Tag #154737 - Interview #103607 (Riva Pizman Biography)

My mother became independent at an early age. In the early 1900s some distant relative of hers died and left her little store to my mother. Perhaps, she felt sorry for the orphan girl and wanted to help her. Whatever it was, my mother became the owner of this store. She purchased and sold everyday goods: matches, kerosene, needles, soap, etc. After the revolution my mother’s store was expropriated. This was when mama began sewing at home. She altered old clothes and did it so well that everybody believed the thing was brand new.  She had her clients: at first poorer women , but later she got wealthier clients, who liked her sewing.  
 
I remember the prewar Mogilyov-Podolskiy: a clean, cozy and quiet town buried in verdure on the bank of the Dnestr River. On the other side it is surrounded by a range of lime hills covered with woods. The Dnestr was the border between the Ukraine and Bessarabia 5. 
 
Mogilyov-Podolskiy is a Jewish town. Jews constituted a bigger part of the population before the revolution. Vinnitsa region was within the Pale of Settlement 6 before the revolution. Jews settled down in the central part of the town. There were few 2-storied stone houses in the center, but mostly people lived in small clay houses. The houses adjoined closely to one another. Ukrainians, Greeks and Moldavians lived in the suburbs of the town. They were farmers and supplied food products to the town. There was a market in the center of the town. There was a shochet, and Jewish housewives brought their poultry to him to slaughter. There was a synagogue across the street from the market. There was another synagogue near our house, few prayer houses, and there was a cheder in the town. There was also a Russian Orthodox church, a Catholic cathedral and a Greek Orthodox church in Mogilyov-Podolskiy.