Tag #151430 - Interview #78157 (Rosa Gershenovich)

In 1936 I returned to Rybnitsa where I worked as an accountant for the District Party Executive Committee. I didn't want to become a party member. Besides, I was too young for that. Life was very dull. I embroidered in the evening and went to the cultural center sometimes to watch old silent movies. In 1938 Moishe Shnaiderman, the brother of my Aunt Surah's husband, came from Moscow. He was a widower of over 60 years. His wife had died some time before and he proposed to my mother and invited her to go to Moscow with him. They didn't have a wedding party. Besides, all synagogues had been closed by then. The authorities pursued a serious struggle against religion [17]. My mother moved to Moscow with pleasure. My mother didn't work in Moscow. Her husband was a pensioner. He was a very nice, decent man and they had a very good and quiet life together.

I stayed behind in Rybnitsa and moved to Tiraspol, the capital of the Moldavian Republic, in 1939. Tiraspol was a big, beautiful town compared to Rybnitsa. My friend Polia Finegersh lived there with her husband, and I stayed with them. I got a job as a cashier and then as an accountant in the Central Bank. There were many Jews in Tiraspol. The chief accountant at my workplace was Russian; all the other employees were Jewish. I rented a room from a Jewish family, the Roizmans. They were not religious. I believe they did observe some traditions, but I took little notice of anything of this kind. They were an old couple and they treated me very nicely.