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In 1919 a big Jewish pogrom5 happened in Tetiyev. Grandfather Moisey and my father’s stepmother perished. My father’s sisters 16-year-old Manya and 14-year-old and their 7-year-old brother Idel escaped to Kiev. Younger children 6-year-old Fania and 4-year-old Samson were hiding in the attic. They were lucky to find a bag with lump sugar there. They ate sugar and drank their own urine and came down when the pogrom was over. Somehow they were sent to Kiev where people helped them to find their brothers and sisters.
Furnished rooms were on lease in a garret in the center of Kiev where sailors, prostitutes and likewise public resided before the October revolution.6 After the revolution 28 rooms in the garret became vacant and were spontaneously accommodated by Jews escaping to Kiev from pogroms. My father and his sisters Manya, Yeva and Fania moved into this garret and their younger brothers Idel and Samson were sent to a children’s home. Manya and Yeva sold coal in Podol7 and later they bought a knitting machine. They knitted stockings and socks and sold them at the Jewish market near their home. I have dim memories about Yeva. She died in 1933. Manya married Mikhail Zhyvotovskiy, a tradesman, in the early 1920s. They had a son named Yefim. My father’s younger Fania married Grigoriy Tverskoy, also a Jew, in the 1930s. They had three children: Mikhail, Leonid and a daughter whose name I don’t remember.
Furnished rooms were on lease in a garret in the center of Kiev where sailors, prostitutes and likewise public resided before the October revolution.6 After the revolution 28 rooms in the garret became vacant and were spontaneously accommodated by Jews escaping to Kiev from pogroms. My father and his sisters Manya, Yeva and Fania moved into this garret and their younger brothers Idel and Samson were sent to a children’s home. Manya and Yeva sold coal in Podol7 and later they bought a knitting machine. They knitted stockings and socks and sold them at the Jewish market near their home. I have dim memories about Yeva. She died in 1933. Manya married Mikhail Zhyvotovskiy, a tradesman, in the early 1920s. They had a son named Yefim. My father’s younger Fania married Grigoriy Tverskoy, also a Jew, in the 1930s. They had three children: Mikhail, Leonid and a daughter whose name I don’t remember.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Leonid Kotliar