I believe my father went to Rostov to propose to my mother. All I know is that they got married in the fall of 1916. They had a wedding in Odessa. Although my parents were atheists, they gave in to their numerous Jewish relatives and had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah, even though there were only the closest relatives and friends at the wedding.
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Major events (political and historical)
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Displaying 2101 - 2130 of 50826 results
Isaac Gragerov
My grandfather Abram was very upset about the new political regime. He understood that he was going to lose his property and riches.
By that time my grandfather's property became the property of the state. My grandfather had three rooms in his apartment left for his family, and the remaining three rooms were given to other tenants. I have vague memories about our neighbors in this apartment: two rooms were occupied by the family of a worker, and the third room was occupied by a woman who participated in World War I.
In the first years after the Revolution my father began to work at the leather and shoe factory in Odessa. He was an engineer at first and later was promoted to technical director.
My mother also had a job. She graduated from the Medical Institute and took to science. She got a job at the Glavchi Scientific Research Institute for Skin and Venereal Diseases. There's a photo which shows my mother with her colleagues of the laboratory. Their laboratory was supervised by an outstanding scientist, Peter Lazarevich Brodsky. My mother and father spent a lot of time at work.
My mother also had a job. She graduated from the Medical Institute and took to science. She got a job at the Glavchi Scientific Research Institute for Skin and Venereal Diseases. There's a photo which shows my mother with her colleagues of the laboratory. Their laboratory was supervised by an outstanding scientist, Peter Lazarevich Brodsky. My mother and father spent a lot of time at work.
My sister and I spent a lot of time with our grandmother. She told us about Chanukkah, on which children get sweets and money, the taste of matzah and all the other delicious food that she made at Pesach. My grandmother also told me about the other holidays and traditions. I wasn't really very interested in them, but I enjoyed eating the delicious food. My grandparents went to the synagogue on holidays. We didn't go with them.
Our parents didn't allow them to involve us in any religious activities. My parents weren't religious. They considered religious convictions to be a thing of the past, although they weren't members of the Communist Party. My parents didn't even speak their mother tongue - Yiddish - at home. They only spoke Russian.
In 1924 I began studying at a Russian lower secondary school). There were pupils of various nationalities, but we were all friends. We had very good teachers. I became a pioneer and was very proud to wear my pioneer red necktie. We went in for sports, collected waste paper and scrap and spent our summer vacations at the sea.
In 1930 our family moved to Moscow. My grandparents stayed in Odessa. They were supposed to join us as soon as my parents had settled down. My father couldn't find a good job in Moscow, and we stayed there for about half a year. I felt some hostility from my classmates at school in Moscow. They didn't socialize with me, and when I asked why, they told me that I was different from them. There were no other Jews in our class, and I understood what they meant.
After half a year my father got a job assignment with a leather factory in Berdichev [a small town 200 km from Kiev]. He became chief engineer there. The majority of the population was Jewish. There was a very warm atmosphere in town. There were almost patriarchal relationships between the inhabitants of the town. People spoke Yiddish in the streets. Even Ukrainians spoke fluent Yiddish. Synagogues were closed by that time, but before 1917 there were over 20 synagogues in Berdichev. In spite of this fact, Jews observed Jewish traditions strictly. On holidays they got together near the synagogue in a room. All of them dressed up to watch merry Purimshpil performances. At Chanukkah people danced and sang in the streets. I didn't know any details about these holidays, but I enjoyed the atmosphere.
I studied in a Russian secondary school, where most of the pupils and teachers were Jews. After school my friends and I took a walk in town, admiring a Christian church and a synagogue. Many boys went into the synagoguewith little caps on their head. It was natural for them because their families observed all Jewish traditions. I didn't dare to go inside the synagogue. I believed that only a person with true faith could go in there.
In 1932 we returned to Odessa. My father became director of sscience at the rResearch Iinstitute of Lleather and Ffootwear Iindustry. My mother returned to her laboratory at the institute. I became a Komsomol [10] member at school. Later I went to high school where I completed my secondary education.
During the famine of 1932-33 [the famine in Ukraine] [11] we were in Odessa. We didn't have enough food. Sometimes my sister and I got little buns at school that were a delicacy. The situation in our family was less acute - my father received food packages at work. Many people starved to death. I remember seeing a dead woman on the stairs of our grandfather's former building. I also saw people dying in the streets, and their corpses were removed at night.
After finishing school I submitted my documents to the Kiev State University. I wanted to become a chemist, but in 1935 there was no admission to the Faculty of Chemistry, and I decided to enter the Faculty of Physics. I failed at the exam in Russian and Ukrainian composition. I entered the Faculty of Chemistry at the Institute of Leather and Footwear Industry located near the leather factory. I was more interested in scientific research than practical applications and, after a year, I managed to enter the Faculty of Chemistry at Kiev University.
I was also involved in public activities, and at one time I was head of the Komsomol unit of my course and a member of the Komsomol committee of the institute. I collected monthly fees, conducted meetings, concerts and amateur artist contests. I also met a nice Jewish girl called Zhenia Kriss. We went to theaters and concerts. We all celebrated 1st May and October Revolution Day [12] together, went to parades, got together at somebody's place, danced and partied until late, recited poems and sang Soviet songs.
There were many, many arrests in the 1930s [during the so-called Great Terror]. A few lecturers and students of the university vanished. There were portraits of devoted revolutionaries in the concert hall of the university. Many of these portraits vanished, after these people were accused of betrayal and executed. There were portraits of Kamenev [13] and Zinoviev [14]. Many other dedicated and devoted communists vanished in those years. Many of my father's friends and acquaintances disappeared. My father's brother Alexandr was arrested and vanished. My father had a feeling that they were coming for him one night. Of course, my parents understood the real situation, but I believed that all these arrests had their reasons, and that all those people were indeed 'enemies of the people'. My parents didn't try to tell me otherwise, but they often discussed how unfair the situation was.
We knew about Hitler and fascism and what they did in occupied areas from newspapers and radio broadcasts. Although people were preparing for a war - (we had training for air raid alarms and all kinds of other training at the university -) the war came as a surprise.
I remember air raids in Kiev on the first day of the war on 22nd June 1941. Then we heard Molotov's [15] speech about the war. My mother was very worried about me every time I left home. Once I saw an air raid over Podol [16] where German planes were shooting at people in the streets.
Soon I was recruited to the army. We, young raw recruits, were sent to support the evacuation of a military storage facility located near the Lavra (Monastery). We packed and loaded weapons and equipment onto railcars day and night. We slept at the storeroom and had meals at the canteen near the shoe factory. Later we were ordered to march to a training camp.
Our training camp was in the village of Orsha, in Sumskaya region [400 km from Kiev]. We were there for about a month learning military techniques, although we didn't have any weapons, uniforms, shells or bullets. I managed to shoot once before we were sent to the front. Our unit was deployed near Kiev, where we were to participate in the defense of the city. I remember my first battle on 16th September [1941] when I felt something hitting me on my head, and I fainted. I came to my senses in hospital in Kharkov. I couldn't move my left arm and leg.
Khrompik was a small town where my father's institute was evacuated. My parents occupied a room in a communal apartment. After I came there were four of us: my father, my mother, my sister and I. Life was hard, and we didn't have enough food.
I decided to continue my studies and attended a post-graduate school at the university in Sverdlovsk where chemistry professors from Moscow were working at the time. Since I didn't have any documents with me, I went to Ufa where the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences was in evacuation. I found my scientific tutor Professor Yavorskiy. He helped me to obtain the required documents. I studied in Sverdlovsk for over a year. At the end of 1942 the front moved to the West, and the professors moved back to Moscow and called me to come there. I arrived in Moscow at the beginning of 1943.
In 1946 I returned to Kiev and found Zhenia Kriss through her passport. Shortly afterwards we got married. We had a civil ceremony. We didn't even have rings. We just had our close relatives and friends at our small wedding party.
She returned to Kiev in 1946 and became a senior lab assistant at the Chair of Organic Chemistry of the Silicate Institute. She defended her thesis in 1956. She had many publications and students. They prepared their theses under her supervision. In 1966 Zhenia became a junior scientific employee. Later she was promoted to the position of a senior and then a leading scientific employee. She prepared five candidates of science. She worked in a new field dealing with the development of new medications. My wife retired in 1997 when she turned 77. Her former students still call her and come to see her to have discussions or ask for advice.
It took me some time to find a job in Kiev. I don't know whether it had anything to do with my nationality, but this issue was resolved through the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Alexandr Brodsky, a Jew, was the director of the Academy, and he helped me to get employment. I believe it was thanks to his efforts that the 'campaign against cosmopolitans' [17] and the Doctors' Plot [18] in the early 1950s bypassed our institute. The only thing the authorities could do was to fire quite a few Jews on the basis of an order, which said that no married couples or their relatives were allowed to work with the same company. These campaigns didn't affect me personally.
When Stalin died in 1953 I couldn't hold back my tears, although I was a very reserved person. My mother was crying aloud.
My sister Asia graduated from the Kiev Engineering and Construction Institute and became an architect. She married a Jewish man, Vladimir Kriksunov. Asia and her husband showed a lot of interest in Israel and the Jewish way of life. In the late 1980s they moved to Israel with their children, Leonid and Peter. Asia's husband died there. Asia works as an architect.
I was a convinced communist. I became a member of the Communist Party during the war. I wasn't involved in any activities, but I believed it to be my duty to be among the 'builders' of communism. My faith was shuttered by the Twentieth Congress [19], which denounced the cult of Stalin. I realized then how much injustice and lies there were in our life, and that so many innocent people suffered from the Party in which they believed.
I've been happy in my personal life, too. My wife and me are very close and very much in love with one another. We always liked to celebrate Soviet holidays. We've had friends of various nationalities. We liked to get together and sing beautiful Soviet songs. We've read a lot and went to the theatre, art exhibitions and concerts.
We have two children: our daughter Irina, born in 1948 and our son Alexandr, born in 1953. They were not raised Jewish, but they have always identified themselves as Jews and are proud of it. I can't say that either of my children directly faced anti-Semitism. They both went to study in Moscow, because at that time it was practically impossible for a Jew to enter higher educational institutions, especially the university, in Kiev.
Irina entered the Faculty of Chemistry of Moscow State University. Upon graduation she returned to Kiev. She met Yuri Malitin at university, a Jewish man, a very nice and decent young man. They soon got married. Irina and Yuri work and live in Kiev. They have two children: Andrei graduated from the Biological Faculty of Kiev University, and Alexandra is in 10th grade of school at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute.
Our son Alexandr graduated from the Faculty of Biophysics at the Moscow Institute of Technical Physics. He became a specialist in molecular genetics and defended a thesis for Candidate of Science.
Our son Alexandr graduated from the Faculty of Biophysics at the Moscow Institute of Technical Physics. He became a specialist in molecular genetics and defended a thesis for Candidate of Science.