Tag #155691 - Interview #103607 (Riva Pizman Biography)

There is a Jewish community in Mogilyov-Podolskiy, and the Jewish life has revived. There are various events and concerts of Jewish music and dancing. My husband and I used to attend Jewish concerts some time before, but then he fell ill and hardly ever leaves home. I do not want to leave him alone. The community celebrates Jewish holidays. My husband and I went there twice, but we don’t like it. We have been atheists and religion is far from us. The community and the Hesed 37 provide assistance to older people, and this is a real support. Old people receive food packages and have hot meals delivered to them at home. This is very good and they need it a lot. There are many Jewish publications. We subscribe to newspapers “Yevreyskie Vesty” [Jewish news], ‘Vek” [Century] and we read them with interest.  However, this is done for the leaving generation while young people hardly need it: they have different interests. My granddaughters are far from the Jewry, they live the life like their non-Jewish friends do. My older granddaughter Tatiana has entered Kiev Polytechnic College this year. She will go to Kiev before the start of the new academic year. We will miss her. Perhaps, there is not so much anti-Semitism in Ukraine now, if she managed to enter a higher educational institution in the capital of the country all by herself.   
 
I’ve lived my life, but if I met a magician and she asked me what I would like for my children and grandchildren and all people of the Earth, I would ask her for decent life to all, so that each could find a suitable job. For each to live where one wants, so that a person didn’t have to leave his country for the fear of starving to death. And I would ask for health and peaceful life for all, so that nobody had to go through the horrors of the war that my generation had.