We had special fancy dishes and utensils for Pesach. My father made fire to kosher all kitchen utensils and if something went wrong he burned that piece. The rabbi gave his permission to us to keep cereals and the rest of the leftovers were also burnt. I remember only two days in the middle of Pesach when it was allowed to do some work. I remember our family sitting at the table at Pesach. My father gave each of us a piece of matzah with jam and nuts on it and another piece with horseradish. Then he said a prayer standing. My mother put on a dark shawl and lit candles. We sat down for a meal and my father sang songs. It was beautiful.
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Displaying 7861 - 7890 of 50826 results
Makhlia Khalzova
Father made a sukkah at Sukkot. He made it from planks and we had meals there. Our Jewish neighbors that didn't have a garden made sukkot for their families in our garden. There were usually three or four sukkot in our garden. My father put on a long jacket and a black hat and said a prayer. My mother had her shawl on and boys wore small caps. We had meals in the sukkah through the whole period of Sukkot regardless of the weather.
There was a beautiful stone synagogue in the town. Women were sitting separately from men. At Chanukkah children got money. At Purim money was given to children and acquaintances. Purim was full of joy and fun. At Simchat Torah women and men began their dance at the synagogue in separate areas and then continued dancing together in the yard. There were processions with torches in the village - 'Let them know how Jews enjoy themselves. We are not afraid of anybody'.
Life was quiet and there were no conflicts. Ukrainians called Jews 'zhydy' [kikes] but there was no abuse: this was just the Ukrainian word for 'Jew'. [Editor's note: The word 'zhyd' is abusive in Russian, but not in Ukrainian. In Ukrainian villages 'zhyd' was the definition for a Jew and no other words for Jewish people were known.] My friend Catherine was a Ukrainian girl, my neighbor. We were like sisters. She liked to go to the synagogue with me. We studied at the Polish grammar school together. Half of the pupils were Jewish. There were no Jewish schools in the village, and Kosov, where there was a Jewish school, was seven kilometers from us and that was a little bit too far away.
In the 1930s Zionist activists from Palestine arrived and tried to convince my parents to move there. I said to my father, 'Let's go there - why sit here?', but he replied 'No, I can't go there since I have no profession and there are no jobs for laborers there'. My father wasn't young any longer while they needed young employees in Palestine. They invited girls in particular. There were probably not many girls in Palestine. One young Jewish man even wanted to marry me to go to Palestine, but I refused since I didn't want to leave my family. I didn't want to get married either. Besides, we got assistance provided by America: clothing, food and some money that my father received. It was said to be provided by Joint 5. We knew little about it, we just thought that wealthier Jews were helping poorer ones. We didn't know about Zionism or other Jewish movements.
We had a loom at home. My mother and I wove carpets and I also liked making picture wall carpets. When my brother brought pictures of Lenin and Stalin and said that they were leaders and we had to keep them in secret I wove their portraits on carpets and hid them. We didn't have information about what was going on in the outer world - in the Soviet Union, in particular. There was only one radio in the village that broadcast programs in Russian that only very few people could understand. However, we had some knowledge about the communist society from newspapers in Ukrainian that were distributed secretly. We believed this was the realm of wealth and justice where all people were equal and there were no rich or poor. Many people looked forward to the establishment of the Soviet power in our area hoping for a better and happier life. Poor Ukrainians and poor Jews looked forward to the coming of the Soviet army. I took no interest in politics and believed my brother Alter who told me about a happy life in the Soviet Union.
Young people were very enthusiastic when the Soviet troops came to where we lived in 1939, while my father and mother were less excited. They were getting older and were afraid of new developments.
We lived two quiet years [from September 1939 through June 1941] with the Soviet power. There were no disturbances of Jewish life in Kosov and we went to the synagogue and celebrated holidays as before. My mother and I did the housekeeping and my father was a pensioner. Since I gave portraits of Stalin and Lenin to the military authorities our family was referred to as one of those that were loyal to the Soviet power. Besides, we didn't own any business or get involved in any social activities. Wealthier Jews lost their stores or shops that were expropriated by the state, but we didn't suffer from any suppression. We were in no hurry to even join a collective farm 6.
We didn't have any information about the situation in Europe since we didn't understand radio programs in Russian. That the war began on 22nd June 1941 was a surprise. My father or mother never took any interest in politics and we used newspapers for kindling our stove. Refugees from Hungary, Romania and Poland began to come to Kosov telling horrible stories about German brutalities against Jews. People could hardly believe what they were told, besides, it seemed to be so far away from us. There were a few German families in Kosov - very nice people, and we could never understand for what reasons Germany attacked the Soviet Union and why there had to be a war. We were scared. My mother decided to get food stocks. A few days after the war began my mother gave me 50 rubles to go to my sister Itta, who worked as a clerk in Kosov, to buy sugar. To get to Kosov I had to cross a bridge over a mountainous river. I crossed it and climbed a hill when I heard a terrible roar. I looked back and saw the bridge fly up into the air after it was bombed by a plane. At that moment I realized that I had lost my mother and my mother had lost me. The river parted us forever and there was no way for me to return home. I cried and wailed, but there was nothing to do about it.
Itta and I learned about what happened to our parents after we returned to Pristyn from evacuation in 1945. Our Ukrainian neighbors told us the sad story. When Romanian troops came to the village some local Ukrainian villagers began to rob and abuse their Jewish neighbors Even Romanians came to protect Jews from abuse. In September 1941 the Germans came to the village. On 16-17 October 1941 they captured almost half of the Jewish community of the village to take them to execution in the vicinity of the village. Our father, mother and Idlei hid in the cellar. A 'bukharka' - slang for 'drunkard' - Galia, a local Ukrainian, saw them and began to shout, calling the Germans to 'come here immediately: there is a 'zhydivka' hiding'. The Germans pulled my mother outside by her hair and my father by his beard. Idlei was running after them yelling in Yiddish, 'Don't touch my mother or I will kill you', but the Germans only laughed at him. When they reached the shooting ground the Germans forced my father to bury those Jews that had been shot there. I'm still terrified to think what my father must have felt while burying his Jewish neighbors and acquaintances. Then the Germans put my father, mother and handicapped Idlei into a gas chamber truck and left the truck somewhere. When they were dead, their bodies were thrown out some place - nobody knows where. The rest of the Jews were taken to Kolomyia where they were gradually exterminated. Our neighbors told us this story when we visited Pistyn after the war. They witnessed what happened.
When I reached my sister Itta at the fire department in Kosov in the summer of 1941, they were all preparing for evacuation. This was a military fire unit and my sister was a civilian hired to work there. At that time nationality didn't matter at all. They evacuated and took their people with them regardless of nationality. My sister helped me obtain permission to evacuate with them. I had no documents or clothes with me. We reached Kharkov where I went to work as an attendant in a hospital and Itta worked in the hospital pharmacy. I did all the hard work washing and carrying wounded soldiers, washed blood stained bandages and cleaned the wards and surgery rooms until they began to shine. We were staying in the hospital since we didn't have a place to live. We had to forget our kosher habits and ate what we could get. We stayed in Kharkov until October 1941. The front was getting closer and the hospital moved to a settlement in Krasnodar region [150 kilometers from Kharkov]. I worked day and night in this hospital. The doctors, nurses and patients treated me well.
I found it interesting to look in the microscope when I came to the laboratory. One Jewish doctor said once, 'We need to employ Makhlia to do testing in the laboratory rather than wash floors. She must do blood testing'. The director of the hospital, a major, liked this idea. I was given 20 hours of training. I had to remember everything by heart since I could hardly write. My trainers said that I was smart since I passed my exam successfully. I learned to do blood testing very skillfully. Our patients always asked for me to take their blood tests. There was another nurse that also took blood tests. Soldiers complained that it hurt when she took their blood, but there were no complaints when I did it.
In 1945 my brother Alter, who was demobilized after he was severely wounded, found me. He told me that when the war began Maria, a Ukrainian woman from Kosov, hid him. She was in love with him and would have done anything for him. She even threatened to kill her own husband, who was a policeman and worked for the Germans. Alter ran away from her, crossed the frontline and joined the Soviet army. He was wounded several times and participated in the liberation of Ukraine, Poland and Czechoslovakia.
In 1946 Alter married Sonia, the daughter of a rabbi from Wroclav in Poland. I don't know how they met. They had their wedding in Lvov; it was a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah and a rabbi. My sister and I made traditional food: gefilte fish and everything else our mother had taught us.
My sister Itta married Vershkin, a Russian man, a military, in 1946. They lived not far from us in Lvov. After the war Jews tried to switch to Russian names [common name] 7 to avoid teasing or mocking. Itta changed her Jewish name to Lida, a Russian name.
That same year, in 1946, Vassiliy and I registered our marriage in a registry office. We didn't have a wedding party. I took my husband's last name - Khalzova. Vassiliy demobilized from the army and began to work at the flour mill factory; he was a mechanic there. He didn't allow me to go to work. I was to look after the children.
I didn't celebrate any Jewish traditions after the war - it's not that I forgot them, but somehow I didn't observe any. My daughters weren't raised Jewish. We spoke Russian at home. I just told them about my mother and about our life in the village. When we visited Itta we sang songs that Itta and I remembered since we were children. I cooked the way I was used to. Vassiliy didn't eat pork either. We didn't specifically follow the kosher laws, but we kept meat products separately from dairy products. I might hear the abusive 'zhydovka' while standing in line to buy something, but, as I say, I know how to answer for them to leave me alone. And frankly, I didn't pay much attention to any such demonstrations of anti-Semitism. Life was difficult and common people blamed Jews for their problems, but I always reacted in such manner that they never made another attempt to hurt me.
We lived our life and didn't care about our political surroundings. I remember Stalin's death [March 1953]. I liked him since I was making his portrait - he was a handsome man with a moustache. I cried after him. Vassiliy said when he came home and saw me crying, 'Stop crying; he is not your husband or brother, is he?' I thought that if Stalin had known the true state of things he wouldn't have allowed Jews or Russians or anyone else to be suppressed and offended. Jews and Russians were suppressed in similar ways, and my husband was always ready to come to anybody's help. But Vassiliy said to me that he was there to protect me, not Stalin. He did everything for the family, that's true.
My husband worked a lot and we didn't have much free time. We didn't go to theaters. Sometimes my daughter and I went to the cinema; we liked Indian films.
Our girls studied well at school and I decided to go to work. I became a cleaning woman in the nearest polyclinic in 1961. When my husband heard about it he beat me with his belt since he wanted me to stay home. This was the only time he behaved like that; he just got furious when he heard that I wished to go to work. However, I had my own character and I explained to him that our girls were growing up and needed new clothes and shoes and that I was going to make some money for them to have what was necessary. My husband provided everything necessary, but our girls wanted to have nice clothes or shoes, which again Vassiliy didn't quite understand due to his rough character. I wanted to earn some extra money for our girls. I need to say that I always felt comfortable in the family and had a feeling of being protected and the feeling of stability. When I got my salary for the first two weeks I bought my husband a bottle of vodka and he agreed that it was all right for me to go to work. He came to the polyclinic to help me do my work saying, 'I feel uncomfortable that you have to work'.
Ludmila finished school and a college. She worked as an accountant at a meat factory. She married Vladimir Voronin, a Russian man. I didn't have any objections to her marriage - he loves her and they get along well. Ludmila has a daughter, Tania, and a granddaughter, Martusia - my great granddaughter. Martusia goes to the Jewish school. She is a very pretty girl. She performs at concerts and studies Hebrew. She says, 'I'm not Ukrainian, I'm a Jew'. Tania laughs, 'I'm also a Jew and so is my mother - we are all Jews'. Ludmila is a pensioner; she goes to Hesed and is interested in Jewish life. She goes to concerts and celebrations. She knows more about traditions than I do. In Hesed they attend classes where they study Jewish traditions, the history of the Jewish people and Jewish literature while I have forgotten most of it.
She has a higher education - she graduated from polytechnic college and worked as an engineer at a TV factory, but who needs engineers nowadays? All industrial enterprises in Lvov have been shut down and many engineers have lost their jobs. The state doesn't finance big enterprises. Their equipment is obsolete and they cannot survive in the conditions of market economy. Alla works as a cook in the administration of Jewish organizations when representatives of Joint or other associations visit them - representatives of Jewish communities from other towns. There are also visitors from Israel or USA. She makes delicious Jewish traditional food.
We don't observe any Jewish traditions or celebrate holidays at home. I go to Hesed when I get an invitation and when it's warm. I like to be examined by doctors, but I don't need free dinners - Alla makes better food at home. I like seeing other Jews at Hesed. We have a lot to talk about. We enjoy celebrating holidays and singing old songs. When we lived in the center of the town I had Jewish friends, but here there are only goyim. I don't feel like even talking with them. One neighbor here threw stones at my dog - and she is such a lovely and nice dog. I reprimanded him and he said, 'Why is a zhydovka speaking here? You don't have the right to talk here'. I didn't say anything in response. I'm glad that there are Jewish organizations in town that support us. This is due to perestroika 9, when many things changed for the better. People know more about the suffering of our people and their attitude changed for the better.
Bedriska Felixova
She celebrated all Jewish holidays and tried to commemorate them at least with traditional holiday foods. Holiday meals didn't have to be kosher, but she would usually roast a goose, duck or chicken. For Yom Kippur she kept the required fast.
During socialism I didn't subscribe to any newspapers, because they always wrote about the same things.
After our wedding my husband and I lived along with my mother in the three- bedroom apartment at 16 Erbenova Street. We didn't belong to the wealthier of families, but as long as we didn't go hungry and barefoot, we were content. We didn't have a car, but didn't miss it.
Our older son has a somewhat lukewarm relationship to Judaism, while the younger one feels it more deeply and shows more interest. He doesn't since go to the synagogue often, but regularly takes part in activities and events organized by the Brno Jewish community.
Jan studied at VUT [Technical College] in Brno. These days he has his own company and works as a design engineer. My younger son is a professional gardener and enthusiastic stamp collector; he collects old stamps and postcards. Both of course have been conscious from a young age that they are Jews.
I worked as a nurse for 32 years and no one said anything bad to my face regarding my origins. When someone asks me what nationality I am, I usually say: 'I'm a Czech Jew'. I'm not at all ashamed of my Jewishness, but I'm also a proud Czech.
After I finished my medical school studies, on 1st October 1954 I was offered a job as a dental assistant in Nove Mesto in Moravia. After three quarters of a year, in about the middle of May 1955 I returned to Brno, where I got a nursing job in a dental clinic. In the course of time I worked in several clinics; the last one was in Kralove Pole.