Tag #141726 - Interview #78774 (Fania Brantsovskaya)

We didn't observe Jewish traditions. We spoke Yiddish to one another. Shortly after the war the synagogue opened in Vilnius. We attended it, but not to pray. There was a sort of Jewish center there where Jewish survivors searched for information about their families. I found my friend through the synagogue. She lives in Israel, in Haifa. Almost right after Vilnius was liberated I received a letter from aunt Niusia, my uncle Meishke's wife. I was very happy to learn she had survived. I visited her in Moscow several times. Once I met a few girls from Taurag at a Komsomol gathering. I mentioned that my uncle Shimon had lived there before the war, the only one of my mother's brothers who managed to evacuate, and it turned out that Shimon had survived. He visited us with Shulamit, his daughter, the only one of his daughters who also survived. He and his daughter visited us in Vilnius to bid us farewell. Shimon couldn't bear to stay in the town after losing his wife and four daughters and they moved to Israel.

I knew I had relatives in Israel. My mother's parents, her brother and sister had moved there before the war. I wrote to them from Belarus back in 1939 and they replied, but after the war it was no good to try to get in touch with them. The Soviet regime didn't trust people who had relatives abroad [39]. People could lose their jobs and the party membership. Besides, at this time the prosecution of Jews and campaign against cosmopolitans [40] began. It had no impact on us and we truly believed the propaganda.