Tag #153649 - Interview #78012 (Fenia Kleiman)

My mother lived with a clear mind until the end of her days. In her last years she was confined to bed since she had her hip bone broken, but she read a lot and we discussed what she had read. On 19th May 2001 my mother celebrated her 104th birthday. She died on 27th May the same year. We buried her beside my father. On the day of the funeral we couldn't have Jewish funeral rituals performed because it happened to be on the day of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. After the holiday we invited a rabbi to say a prayer at my mother's grave. My husband goes to the synagogue on the anniversaries of our parents' death. I make some special food for the mourning and my husband takes a bottle of vodka to commemorate our parents. He also recites the Kaddish.

We were skeptical about perestroika 15 in the USSR in the early 1980s. We remembered the period of 'thaw' after the Twentieth Party Congress and hopes that just faded away. But this time we saw actual changes in life. The Iron Curtain 16, which had separated the USSR from the rest of the world, fell. People had the freedom to travel and invite their relatives from abroad to visit them. Books by Solzhenitsyn 17, Bulgakov 18, etc. were published. We were bombarded with true information about our life and history. The attitude towards Jews began to change during the years of perestroika. I wouldn't say that anti-Semitism vanished, but at least newspapers and TV began to use the words 'Jews', Russian, Ukrainian, etc. Also, Jews don't have major problems with entering an institute or getting a job.