Tag #154742 - Interview #103607 (Riva Pizman Biography)

My older brothers studied in an 8-year Ukrainian school. When my brothers grew older, they started helping mama about the house. My brothers actually raised me. My brothers went shopping, cooked food, cleaned the apartment and looked after me.  After finishing school my older brother Grigoriy became an apprentice of a mechanic at the machine building plant. He bought me my first doll, a rubber naked doll, when he received his first wage.  I was ill and had to stay in bed and he wanted to cheer me up. Mama made dolls from whatever cloth leftovers she had. The doll my brother bought me seemed a real beauty to me. He also bought me brown shoes with buckles: these were also my first shoes, since all I had before were what I got from my sister and brothers. I was even reluctant to step on the floor wearing the shoes: I didn’t want to daub them. One year later my second brother finished school and went to work as a shop assistant in a store.  My brothers gave mama their wages. 
 
I went to a 10-year Ukrainian general education school in 1936 before I turned 7. I remember my first teacher Tina Mikhailovna Voloshina. She was a young beautiful woman. She loved children and she taught us to like studying and our school. 
 
I only had one Jewish classmate. His name was Lev Guss. We lived in the suburb where thee were few Jewish families living. I made Ukrainian friends at school and felt myself very comfortable with them. I was no stranger for them, either. I don’t think there was any anti-Semitism before the war.