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We had many books at home. My mother liked Nekrasov [17]. She knew many of his poems by heart. She also had books by Tolstoy, Pushkin [18], Lermontov [19], Korolenko [20] and Kuprin [21]. In the 1920s a very interesting journal called Vsemirny Sledopyt [The World Pathfinder] was published in Moscow. It published works by Jack London, and a complete set of works of Herbert Wells. [H G. Wells, 1866-1946: English novelist and journalist, famous for his science-fiction works, including The Time Machine, with their prophetic depictions of the triumphs of technology as well as the horrors of 20th-century warfare.] Jack London was a favorite writer of my generation. [Jack London, real name: John Griffith London, 1876-1916: American writer whose work combined powerful realism and humanitarian sentiment.] Martin Eden, the main character of one of his novels, was an idol for my friends. We also had Ivanhoe by [Sir] Walter Scott, The Three Musketeers by [Alexandre] Dumas, With Fire and Sword by H. Sienkiewicz and other books. [Sienkiewicz Henryk, 1846-1916: Polish writer, who emerged as Poland's foremost novelist with the publication of With Fire and Sword; his most popular work is Quo Vadis, a historical novel about the first Christians in ancient Rome. He won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1905.]
I remember an old man whose last name was Tzyglis visiting us in 1929-1930. He may have been my mother's patient or a distant relative. My mother told me that when he was young he belonged to a group of young Jewish people who spoke for the establishment of a Jewish state. Since I was growing up in the yard and at school I didn't quite listen to talks at home. I had learnt the slogan of the time: 'Away, away with monarchs, rabbis and priests! We shall climb the heavens to do away with all Gods!'
I started school in 1921. There were a number of Jewish schools in Odessa. Representatives of the department of education came to see my mother trying to convince her to send me to a Jewish school, but she refused. I witnessed the Jewish school fading away in Odessa in the 1930s. Later, when I worked as a teacher of history in a special artillery school, the director of the only Jewish school left in town came to our school to complain that there weren't enough pupils to keep the school operating in the town although 30% of its population was Jewish.
I remember an old man whose last name was Tzyglis visiting us in 1929-1930. He may have been my mother's patient or a distant relative. My mother told me that when he was young he belonged to a group of young Jewish people who spoke for the establishment of a Jewish state. Since I was growing up in the yard and at school I didn't quite listen to talks at home. I had learnt the slogan of the time: 'Away, away with monarchs, rabbis and priests! We shall climb the heavens to do away with all Gods!'
I started school in 1921. There were a number of Jewish schools in Odessa. Representatives of the department of education came to see my mother trying to convince her to send me to a Jewish school, but she refused. I witnessed the Jewish school fading away in Odessa in the 1930s. Later, when I worked as a teacher of history in a special artillery school, the director of the only Jewish school left in town came to our school to complain that there weren't enough pupils to keep the school operating in the town although 30% of its population was Jewish.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Victor Feldman