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Ghita Kaplunovich was born on 14 June 1922 in Kiev. She was very good at music and when studying in her music school she could play the piano wonderfully. Her father Abram Kaplunovich was chief of district health department and her mother Hanna Lopatnik was a housewife. I remember Ghita’s stately grandfather Yakov Lopatnik. Before the revolution of 1917 he was manager of one of Brodskiys’ [editor’s note: Brodski family – Russian sugar manufacturers. They started sugar manufacturing business in 1840s. Organized the 1st sugar syndicate in Russia in (1887). Sponsored construction of hospitals and asylums in Kiev and other towns in Russia, including the biggest and most beautiful synagogue in Kiev.] sugar factories. When the Great patriotic war began he didn’t leave Kiev and perished in Babi Yar in 1941. Ghita’s father went to the front. Ghita and her mother evacuated to Serdobsk in the Ural. Ghita supervised music production in the theater and taught music in children’s homes and schools. They returned to Kiev in 1944 and she entered the Piano Faculty of the Conservatory. She was a wonderful pianist and wanted to be a performing pianist, but there was one obstacle: her fingers did not fit. So she had to go to study at the theoretical department, but there she didn’t get along with one lecturer and she quit the Conservatory after finishing her third year. Ghita convinced me to quit school and go to work at the recreation center for dystrophic children in Vorsel near Kiev. There were 40 children in my group and I worked without weekends through the summer. In August the doctor said: ‘All right, now you quit your job and go to a college’. I didn’t want to go to college. I thought I would be persecuted for being a Jew and in captivity and for surviving. I believed I had to be a worker so that I wasn’t in sight, but Ghita convinced me again: ‘You have a wonderful talent, you can write and be a pedagog’. I entered the Faculty of Literature in Kiev Teacher’s College, a reduced 2-year course. At the entrance exams I made 13 mistakes in my dictation and received a ‘2’ [fail]. When I came to take my verbal exam it turned out that I wasn’t in their lists. Mikhail Levit, a teacher of the Russian language, said: a ‘3’ would be enough for you; veterans of the war are admitted without competition. Here is my condition: I give you back your work where I stressed your mistakes, but I didn’t correct them. You will explain and correct them here. If you do it you will get your ‘3’ and will be allowed to take your verbal exam’. I coped with this task. Then I passed geography, history, Russian and was admitted.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Leonid Kotliar