Tag #151429 - Interview #78157 (Rosa Gershenovich)

My uncle, a storeowner, was expelled from Rybnitsa. He lived in a village and had no rights. He was classified as 'an owner' by the Soviet authorities, which didn't like such elements. My cousin Dora couldn't find a job. Their family moved to Odessa. My uncle got a job working at the Red Komintern Machine Building Plant. They left their house to my mother and me. My mother and I stayed in their house while mother continued to work and I went to school. We didn't observe any Jewish traditions at home but continued going to synagogue. Our life in Rybnitsa was rather plain. There was a dancing club, but it was closed in the 1930s. It was closed because there were only Jewish youngsters there. They danced Jewish dances like the 'Seven Forty' and the waltz. Life in Rybnitsa back then was like living in the Middle Ages. Electricity came to this town in the late 1930s only. There was no sewerage system or running water, and no central heating. There were only dirt roads. People had no education and the general level of culture was very low. Young people were always trying to leave Rybnitsa. There was Vizin, a Romanian town on the other side of Rybnitsa, but we were not allowed to cross the border. Sometimes we heard shooting at night. This meant that someone was trying to cross the border. Some were captured or killed and others managed to cross. We didn't travel. I remember visiting my father's parents in Bershad and going to the country once after I had pneumonia. My mother stayed a month there with me. We rented a room in a house. There was an orchard and our landlady had a cow. We had fruit and milk and my health improved.

I finished school in 1931. There was famine in Rybnitsa in the 1930s., We didn't have anything to eat and we were starving. My mother had two golden dental crowns. She took them to the Torgsin store [12] and exchanged them for some corn flour to make corn porridge.

I was admitted to the Financial College in Odessa. This was the largest city near Rybnitsa, and Surah's family lived there. It was good to have somebody to turn to. I lived at my aunt's. They lived in the center of the city in a big five-story building in a communal apartment [13] with many tenants, but I don't remember them. I studied accounting, Russian and Ukrainian and mathematics. There were many Jewish students and teachers at the college. Nationality was not an issue at that time. I didn't have any real friends, but there were companions for going to the cinema or for a walk. I like Odessa very much. I liked going to the port, Richelieu Street and the center of the city. Once, I saw Verdi's Aida at the Opera. I don't know whether there were Jewish theaters in Odessa then. My aunt had a small collection of books by Soviet writers like Gorky [14], Mayakovsky [15], Fadeyev [16], and others. My aunt's family observed the Jewish traditions and celebrated holidays, but I took no interest in them. I believed traditions and religiosity to be a vestige of the past. I couldn't stay in Odessa after finishing college. I didn't have a place to live and it was difficult to find a job.