On our street there were mainly private houses. Local residents kept order in the street, especially on the road adjacent to the houses. One half of the road had to be cleaned by the residents from one side of the street, and the second half of the road by those from the opposite side. Gomel had electricity, but not every house had running water. A water tower was situated rather far from our house, and therefore my father arranged water- supply for our house only in 1935. He engaged workers at his own expense. The houses next door had no water supply, and our neighbors came to us for water. Our relationship with our Russian neighbors was remarkably good; there were no disagreements with regards to nationality between us.
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Displaying 7651 - 7680 of 50826 results
rachel rivkina
In the town they organized military parades on October [1] and May holidays and we used to watch them, just like most of the Gomel citizens. I remember that we sang the song 'If a war breaks out tomorrow.
Jewish drama groups often came to our town. My parents were true theater- lovers: they didn't miss a premiere, neither in a Russian nor in a Jewish theater. I also watched Jewish performances. In Gomel there was a large circus. All performances were put on stage there. I remember some of them: 'Tsvai Kuneleml' was a play about two people who always got into absurd situations, and 'Dutyke Shpas' which means 'Bloody Joke,' and was about a tragedy 'Overseas.' Once, an American circus came on tour to Gomel.
Before the war, there were several hundred thousand residents, and probably 80 percent were Jews. In Gomel there was a synagogue, but in the 1930s it was closed down, and its building was given to a military registration and enlistment office. When the synagogue was open, my father took me there with him, but I remember almost nothing. In the town there was a Jewish bath-house, and a mikveh functioned. My mother visited it together with me. But later this bath-house was also shut down.
In 1927 it was still permitted to be engaged in private business. My father organized the manufacture of rubber, i.e. a private workshop for whetting scythes. There were no hired workers: only my father, Aunt Mussya and the senior children. Later, my father closed that workshop, firstly because the taxes were excessive, and secondly he did it for the sake of his children. My elder brothers weren't admitted to the eighth grade at their school because they were the children of a private craftsman.
Before the war, Zussya worked as a manager at a soup-kitchen which belonged to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, in Moscow. They persuaded him to enter the Party, but he refused. In general, he spoke negatively about the regulations of this department.
In the first days of the war Zussya left for the front. He served as a sanitary instructor. Near Rzhev their front-unit was marooned. We received letters from him, when they were encircled. He wrote that food and mail to the soldiers were dropped by parachutes from airplanes. He also wrote that they killed many horses, hinting probably, that the soldiers ate horse meat so as not to die from starvation. In one of his last letters Zussya wrote that he would hardly manage to get out from this mess. Later, we received a notification that my brother had disappeared without a trace. After the end of the war I tried to find traces of him, but in vain.
My parents dressed like everyone else, they had no special Jewish clothes.
Later, my father worked as a warehouse manager at a sewing manufacturing firm.
In 1927 Jewish schools were still functioning. I studied at a Jewish school for a year. It was me who asked my father to take me to the Jewish school, because a teacher of this school came from the shtetl. Her name was Chaya Soboleva, she sang perfectly, and I also liked to sing, therefore I asked my father to enroll me in this school. But I managed to study there for only one year, because all the children knew the Jewish language well, and my Yiddish was very poor, though at home my parents spoke it. I remember that we studied the Jewish language and grammar. Shortly after, Chaya Soboleva left Gomel, and I felt absolutely lonely at that school. I was moved to a Belarussian school. Half of our class was Jewish, and the other half was Russian. I was on friendly terms with the Russian girls.
Our family lived a traditional Jewish life: all Jewish holidays were celebrated. We celebrated Sabbath according to the Jewish traditions. My mother didn't wear a wig, she only tied a kerchief round her head, and lit candles on Friday evenings. My grandmother wore a wig. We had a photo of my grandmother, and I asked my mother, 'What does grandmother have on her head?' And my mother answered, 'She wears a wig.' My grandmother died when my mother was a bride-to-be, and therefore it was necessary to postpone her wedding.
I liked Pesach very much, especially at the moment when Pesach plates and dishes had to be taken out from the garret. The day before the holiday, my father went around the house with a chicken feather and swept out bits of bread. During Pesach we ate only matzah.
For Chanukkah, the children got some money.
I remember quite well that my mother always cooked tasty meals for Jewish holidays. For Sukkot we built a sukkah in the courtyard near the back entrance. I remember that for some reason during Sukkot it was always raining. My mother carried meals into the sukkah, and the children were carefully dressed in order to keep dry. We didn't stay in the sukkah for very long and hurried back into the house, because of the rain.
It was the Soviet period, and our parents didn't explain to us the meaning of the different holidays. We perceived Jewish holidays as a national custom. My father visited the synagogue, but his children lived their own lives.
My mother observed the kashrut strictly until her last days. She bought vegetables at the market, and a Jewish shochet brought us meat. When we didn't have enough money to buy meat, I carried our hens to a well-known shochet.
The Jewish lifestyle was natural for me, though I was brought up according to Soviet rules. I was a pioneer [4], and so was my elder brother. That wasn't the point where our parents pressed their children down, they gave us the freedom to choose. Aunt Mussya became a candidate party member even before the war. My brother Isaac, born in 1913, also entered the Party when he was 18 years old. After he finished technical school, he studied at a flying school in Stalingrad [today Volgograd]. The only thing that my mother forbade was to eat non-kosher meals.
In our class there were 40 pupils: Jews, Russians, and Belarussians. But no one had a particular dislike for Jews.
The first time I got to know about Nazism was from my father's elder brother, who had left for America as early as before the Russian Revolution of 1917 [6]. I was seven years old, when in 1933 he came to visit his brother in Gomel. During his stay I listened to his stories about American Jews who would buy nothing in German shops in protest. Probably, they began doing it after Hitler attained to power. I remember well that it happened in 1933, because that year my paternal grandfather died.
We had no troubles caused by the arrival of our American visitor. Besides, before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact [7], in Soviet newspapers there appeared a series of articles about impendence of fascism. I remember my brothers discussing the anti-Nazi film 'Professor Mamlock' [8]. In 1939 a lot of Polish Jews fled to Gomel from the fascists after the beginning of World War II [9]. These refugees told everybody about the prosecution of Jews in Poland.
At that time many people had a presentiment of the war. Isaac, who visited us in Gomel traveling transiently, told my mother a week before the war began, 'Mum, if an air-raid warning happens, be sure that the war has begun. There will be no more training alarms.' And when on the early morning of 22nd June [10] the bombing of Gomel occurred, my mother said, 'Children, this is a war!
Gomel citizens started evacuating from the first days of the war, but my mother said that she would move nowhere, until she received a letter from Haim. Haim had left for the army at the end of May 1941. And then Isaac said, 'Mum, I'll be put before a tribunal, but I'll not go to the regional military registration and enlistment office until you leave Gomel.' My mother nearly had a heart attack, but she took her son's advice. On 27th June we left.
The regiment where Isaac served was located near Voronezh. He managed to get to our village and told us that we had to leave. Sredniy Karachan wasn't situated far from the railroad, and my brother realized, that a sudden attack of German troops wouldn't give us enough time to escape. He said, 'The Germans will come here. Make preparations to leave.' We left at night, got out through the window, and I was ashamed, because we had no time to say goodbye and thank Vera Andreevna for her kindness.
So we arrived in Tashkent. There we lived in one room at my uncle's place: 28 people. My uncle had a family, and we were seven, and then the family of Alta. The room was about 18 square meters, and we spent the nights lying on the floor along the walls. There were no beds. My brother was rather tall and our feet were very close to each other. The floor was earthen. When somebody wanted to turn over, he warned everyone, 'Hey, I'm turning!
My father got a job as a door-keeper in a commercial soup-kitchen, and later as a supplier at 'Rodina' co-operative. At the end of 1941 the commercial soup-kitchens still functioned. My father worked every other day, for day and night work he earned one loaf of bread.
In Tashkent my father became more religious. First of all, all his sons were at the front, and for some time we received no news from them. My father had a hard time.
We lived in Tashkent, where a lot of Orthodox Jews lived. I never met these sort of Jews in Gomel. Families of these Tashkent Jews strictly observed the Sabbath: nobody worked on Saturdays. They didn't buy milk from the Uzbeks, and if it was necessary to buy, they watched the process of milking.
In Tashkent, Samuil entered a branch of the Voronezh Aviation College. He had studied there for half a year, and then all the students of his course were taken to the army, to a Navigation School in Kokand [today Uzbekistan].
In Tashkent it was especially difficult to observe the kashrut. When Jews from Odessa [today Ukraine] arrived here, my mother used to buy one kilogram of meat for a week from them, in order to prepare Saturday meals.
In Tashkent we celebrated Pesach. In some Jewish houses they made matzah, and my mother and Aunt Mussya went there to help. We couldn't afford to buy flour; therefore we bought corn and went to a mill for milling. And one year, I remember, they made matzah at our home, on the stove in the kitchen. The process lasted for two days: it was very difficult to make matzah of high-quality. I remember the constant feeling of hunger.