at home, telling us that he had had enough at work. My mother ate a very small piece.
My brother Nuchim worked somewhere and Maria was a senior student at school. Around 1935 my brother went to Donetsk where he entered Donetsk Medical College, and Maria moved to my uncle in Lugansk for good. She finished school and entered a medical school there. My father still didn’t get along with my uncle. He never visited him and his brother never came to see him either. We hardly ever saw him.
Makeevka is a town of miners, about 30 kilometers from Donetsk. Its population was mixed like in many other towns in the south of Ukraine: Russian, Ukrainian and those that came from Northern Caucasus. There were many Jews in town, a big synagogue and a Jewish cemetery. We first rented an apartment in Makeevka, and in 1933 my parents bought their own apartment in the basement of an old two-storied house. There were three tiny rooms in a row and a kitchen with a Russian stove. In fall and spring our rooms were flooded after it rained. We were still very poor. My father went to work as a janitor at the bakery and that saved us during the famine in 1933 [the famine in Ukraine] [12]. My father brought us loaves of bread that had fallen apart. I don’t know whether this bread really fell apart or if he helped out a little there, but in any case this bread saved us. We always looked forward to my father coming home from work and putting gray glutinous bread on the table. My mother gave equal pieces to my older brother and sister, Srul and me. My father didn’t eat any bread at home, telling us that he had had enough at work. My mother ate a very small piece.
My brother Nuchim worked somewhere and Maria was a senior student at school. Around 1935 my brother went to Donetsk where he entered Donetsk Medical College, and Maria moved to my uncle in Lugansk for good. She finished school and entered a medical school there. My father still didn’t get along with my uncle. He never visited him and his brother never came to see him either. We hardly ever saw him.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Fira Usatinskaya Biography