We lived with mamma in a cold house near the school. We got coal to heat the house by ourselves; we also grew vegetables in the vegetable garden. We received letters and money from my husband and my brother during the war. But our life was very hard, the children got ill, they were not adjusted to the climate there.
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Displaying 12931 - 12960 of 50826 results
frieda stoyanovskaya
The years of my study at the Pedagogical College, 1924-29, were the years of the New Economic Policy [NEP] [5] of the Soviet government. It was the end of the famine [6]. The stores were selling beautiful clothes, white flour and white bread. I hadn't seen them since my early childhood. But we were extremely poor and couldn't afford them. I remember going on tour to Moscow, wearing shoes with holes and a light jacket. It was winter and the temperature was 25 degrees below zero.
I remember going on tour to Moscow, wearing shoes with holes and a light jacket. It was winter and the temperature was 25 degrees below zero. I saw the Soviet capital for the first time. I hardly ever went on vacations. I tried to earn a little money during vacations.
I tried to earn a little money during vacations. I worked as a babysitter, and then a nurse in kindergartens and pioneer camps.
My sister also went to Pedagogical College after finishing secondary school. Only I was at the Russian College named after Pirogov, and she went to the Ukrainian Pedagogical College named after Grinchenko. She became a teacher of Ukrainian literature and language and I became a history teacher.
Our life improved a little in those years. We were still wearing the poorest clothes, but we had more food.
My grandmother Chernia lived in a little room with no water or toilet or any other conveniences. She lived with her younger daughter and my aunt Bella.
Unfortunately, there was nothing left from our former Jewish life in our family or my grandmother's family. I remember my first and only visit to the synagogue in Kiev. It was after daddy died. My brother was too small, and I had to read the Kaddish, the prayer for my father. I came to the synagogue and realized that I wouldn't read any Kaddish, because I identified myself as a Soviet person, and all this was closed to me. I haven't been in a synagogue since then.
After I finished my school I had to go to a far-away village in the vicinity of Kharkov to work as a teacher. The school was in a house with low ceilings and ground floors. There were a few desks and a teacher's desk and the room was dusty. I worked there for a whole year as director and teacher at the primary school.
I was living nearby. The house belonged to an old woman. It was cold and very uncomfortable. Back then I made up my mind to live a human life and to build up my own family.
After returning to Kiev I got another assignment to work in the so-called school for the liquidation of ignorance, at the factory where they made matches. I was teaching twenty older women to read and write.
I was twenty when I got a job at a town school.
I was twenty when I got a job at a town school.
I was introduced to Semyon Goldfine who was almost 26. He was already a well- known journalist, had publications in the Soviet mass media and had a pseudonym. It was Semyon Moiseyevich Gordeyev.
I met my future husband then. It was at the home of Marusia Simanovich, my ex-co-student, where I was introduced to Semyon Goldfine who was almost 26. He was already a well- known journalist, had publications in the Soviet mass media and had a pseudonym. It was Semyon Moiseyevich Gordeyev. They said he loved me at first sight. And I was looking in the opposite direction. To stop his courting I went to Donbass to teach at a new school. And there, far away from him I understood that he was my life. I answered his letters. He immediately came to take me away. He took me as his fiancée, first to Kharkov and then to Kiev.
From 1942 all my students turning 17 were summoned to the front.
Her husband Mikhail perished on the front. She became a widow during the first days of the war.
We read about the horrors of the occupation of Kiev in the newspapers, the extermination of several thousands of Jews. We suffered terribly.
In the middle of 1942 we cheered up, seeing that we would win the war and that it was not the end of everything.
In 1943 we were looking forward to the liberation of Kiev. It was liberated in autumn. We were happy.
In the summer of 1944 my family and I returned to Kiev, which was empty, dark and ruined, but so dear to us. There was no electricity, heating, gas or water in our house, but it was not destroyed. We returned home, all of us, but grandmother Chernia.
My husband Semyon Moiseyevich returned in 1946, the whole time he was mobilized in military units, and served far away from us.
Almost on Victory Day, on 5th May 1945 we received notification about the death of my brother Semyon, a military cameraman. So this day of everybody's joy and happiness became the day of deepest sorrow for us. We found out that he was buried at the cemetery of the Soviet military in Vienna. Later his colleagues brought us the video that they took during his funeral at the end of April 1945.
I didn't have any nationality or social problems during my entrance to school. I had a problem when I wanted to become a Komsomol [4] member. In contrast to my sister Ida, I was interested in politics and I accepted the Soviet way of life and thinking, although it did not agree with our family tradition. Still, I wanted to become a Komsomol member and tried very hard to implement this. This also had to do with the numerous forms that everyone had to fill out at that time. There I had to put down the social origin of my father. If I had written that he owned a store, even if it was a long time ago, the road to the school or Komsomol would have been closed for me. Mamma and I found a way out - we wrote that my father had been a minor craftsman. We did so and it worked out. I became a Komsomol member in 1924, the year of Lenin's death.
Lenin's death was a blow to me but not to my family. I mourned deeply. I remember two things - hoots on the day of his funeral; everything that could produce a sound was hooting. This was different and scary. It gave the impression of uncertainty. And another thing that struck me was the poem of Vladimir Mayakovskiy, 'Vladimir Illich Lenin.' It began with the description of his death and funeral. It seemed amazing to me that it came out a month after Lenin's death. I decided then that I would take to literature.
I was reading a lot then. I devoured fiction and scientific books. Fiction was Russian classical literature. There were hardly any books at home; we hardly had anything at all. But there were good libraries in town and I spent all my free time in them.
It's interesting how nostalgia for the past and revolutionary romanticism entwined in my young mind. As for my political preferences, Stalin was not standing beside Lenin then. The second individual after Lenin was Leon Trotsky for me and for many of my contemporaries. By the way, that Trotsky was Jewish meant nothing to us, we valued and respected him for other qualities.
This hobby determined his future profession: he became an outstanding cameraman and an apprentice of the famous Roman Karmen in Moscow.
, Russia
I wanted to study and could continue my education, thanks to mamma. I had chosen my profession by then. I went to the Pedagogical College.
Leon Glazer
We reached this place near Strzelce Opolskie. It was the road between Strzelce Opolskie and Gliwice. It wasn't until that road that we saw the first Soviet tank. I saw it in a field. We just met them on the road as they were going into that area. One soldier got out of the tank, then another. We were still in our stripes then. They welcomed us properly, cordially. I don't remember what they said to us but I remember great emotion. And that was my liberation. Mine and my friends'.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
In January we were evacuated and we left our base in Gliwice. We were taken one evening, it was already dark. I don't know what time it can have been. Perhaps 5pm. Then we walked all night and all day. On the way we met a whole huge column from Auschwitz-Birkenau. That was that death march. I don't know exactly where we joined up with them. We walked in columns. The Auschwitz camp as such was liquidated sometime around 18 January [evacuation of the prisoners went on from 17-21 January 1945]. I don't know how many people were on the march then. An innumerable number [at least 14,000 prisoners were marched along that route]. I remember that I got diarrhea on the way too. But anyone who broke ranks - a bullet in the head. Terrible, that was. I don't know how I survived it.
We had provisions from our former camp in Gliwice, jam and bread, so on the way we could eat that. But the things that went on on the way, it's obvious. Diarrhea, because the people from Auschwitz were incredibly hungry, and before they set off on the march they had been issued with food. And they'd been walking from Auschwitz, I don't know how many days [they walked along the route Auschwitz - Tychy - Mikolow - Gliwice, approx. 55 km]. I don't remember how long we were walking, but more than 24 hours, I think, and we reached somewhere near Kedzierzyn at night, the Blechhammer camp in the Silesian sheet metal works in Slawecice [approx. 25 km from Gliwice].
They were to pick up the next huge camp from there. We stopped in this one shed, on the fringes of that camp. One night I think we slept on bunks. In the watchtowers there were guards, I remember that still, as if it were yesterday - they were Romanians and I think Latvians, at least that's what all the prisoners round about were saying. A special international brigade of the SS was guarding us. I didn't see any Germans there.
The next day the guards suddenly started shooting at us into the shed from the watchtowers. I was lying on the middle bunk, and up top was Mandel, a friend from the camp in Gliwice. Kiwi Mandel, that's what they nicknamed him. And that Mandel was wounded in the leg. I don't know why they were shooting. There was general pandemonium. We were afraid to go out of the shed, but sometime later that same day we noticed that they had stopped guarding us - they had left the watchtower and fled, evidently, because we couldn't see anybody there.
We had provisions from our former camp in Gliwice, jam and bread, so on the way we could eat that. But the things that went on on the way, it's obvious. Diarrhea, because the people from Auschwitz were incredibly hungry, and before they set off on the march they had been issued with food. And they'd been walking from Auschwitz, I don't know how many days [they walked along the route Auschwitz - Tychy - Mikolow - Gliwice, approx. 55 km]. I don't remember how long we were walking, but more than 24 hours, I think, and we reached somewhere near Kedzierzyn at night, the Blechhammer camp in the Silesian sheet metal works in Slawecice [approx. 25 km from Gliwice].
They were to pick up the next huge camp from there. We stopped in this one shed, on the fringes of that camp. One night I think we slept on bunks. In the watchtowers there were guards, I remember that still, as if it were yesterday - they were Romanians and I think Latvians, at least that's what all the prisoners round about were saying. A special international brigade of the SS was guarding us. I didn't see any Germans there.
The next day the guards suddenly started shooting at us into the shed from the watchtowers. I was lying on the middle bunk, and up top was Mandel, a friend from the camp in Gliwice. Kiwi Mandel, that's what they nicknamed him. And that Mandel was wounded in the leg. I don't know why they were shooting. There was general pandemonium. We were afraid to go out of the shed, but sometime later that same day we noticed that they had stopped guarding us - they had left the watchtower and fled, evidently, because we couldn't see anybody there.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
It took a whole day and a night, I think. They open the wagons: 'Raus' [Ger.: Get out]. We look: 'Arbeit macht frei' [Work makes (you) free, the infamous inscription above the Auschwitz gate]. What's going to happen to us? I thought then. I didn't know anything about Auschwitz. I knew about our camp in Pustkow, but about others, that they existed at all, I didn't. They left us a very long time on that ramp. And that SS-man, Ruff, said that he had had a 'Befehl' [Ger.: command] and he had to put us in the camp, not in any crematorium. No, because he had been given an order and he wasn't leaving the place until they took us to the camp. It wasn't that he asked for it - he demanded it. On that ramp Ruff behaved very decently. I didn't see him during the convoy, I only saw him on the ramp.
I didn't know that Auschwitz was a death camp. None of us knew that. We were told that we were going to the camp and we went to the camp. But later I found out that it was usually like this: a transport arrived and all of it to the bathhouse. There that poisonous gas at once, then the floor fell in, the corpses down, and that was it. In Birkenau [29] there were crematoria, those people were sent there to their deaths, and others were sent to the sheds. And so somehow we simply survived, because in the end we were sent to the camp. And so that's why I've got this number, A-18077. I was tattooed on the first day, 27th July 1944. Prisoners did it, but I don't know whether they were Poles or Jews.
After that I got my stripes, of course [camp uniform, made from material with blue vertical stripes, comprising a jacket and trousers]. But in Pustkow we hadn't had stripes. You went around in whatever you had. First we were sent to this big bathhouse. I knew that I was in quarantine, that this was how it had to be, that they would come and take us somewhere to work. I don't know what the point of that quarantine was. Two weeks we sat in these sheds and didn't do anything. On the bunks, without anything, just like that. There weren't even straw mattresses, and all those people.
There I saw the women's camp in Birkenau [30]. Women, all shaven, I saw at once on the first day. I saw the gypsy camp too. Yes. I could see that they were gypsies; their camp was separate. I saw other people too, different nationalities, Greeks, Hungarians. I even remember this one episode. I didn't even know what it meant. 'Korfu lekhem' - one of the prisoners said that to us. 'Korfu' meant that they were from the island of Corfu, and 'lekhem' is simply 'bread' in Hebrew, apparently. I still remember those two words, as if it were yesterday. 'Korfu lekhem, Korfu lekhem.' Just meaning that they were from the island of Corfu and they wanted bread.
And after that quarantine, after all that, what they called 'merchants' came to the camp. Yes, SS-men. They ordered us all to get out of the shed. The whole group, the one from Pustkow, because we'd somehow stuck together. They asked about our trades. What trade, what trade? They just wanted to see who could do what, because it was to be real work. Obviously I wasn't a properly trained tailor, but I said I was a tailor. Perhaps I saved myself as a tailor, because they took me to work and didn't leave me in the camp. Some of them, that stayed, older people, they finished them off in the camp. Then they split us into groups and some went to the Siemianowice Foundry [proper name: the Laura Foundry], others to... I can't remember, and I ended up in Gliwice. In July 1944.
I was still a prisoner of the Auschwitz camp, just of the Gliwice branch [31]. There they were building a factory to make gun carriages and large water mines - munitions, in any case. We organized it all, in the sense that first we did the earthworks, and then we put the machines in, set them up, leveled them. Even lathes, milling machines and other machines. As non- experts we did what we could. And in charge of that was a firm called Zieleniewski [Zieleniewski-Maschinen und Waggonbau GmbH] from Cracow, which the Germans had partly transferred to Gliwice during the occupation. I don't know why. Perhaps so as not to be manufacturing munitions in Cracow? Perhaps they didn't want it to be visible in Cracow, that there was production going on in such a big city, and there in Gliwice it was somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, way out of town.
Some of the workers presumably had to move from Cracow to that factory. But they used to go home almost every Sunday. They weren't slaves like we were, but presumably got money for their work. We walked to work every day, perhaps 10 minutes, because our sheds weren't far from the factory that was being built. But there the conditions were awful. Indescribable. In the winter, washing right out in the open air, naked. The washbasins were outside. We had to wash, because we were covered in lice. I couldn't stand it any more. Everything outside. These camp sheds, so many people in one space, as many as possible. The nights terrible, the days terrible. And I was there until about January 1945. The worst I experienced was there. The worst. And then after that there was that march [26] as well. I didn't expect it to end like that. Quite simply, well.
I didn't know that Auschwitz was a death camp. None of us knew that. We were told that we were going to the camp and we went to the camp. But later I found out that it was usually like this: a transport arrived and all of it to the bathhouse. There that poisonous gas at once, then the floor fell in, the corpses down, and that was it. In Birkenau [29] there were crematoria, those people were sent there to their deaths, and others were sent to the sheds. And so somehow we simply survived, because in the end we were sent to the camp. And so that's why I've got this number, A-18077. I was tattooed on the first day, 27th July 1944. Prisoners did it, but I don't know whether they were Poles or Jews.
After that I got my stripes, of course [camp uniform, made from material with blue vertical stripes, comprising a jacket and trousers]. But in Pustkow we hadn't had stripes. You went around in whatever you had. First we were sent to this big bathhouse. I knew that I was in quarantine, that this was how it had to be, that they would come and take us somewhere to work. I don't know what the point of that quarantine was. Two weeks we sat in these sheds and didn't do anything. On the bunks, without anything, just like that. There weren't even straw mattresses, and all those people.
There I saw the women's camp in Birkenau [30]. Women, all shaven, I saw at once on the first day. I saw the gypsy camp too. Yes. I could see that they were gypsies; their camp was separate. I saw other people too, different nationalities, Greeks, Hungarians. I even remember this one episode. I didn't even know what it meant. 'Korfu lekhem' - one of the prisoners said that to us. 'Korfu' meant that they were from the island of Corfu, and 'lekhem' is simply 'bread' in Hebrew, apparently. I still remember those two words, as if it were yesterday. 'Korfu lekhem, Korfu lekhem.' Just meaning that they were from the island of Corfu and they wanted bread.
And after that quarantine, after all that, what they called 'merchants' came to the camp. Yes, SS-men. They ordered us all to get out of the shed. The whole group, the one from Pustkow, because we'd somehow stuck together. They asked about our trades. What trade, what trade? They just wanted to see who could do what, because it was to be real work. Obviously I wasn't a properly trained tailor, but I said I was a tailor. Perhaps I saved myself as a tailor, because they took me to work and didn't leave me in the camp. Some of them, that stayed, older people, they finished them off in the camp. Then they split us into groups and some went to the Siemianowice Foundry [proper name: the Laura Foundry], others to... I can't remember, and I ended up in Gliwice. In July 1944.
I was still a prisoner of the Auschwitz camp, just of the Gliwice branch [31]. There they were building a factory to make gun carriages and large water mines - munitions, in any case. We organized it all, in the sense that first we did the earthworks, and then we put the machines in, set them up, leveled them. Even lathes, milling machines and other machines. As non- experts we did what we could. And in charge of that was a firm called Zieleniewski [Zieleniewski-Maschinen und Waggonbau GmbH] from Cracow, which the Germans had partly transferred to Gliwice during the occupation. I don't know why. Perhaps so as not to be manufacturing munitions in Cracow? Perhaps they didn't want it to be visible in Cracow, that there was production going on in such a big city, and there in Gliwice it was somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, way out of town.
Some of the workers presumably had to move from Cracow to that factory. But they used to go home almost every Sunday. They weren't slaves like we were, but presumably got money for their work. We walked to work every day, perhaps 10 minutes, because our sheds weren't far from the factory that was being built. But there the conditions were awful. Indescribable. In the winter, washing right out in the open air, naked. The washbasins were outside. We had to wash, because we were covered in lice. I couldn't stand it any more. Everything outside. These camp sheds, so many people in one space, as many as possible. The nights terrible, the days terrible. And I was there until about January 1945. The worst I experienced was there. The worst. And then after that there was that march [26] as well. I didn't expect it to end like that. Quite simply, well.