Many people in this country lived in fear of arrest and repressions during those years before the war. That's why I was sent out of the house with the story that mother had tonsillitis and I could catch an infection.
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Displaying 10411 - 10440 of 50826 results
Maya Dembo
Later grandfather Moisey slaughtered the hens according to the rules. I liked chicken cooked by grandmother; she was a wonderful cook. She handed over her cooking talent to her daughters.
In the summer of 1941 we planned to visit Grandmother Sara in Riga, but then the war broke out. I was already a schoolgirl before the war, but I was evacuated with the kindergarten to Yaroslav region. I remember clearly how I walked along Nevsky prospect [the main street of Leningrad] with a rucksack. We were sent to the Volga river and my parents stayed in Leningrad. Our troop train with children was in-between those trains that headed to the frontline and the Germans bombed us all the time. There was no unbroken window glass left in the train car.
We sat under the benches covering our faces with our hands. Finally we reached our place of destination. It was the village of Iskra in Yaroslav region.
We sat under the benches covering our faces with our hands. Finally we reached our place of destination. It was the village of Iskra in Yaroslav region.
In 1940 Latvia was annexed to Russia. When the Great Patriotic War broke out in 1941, Riga already had some information about the Germans persecuting Jews in Poland. Thus when the Germans approached Riga, my grandmother and her daughter Cecilia escaped with the retreating Red Army, taking only a bundle with belongings and a small suitcase with Cecilia's tools with them.
I faced anti-Semitism there for the first time in my life. We were called 'plucked-out jews'. I came home and asked who 'plucket-out jews' were. They explained it to me. But the strangest thing was that they called all evacuated people, even Russians, 'plucked-out jews'. Obviously, the local inhabitants thought that only Jews were evacuated. I didn't make friends with anyone there; we struggled for existence.
My father was occupied with the production of pumps in Podolsk. After the siege, the LMP employees returned to Leningrad and their families came back later.
My mother and me returned to Leningrad in June 1945. Father came back with his plant earlier.
My mother and me returned to Leningrad in June 1945. Father came back with his plant earlier.
Our house #27 on Dobrolyubova Street, where we had lived before the war, hadn't remained intact; a bomb hit it. My father got a room in a communal apartment in building #23 on the same street. The room was on the second floor, it was a pillbox during the war, our soldiers shot from it. My father had to break off the bricks from the window openings with a crow-bar and to make new windows. The room was crammed with furniture, gathered from the whole building and everything had to be taken out. The communal apartment was rather big, designed for six families.
There was a kitchen with a wood-stove and a wash-basin, where huge fat rats sat, well-fed on the corpses during the siege. Those rats were afraid of no one. There was also a tiny toilet, which didn't work properly. Torn electric wires and pieces of wallpaper hung from everywhere. Nevertheless, little by little, neighbors appeared and life returned to normal.
There was a kitchen with a wood-stove and a wash-basin, where huge fat rats sat, well-fed on the corpses during the siege. Those rats were afraid of no one. There was also a tiny toilet, which didn't work properly. Torn electric wires and pieces of wallpaper hung from everywhere. Nevertheless, little by little, neighbors appeared and life returned to normal.
My father continued to work in his former position at the LMP. Later on their special design bureau was transferred to the Economizer Plant, which produced pumps, so he began to work there.
My mother didn't have special medical education, but learnt a lot working at policlinics during the evacuation in Verkhnaya Salda and in Podolsk. Thus, having returned to Leningrad, she found a job at a tularemia infection station, which was located not far from our house on Tatarsky Lane. They dealt with extremely dangerous infections there: plague, encephalitis, tularemia.
My mother didn't have special medical education, but learnt a lot working at policlinics during the evacuation in Verkhnaya Salda and in Podolsk. Thus, having returned to Leningrad, she found a job at a tularemia infection station, which was located not far from our house on Tatarsky Lane. They dealt with extremely dangerous infections there: plague, encephalitis, tularemia.
In the postwar time my parents loved to go to the theater and concerts; they especially liked [Arkadii] Raikin and [Klavdiya] Shulzhenko [both popular Soviet variety artists]. My parents had a lot of friends, whom they welcomed at home with pleasure and whom they visited, too.
Their friends were of various nationalities, not only Jews; my parents were people of cosmopolitan nature, they would live well in any part of the world. I think they developed such a trait when they were young and lived in Paris for ten years. They didn't like chauvinism, either Russian or Jewish.
Their friends were of various nationalities, not only Jews; my parents were people of cosmopolitan nature, they would live well in any part of the world. I think they developed such a trait when they were young and lived in Paris for ten years. They didn't like chauvinism, either Russian or Jewish.
We didn't go to the summerhouses in summer because my mother didn't like all these buckets, pans, oil-stoves. My parents bought a Moskvich car: private cars weren't common yet at that time, but already affordable for well-to-do families. We drove to the Crimea and the Caucasus, in our own car. But most of all we liked to go to the Baltics: to Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and the Lettish farm at the border with Estonia, where our close friends, Latvians lived - though I don't remember anything special about the time we spent there.
I went to school after the war. It was a girls' school and I didn't like it. The teachers constantly dragged me to the toilet and made me wet and comb my curls. They didn't believe that I had such hair by birth. The hair became even curlier when wet. I had real fun, but my mother was summoned to school. I cannot say that I was oppressed because of my nationality, but playing in the yard, I heard sometimes 'Jewish mug!', and I thought: what can I do? I faced real anti-Semitism when I entered the institute.
I finished school in 1951, since I lost about one and a half years because of all these evacuation trips. I wanted to enter the philological faculty of Leningrad University, but my parents advised me to not even try to submit my documents there, in order to save time, strength and nerves, as Jews weren't accepted to university openly at that time. I got the same advice from Natasha, my friend and neighbor in our communal apartment. She was two years older than me, Russian and studied at the faculty of law.
I submitted my documents to Leningrad Library Institute. I passed the entrance exams fine, got one 'good' mark and the rest were 'excellent'. However, the entrance examination commission asked me to bring an excerpt from my parents' biography, explaining why I was born in Paris.
Were my parents white emigrants or not? Why did they live there? A Jewess and moreover, born in Paris! My father wrote an explanation, I entered the institute with difficulty, but studied well and with pleasure. We had a very strong literature sub-faculty, consisting of famous Russian and foreign literature specialists, who were driven away from the university, for being Jews or so-called 'cosmopolitans' [18], who weren't exiled to far away camps so far.
I submitted my documents to Leningrad Library Institute. I passed the entrance exams fine, got one 'good' mark and the rest were 'excellent'. However, the entrance examination commission asked me to bring an excerpt from my parents' biography, explaining why I was born in Paris.
Were my parents white emigrants or not? Why did they live there? A Jewess and moreover, born in Paris! My father wrote an explanation, I entered the institute with difficulty, but studied well and with pleasure. We had a very strong literature sub-faculty, consisting of famous Russian and foreign literature specialists, who were driven away from the university, for being Jews or so-called 'cosmopolitans' [18], who weren't exiled to far away camps so far.
After graduation I was assigned to work at the Kola Peninsula in the town of Kirovsk [mandatory job assignment] [19]. The following order existed at that time: nonresidents were left in Leningrad and Leningrad residents were sent to remote locations, so that they 'would not stir up trouble'. I worked in a library in Kirovsk.
I worked in Kirovsk for two years, between 1955 and 1957, returned to Leningrad and started to look for a new job. I visited different organizations. They greeted me rather warmly, asked me to fill in a form, but having considered my application, informed me that they weren't able to take me. It wasn't easy to tell by my appearance, if I was a Jewess or not, but after I filled in the form, everything became clear. So I 'wandered about' for some time and later through some friends of mine found a job as a librarian at the Children's Literature Publishing House.
I worked at the so-called 'mass department' at the Writers' House, I was engaged with the writers' 'education', arranged various meetings for them with famous figures of science and engineering, artists, producers, theater and cinema actors. I was very business-like and vigorous. Writers are very capricious and sometimes even quarrelsome people; often I caught it from them, besides, there was a lot of gossip. I called that organization the 'viper-house' but I passed through the hard school of life there. I left the place in 1982 after 15 years of work there.
I met my husband, Lev Samuilovich Freidman, in 1957 at my friends' place in Kirovsk. Lev was a Jewish man. He was born in Leningrad in 1926. His father didn't have any higher education but he was a very good practical economist and was a member of a lot of expert commissions. Lev had twin sisters, both were doctors-pediatricians, they are still alive; and a brother, who died in 1999. Lev studied at the Leningrad Institute of Law, but he didn't manage to obtain a diploma, as he was arrested and exiled to Kirovsk.
I married Lev at the end of 1957.
After his sentence in Kirovsk Lev finished a construction equipment installation technical school, and all his life after that he was occupied with industrial construction at Krasny Vyborzhets plant, at Srevdlov machine-tool plant, at Izhorsky plant and others. He was well-known among constructors, respected and loved.
Regardless of the fact that he was a constructor, we weren't able to get an apartment, we were in line for a long time and finally we built a cooperative apartment. In 1968 we moved into a two-bedroom cooperative apartment on Varshavskaya Street, where I still live now.
In 1981 Lev was assigned by his ministry to the construction of Kostomuksha ore mining and processing combine in Karelia. The construction was executed jointly with the Finns. There were a lot of KGB [20] representatives. They were people dressed in civilian clothes in the guise of interpreters, but they only disrupted the work, as they didn't know the specifics of construction work and technical terms. Lev was very soon bored with that and began to work directly with the Finns; they all understood the drawings perfectly and understood each other very well.
When Lev came back to Leningrad, he always said, 'The KGB is close at my heels, it doesn't allow me to breathe, besides, here you are being born in Paris...
When Lev came back to Leningrad, he always said, 'The KGB is close at my heels, it doesn't allow me to breathe, besides, here you are being born in Paris...
I started to work at the Monuments' Protection Society, located on Shpalernaya Street in 1982 and worked there until I retired in 1987.
Lev was accused of accepting a bribe and was placed in the famous Leningrad Kresty prison. The amount of money in question was very small, and no one could understand such preventive punishment, but the investigator refused to alter it and release Lev 'under a written undertaking not to leave the place'.
My husband's muskrat hat was brought to me; it was all cut into pieces, the investigators were looking for something in it, as they explained to me. They searched my apartment on 8th March; they knocked on the walls, looking for hiding-places. They composed a statement, but there was nothing to make an inventory of.
Eight or nine investigators took turns on Lev's case, they had nothing to get hold of, but he remained in Kresty. I went to the prison along with his sisters; once every two months it was allowed to deliver a package.
My husband's muskrat hat was brought to me; it was all cut into pieces, the investigators were looking for something in it, as they explained to me. They searched my apartment on 8th March; they knocked on the walls, looking for hiding-places. They composed a statement, but there was nothing to make an inventory of.
Eight or nine investigators took turns on Lev's case, they had nothing to get hold of, but he remained in Kresty. I went to the prison along with his sisters; once every two months it was allowed to deliver a package.
Lev stayed in Kresty for half a year. We got him out of the prison with great difficulties. All witnesses in court were for the defense, the prosecution had none. Lev's colleagues found the anonymous man, who had written the letter, and beat him severely. These Russian guys actually helped me a lot.
But the court didn't withdraw the accusation and Lev was sentenced to work in 'chemistry', as it was called at that time. It was a hazardous production, he worked not far from Volosovo in Leningrad region at a wood-processing factory for one and a half years.
But the court didn't withdraw the accusation and Lev was sentenced to work in 'chemistry', as it was called at that time. It was a hazardous production, he worked not far from Volosovo in Leningrad region at a wood-processing factory for one and a half years.
He returned at the end of 1984 and in August 1993 he died, having suffered three infarcts during that period of time. He was buried in the Preobrazhensky Jewish cemetery, not according to Jewish customs, but in a secular manner, without ceremonies. I visit the cemetery often, but I never go there on Saturday. I observe this Jewish custom.
I get packages and medicine in Hesed at lower prices.
Let alone Israel, where our relatives and friends live.
I had a positive attitude to their departure, I also wanted to leave together with my husband, but, as the only daughter, I couldn't leave my parents, especially when they were in their declining years and sick. Now that I'm a sick and elderly person myself I don't have any religious life, since it would be too difficult for me in terms of health. I lead a secular and a very modest life.
I had a positive attitude to their departure, I also wanted to leave together with my husband, but, as the only daughter, I couldn't leave my parents, especially when they were in their declining years and sick. Now that I'm a sick and elderly person myself I don't have any religious life, since it would be too difficult for me in terms of health. I lead a secular and a very modest life.
My paternal grandfather, Isaac Dembo, was born in Riga [Latvia] in the 1870s. He had some kind of technical education, but I have no detailed information.
My paternal grandmother, Sara Lazarevna Dembo, nee Bugg, also had a Jewish name, Sorel. She was also born in Riga in 1865. The Bugg family was wealthy; they owned a fur factory in Riga named Electra. This factory was one of the first in Europe, which learnt to make mouton out of sheepskin, a shining fur with a soft flexible base. They really succeeded in it. They also had a dairy farm near Riga, in Saulkraste, so they were a fairly well- to-do family.
Another one of Grandmother Sara's brothers - his name is unknown - found himself in Riga occupied by the Germans, and perished tragically. The fascists threw him into the burning synagogue. Other relatives had managed to escape from Riga before the Germans arrived. Some fled to the East, some the West.
The German - not Yiddish - language was the mother tongue of Grandmother Sara's family, because the German influence was very strong on the Latvian culture at that time, especially so in Riga, the capital of Latvia. All members of the family spoke Latvian and German; grandmother Sara and Aunt Cecilia, who lived most of their lives in Latvia, spoke it perfectly; my father and Uncle Aron spoke it less well.
They all spoke Russian well, Cecilia spoke without any accent and her brothers had a slight accent.
They all spoke Russian well, Cecilia spoke without any accent and her brothers had a slight accent.