Jacob studied in cheder, yeshyva and in a Polish secondary school. He began to work as a carpenter’s apprentice and studied in an evening school.
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Displaying 50521 - 50550 of 50826 results
Rita Vilkobrisskaya Biography
When Hitler was preparing for intervention in Poland Jacob’s mother insisted that he moved to the Soviet Union. Jacob went with his sister, but she fell ill on the way and Jacob had to take her back home. He could never forgive himself for doing this. His family perished during World WarII. We have no information about where or how they perished, but none of them survived the war.
Jacob crossed the border of the Soviet Union in the vicinity of Brest in Byelorussia. He had to go through several examinations before he obtained a passport of the soviet citizen. However, he didn’t have the right to reside in Moscow, Leningrad, and capitals of the Union republics or big industrial centers [the Soviet authorities were suspicious about people that came from other countries. They were not allowed to reside in bigger towns].
My father was very upset about it, although the attitude toward him didn’t change. In 1952 my father had an infarction. He didn’t work for a year, but when he went back to work he had another infarction almost immediately. My father was in hospital when Stalin died in March 1953. Although my father suffered during the period of repression he felt respectful toward Stalin and did not have an inch of suspicion that Stalin was to blame for repression and persecution of Jews and many other things. I remember mother smiled when talking to someone, in hospital. My father, however hopelessly ill, forbade her to smile on such a mournful day.
There was a mourning meeting at school and many students and lecturers were crying standing by the portrait of the leader, but I didn’t feel like crying. I believed that the country had buried its leader, and also a tyrant, it was just my feeling and I never discussed it with anyone.
My father died on 10 January 1954. He was suffering a lot when dying. He said farewell to all of us and was concerned about me being single and he was worried that I was not settled in life. We buried him at the town cemetery in Lvov. Shortly before he died my father introduced me to a son of his fellow comrade, visiting him in the hospital. His name was Volodia. We went out for some time, but then we broke and he married my close friend.
Then my friend Raya Reingold introduced me to her Jewish friends and I began to spend most of my free time with my new Jewish friends. We went to the cinema or discotheque like all other young people. We enjoyed being together. There were no Jewish or religious aspects in our life.
I graduated from the Institute in 1955. There was a conflict when I was receiving my job assignment. I was the second one to enter the room where a commission was sitting. There were various assignments available. But the commission offered me distant towns in the North: Syktyvkar, Yakutsk. I couldn’t go there after I was ill with tuberculosis. Job assignment was a mandatory requirement [18]. I called my mother at home and she came to the Institute at once. She managed to make an arrangement for me to receive a so-called free ‘Item 5’ [19]. I decided to look for a job by myself. What an ordeal it turned out to be especially when potential employers looked at ‘Item 5’ [17] in my passport and I got refusals. I even went to the Ministry in Kiev to ask them to help me with employment. They promised to send me an assignment, but nothing happened. Anatolmitz Zolotukhin, a lecturer in our Institute, helped me. He had an acquaintance in the Printing Committee that helped me to obtain a job assignment in Lutsk. I got a job of an economist in a printing house.
I went to work at the beginning of October 1955 and when I came home during holidays in November my mother introduced me to Jacob Honiksman, my mother’s acquaintance introduced him to my mother and she liked him. He was a very nice young man. I met with him several times when I came to Lvov: on 5 December, Constitution Day [Soviet holiday] and on New Year. Jacob proposed to me, but I told him that I had to think about it. He was divorced and had a daughter and I had to consider his proposal. On 29 January 1956 Jacob and a friend of his came to see me in Lutsk and on the following day we got married in a district registry office. The procedure at that time included a one month waiting period after submittal of application for marriage, but Jacob was full of charm and managed to convince a girl at the registry office to marry us and we became a husband and wife. It happened promptly since Jacob could only stay in Lutsk for two days and had to return to his work that was important for him. And for me the only opportunity to go with him was to marry him. I quit my work and came to Lvov. We had a wedding party at a restaurant on 10 March. It was a great party, but we didn’t observe any Jewish traditions then. We’ve been together since then.
Families of the military received good food packages, with tinned meat, milk powder, sugar and candy. We actually didn’t feel hungry like it was with other people in evacuation and the local population. The products we received in food packages were sufficient and we bought something else, like vegetables. My father got a good salary, but money couldn’t buy anything. Food coupons or clothes became valuable. There was bread given on food coupons, We received sufficient coupons for living. I was responsible for standing in line that began to form at dawn, sometimes I had to stand 5-6 hours. Even vodka was given for coupons before holidays.
In 1943 my father that was in the rank of colonel was sent to the front. Father told us that he was to be there on a temporary basis and was going to return soon. Later he wrote in a letter that he wanted to stay at the front to fight against occupants. He served in a rear logistics unit, but he also took part in action. He was awarded an order of the Great Patriotic War, Order of Lenin, Order of Red Banner and medal for ‘Victory over Germany’. He served in the First Ukrainian Front that liberated towns in the West and South of Ukraine, including Lvov. He also took part in the liberation of Poland and Warsaw. My father was in Vienna when the Victory Day came. He had pictures where he was photographed with his fellow comrades near the Brandenburg gates in Berlin. However, I don’t know how my father happened to be in Berlin. I guess it happened after the victory.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
At that time something terrible happened. After finishing the aviation school in Magdagachi town near Chita in the Far East a group of young pilots and Ilia were sent to Kamchatka Peninsula in the Pacific Ocean in the east of Russia, 12500 km from Moscow. My father was at the front at that time. Ilia came back in June 1943. He must have had a premonition since he was very reluctant to go where he was assigned. He asked grandmother to ask our father to take him from Kamchatka when he returned home My grandmother wrote my father to the front, but mail was slow and my father probably didn’t receive this letter and couldn’t help. He was even ready to go to the front instead of going to Kamchatka. Ilia was in the town of Elizovo near Petropavlovsk-in-Kamchatka. In November 1943 he died in a crash during a training flight. His plane got into spin and Ilia failed to catapult and perished. We received a letter from his military unit and later they sent us a picture of the monument on his grave: a pedestal with a star. My mother and grandmother couldn’t stop crying: they didn’t know how to tell Ilia’s father about his death. They decided not to write him to the front. My father heard about his son’s death when he came to us in Voroshylov in 1945 after the victory. He returned home in joyful excitement with all orders on his jacket, but when he heard about his son’s death he had a heart attack – the first one in his life. It took him a while to recover from this tragedy. Many years afterward I wrote letters to Elizovo requesting them to find my brother’s grave, but it was never found.
The Victory Day of 9 May 1945 was a real holiday for all people. We celebrated it in Voroshylov. In the morning the radio announced that war ended victoriously. We went to the street where there were crowds of people greeting each other. We believed that the worst was in the past, that when father came back our life would be a continuous holiday. My father took us from the Far East in 1945.
My father, my mother and my little sister left for a new work destination of my father in the town of Langenzercdorf, near Vienna in Austria. My father was there in occupational troops. My grandmother and I lived with my aunt Sophia in Dmitrov near Moscow. My father couldn’t take all of us with him, and we decided that my little sister would go with them and I would stay with grandmother.
Aunt Sophia had married Nikanor Kabachkov a short time before. This was her second marriage. He was a Russian man, mechanic at a power plant. There were two sons in my aunt’s family, her daughter Vilena was married and had her own life, and my grandmother and I hardly had a place to live in their apartment. We got on aunt Sophia’s nerves and she didn’t keep this to herself. I kept asking mother in letters to take me to live with them until in few months’ time my father came to pick me up and take to Austria and grandma stay with Sophia.
At that time my father was transferred to Noggels town in 50 km from Vienna, my father was on military service in the Soviet occupational army. My father was a high-level officer and in accordance with his rank we received a 5-room mansion. There were servants working for us: few housemaids, a cook and a cleaning woman. We took it for granted and believed that father deserved it. My mother didn’t work. Her Yiddish helped her to communicate with Austrians and she picked up sufficient German rather promptly.
At the beginning of a week Soviet children were taken to a boarding school. Once a week children of the military were taken to boarding school by truck. Inessa went to school in 1946 and there was a girl – Inga - and a boy from our town that were taken to school by car. The boarding school was located in a beautiful town on Badenboyville near Vienna. It was a resort and our school was housed in an old fortress. We came home at weekends. We studied all mandatory subjects of the Soviet school curriculum. There were teachers from the Soviet country and we wore school uniforms that were also brought from the Soviet Union. Our school was in a distant castle and I only communicated with our schoolmates. After classes we did our homework and played in the yard. We celebrated Soviet holidays and studied Soviet patriotic songs and verses. There were 3 tenants in one room where we had comfortable beds, sinks, toilets and desks. There were children of various nationalities, but it didn’t matter to me.
In autumn 1947 my father’s assignment in Austria was over and shortly afterward the Soviet troops left Austria, too.
My father was offered to chose a job in Kiev, Riga, Odessa or Lvov. My father liked Lvov when he was there in 1944 and he chose this town. We moved in here in September, 1947.
My father was deputy political officer in a rear aviation unit. My father got a beautiful spacious apartment in Pushkinskaya, the central street in Lvov.
My father was deputy political officer in a rear aviation unit. My father got a beautiful spacious apartment in Pushkinskaya, the central street in Lvov.
I went to a Russian secondary school for girls – girls and boys studied separately at that time. There were few Jewish girls in this school, it wasn’t important for me, but it seems to me that about that time I began to differentiate Jews by name and appearance. There were Ukrainian and Polish schools in Lvov, therefore, there were mostly Russian girls in my school since it was a Russian school. I got along well with my classmates. My classmate Lilia became my lifetime friend. We did homework together and went to the cinema or discotheque together.
Lilia’s father Anrei Kamalitdinov was a Tatar man and her mother Olga Vladimirovna was Russian. Lilia’s father was a hygienist and her mother was a very good children’s doctor. Lilia’s wanted to become a doctor since she was a child. After finishing school in 1949 she convinced me to enter a medical Institute. I and Lilia submitted our documents to the Institute, but failed to accumulate a required number of points. This had nothing to do with anti-Semitism – I was just a poor pupil at school. The rector of this institute offered me to go to the pharmaceutical faculty where competition was small, but I didn’t want to. Lilia was trying to convince me to go to Tomsk in Siberia where her mother’s former fellow student was Rector of the Medical Institute, but my parents were against my going there since I had a poor health – I had problems with my lungs. Lilia went to Tomsk where she entered the College and then in a year’s time she transferred from Tomsl to Lvov Medical University. There were fewer students than required in three institutes: of physical culture, commercial and polygraphy. I submitted my documents to the Faculty of Economics at the Institute of Polygraphy. I passed all exams and became a student: exams were only formal and everybody could be admitted.
I fell ill with tuberculosis. I had to take an academic leave to go to hospital. There were no medications available, but my father managed to get some streptomycin. It worked well and put me on the way to recovery. After hospital I spent few months in a great military recreation center in the Crimea. Between 1950 and 1953 I spent my summers in recreation centers for the military elite where my father made arrangements for me. I traveled there alone, but always made friends. Those were magnificent recreation centers for the military elite. There were comfortable single rooms with all comforts facing beaches. The food was nice and sufficient and there was entertainment: dancing or cinema in the evenings.
There were many Jewish students in my group. There was a meeting where we joined trade unions – there were trade union units in each organization - and each student stood up to say their first name, surname and patronymic. I counted 11 or 12 Jews then of 25 students in my group. However, I only studied few months with this group since I fell ill with tuberculosis.
I missed one year at the Institute and studied with students that entered in 1950. I met my friend Raya Meyerhold there. She lives in Israel now, with her children and grandchildren. We correspond rarely. When we were young we went to discotheque together and discussed latest news or books that we read.
In the late 1940s the attitude towards Jews changed dramatically. Newspapers and radio kept talking about ‘rootless cosmopolites’ [16] and doctors-poisoners [doctor’s plot] [17]. There were no arrests in our Institute, although there were Jewish lecturers. But the attitude of officials towards Jews, including Jewish students, was politely cold We pretended we didn’t notice anything and hoped that we would manage somehow, but students treated each other in the same friendly manner. Nothing changed in this regard.
In April 1941 my father was awarded a trip to a military recreation center at a resort in Nalchik town in Northern Caucasus. My father took grandmother Hasia with him: she wanted to see her children: Khona, Max, Efim and Sophia. While my father stayed at the recreation center grandmother went to visit her children. They all asked her to stay with them, but grandmother refused. Khona from Western Byelorussia was particularly insistent. She told them that she was used to living with Bertha and Michael and that they needed her assistance. Khona was a little bit hurt. When we recalled this later we felt happy that grandmother refused to live with them or she would have perished as her family did.
At the end of May 1941 my father and grandmother returned to Khabarovsk.
At the end of May 1941 my father and grandmother returned to Khabarovsk.
On 22 June 1941 the Great Patriotic War began. The war seemed to be far away, but the commandment was probably concerned about possible war with Japan. They offered all officers to take their families further to the west and come back to Khabarovsk. My father couldn’t think about separation with the family. I remember he lifted me and asked ‘Rita, are you afraid of the war. Do you want to stay here with me or do you want to leave?’ I replied that I was afraid and he said ‘Let it be as my daughter decided’.
Our family along with other officers’ families was evacuated to Olevsk town in Altaysk region in Siberia in 1500 km from Khabarovsk.
Our family along with other officers’ families was evacuated to Olevsk town in Altaysk region in Siberia in 1500 km from Khabarovsk.
Ilia, my older brother, studied in Navy school in Vladivostok, a town in the Far East on the shore of the Pacific Ocean, at that time. When the war began their ship was sailing near the shores of Japan, but they turned back to Russia and did he stay in Vladivostok during the war.
In Olevsk there were four of us: my mother, grandmother, sister and I. Olevsk is a small town in Siberia with one-storied buildings and population of few thousand people. There were not many people in evacuation and the locals were quite friendly with them. We lived in this town during the whole severe winter of 1941-42. We lived in a small room in a communal apartment. My mother went to work. She went to collective farms propagating to collective farmers to fight for bigger crops to give more grain to the front. There was a slogan ‘Everything for the front, everything for the victory’. My mother was away for several days. On one of her trips the coach that she rode on turned over and mother broke her arm. She had cast applied on it, but she didn’t stay home to wait until it healed. She went to villages and my sister and I stayed at home with grandmother. I went to school in Olevsk. The school was far from where we lived and I had to walk through knee-high snow snowdrifts.
My mother brother Efim’s wife Milia and their daughter Tamara were also in evacuation in Olevsk. They left Minsk in a hurry. They were lucky to have been picked by a military truck that drove them out of the town. They found out through the state search department that we were in Olevsk and joined us there. Later Milia’s sisters Lisa and Tsylia from Moscow arrived at Olevsk. We all lived in one room, Milia and her sisters worked in a kolkhoz near Olevsk. At the end of winter in 1942 my father came to take us back to Khabarovsk and Milia, her sisters and Tamara stayed in Olevsk.