Tag #155390 - Interview #103776 (Efim Shpielberg Biography)

My mother’s older brother Isaac was born, I think, in the middle of the 1880s. I don’t know where he studied. He spoke Yiddish like the rest of the family. He was short, but he had strong fists. During a pogrom in 1905 [5] there were stories about him. His house was one of the first houses in the street and once pogrom makers came to his house where he lived with his wife Tsylia. He lifted two bandits by their collars, banged them one with another and threw outside. Then other pogrom makers told everyone that there was an extremely strong zhyd [abusive word for a Jew] in a house in this street that wouldn’t hesitate to kill. There were daring Jewish residents in Moldavanka. They were brave and could stand for themselves. There were fewer victims among them than elsewhere in Odessa during pogroms.