We used to joke that there were three factories in our yard. One was Nadezha, a confectionary. Its old Jewish owner Vishrut, his son and one worker made chocolates and lollipops and gave them to daily workers to wrap them. At that time bone-shaped chocolate ice cream was very popular. There were no fridges and chocolate in mould forms was taken to the yard to cool down. The children were waiting for them to take the forms outside hoping to get some treats. The Vishrut family had two sons and a daughter. Her name was Anna. Once we were invited to her birthday party. We made fancy carnival costumes from goffered paper. We had lots of fun at the birthday party and laughed so much that we peed and wet our paper skirts. Anna entered university shortly before the war. Her father had an agreement with the housekeeper that he would give shelter to the family and hide their valuables once the Germans came. However this housekeeper happened to be a real fascist and reported on the family. Their older son, a mathematician, was the only survivor. He lives in the USA now.
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Displaying 23281 - 23310 of 50826 results
Fania Brantsovskaya
There were only Jewish families living in our house. The only non-Jewish family was our janitor's family. Later a post office was opened in the building and its director received an apartment in the house as well. The janitor's children were very happy that they'd finally be able to meet non- Jewish children and were greatly surprised to find out that there were no icons in the director's apartment [Orthodox-Christian families traditionally had icons in their homes.]. They happened to be a Karaite [20] family.
Frankly speaking, all I know about Jewish traditions I learned from my father's parents. We celebrated the first seder with them. We hired a wagon to get there and I loved it. My grandfather wore a kippah and reclined on cushions at the head of the table. Grandmother sat beside him. I looked for the afikoman and got a present for this. I also posed the four questions about the holiday [the mah nishtanah] to my grandfather. We also visited my grandparents on Chanukkah and I got Chanukkah gelt. I kept an old whipping top, a memory of my grandfather, for many years and only recently gave it to an acquaintance of mine who is collecting old Jewish things. She lives in Israel. On Rosh Hashanah it was necessary to take a candle with a little flag placed in a potato to the synagogue. Mama gave me the candle when I went to the synagogue with my grandfather. She bought the candle in advance.
Mama usually cooked Jewish food on Pesach. She made sweet and sour stew, cookies made from the dough boiled in honey, tsimes [19] with carrots, beans, potatoes and prunes. She also made tsimes with lentils, grown in Lithuania. She also made imberlach with carrots and ginger, which I still cook every now and then. On Pesach mama made borscht with marinated beetroots. She also made jam with these beetroots and nuts. Mama also made a cake from matzahmuki [matzah flour] on Pesach. She also served medok, both Jewish and Lithuanian beverage with honey and hops. We celebrated Pesach, but didn't have the seder ceremony. We cleaned our house and bought gifts for the family. However, I cannot remember any Jewish traditions related to this holiday being observed in our family. Matzah was bought long before the holiday and kept in a basket. Mama made latkes and little pies from matzah flour stuffed with fried onions and jam. Mama also made boiled buckwheat with fried onions - this was a typical Jewish meal in Vilnius. On Chanukkah mama made potato pancakes. We didn't have a chanukkiyah.
My parents weren't religious. They didn't observe the kosher laws either. We often had sausage and ham at home. Mama was raised in a more traditional Jewish family and tried to observe Jewish traditions at the beginning. She lit candles on Sabbath and prayed, but my father often worked on Saturday and Mama gradually gave up praying, but kept lighting candles. Later she just told me, 'Fania, light the candles'. Mama also fasted on Yom Kippur and tried to involve my father in it. She didn't make dinner on this day and my father and his friend, a shochet's son, used to go to a missioners' cafe where they served nice dinners to all those willing. Later Yom Kippur became just a day off for us; it was a good occasion for the family to get together. Mama cooked a lot and the family had dinner together enjoying themselves; Aunt Tyoma and her husband visited us.
My mother always had some money prepared for donations: there was an association of the poor in Vilnius. It divided the town into districts and collected donations on certain days. Poor Jews visited us on Wednesday and Mama gave each of them a farthing. My father bought books from his monthly salary. We read a lot: books and Yiddish newspapers. We also often went for walks together and discussed what we had read.
Our apartment was modestly furnished, but my mother's eagerness and skills added charm to it. There was hardly anything my mother couldn't do. She kept altering clothes and dressed my sister and me to the fashion. She could knit and embroider. She made napkins for the furniture and embroidered rugs. When little round tables became fashionable, mama cut the edges of the kitchen-board, finished it and placed it on our table. She couldn't wait till my father got some time for it and did the wiring herself, however crookedly she managed to do it. Mama whitewashed the walls, moved the furniture and fixed it to make our life more comfortable. Mama was an excellent housewife. However hard the times, she always managed to make dinner somehow.
There was a signboard with the name Joheles, my father's name, on the front door. We had a common apartment for the time. The rooms were located one after another. My father's shop was in the first and biggest room of the apartment. My father made a partition to separate the shop from my parents' bedroom. The next room was also divided to create a dining room and a children's room. Then there was the kitchen with a backdoor leading to the yard. There was a wood-stoked stove in the kitchen. In the yard there was a shed where all tenants kept sawn wood. The winters in the north were severe and one had to be prepared for it. There were men offering their sawing services for a reasonable fee walking from one house to another in fall.
My parents started by renting a room. We had to go through our landlady's room since she lived in the same apartment. Later we moved to a place on Basanavichus Street. Two months later we moved to a bigger room. In 1928 my parents rented a room on Pilimo Street. This big four-storied house behind the synagogue is still there. The synagogue is also there. Madam Trotskaya, our landlady, lived with her daughter in Paris. Her Jewish manager collected the rent, and there was a maid to keep the house clean. The landlady arrived each summer to collect the money.
My father went to work as an instructor of an electric mechanic laboratory of the polytechnic school of the organization of the workers' union. My father became a valued teacher at this school. However, he wasn't paid his regular salary in full: they usually paid him about 20 percent and put the rest on credit. Once his credit had accumulated into a big amount, the management paid half of it to my father. My parents believed it to be a huge amount of money and decided to have winter coats made for them for this money. However, my father's salary wasn't enough to cover all family expenses and when my parents managed to get a suitable lodging my father opened his own electric technical shop.
We crossed the border between Lithuania and Poland and arrived in Vilnius, which belonged to Poland at the time. [The modern Polish nation-state was created after World War I of the ethnic Polish areas of the Russian Empire (Kingdom of Poland and areas East of it), Austria-Hungary (Galicia province) and some Eastern parts of Germany. Vilnius (Wilno at the time) was also a part of Poland up until 1939.] My father's parents and sisters lived there and we found ourselves staying with a big Jewish family all of a sudden. They all shared love and support.
In 1927 my sister Riva [Joheles] was born. This was when my father got arrested for being a Polish citizen having received his passport in Vilnius. He was accused of espionage. At this time President Smetona [18] came to power. Grandmother Hana-Leya, who had come to stay with us around the time the baby was due, and I visited mama at the hospital. My grandmother decided to keep silent about my father's arrest. Since my mother didn't like it that I was wearing a different coat than she had expected me to wear, my grandmother told her that my father had gone on a business trip and taken the key to the wardrobe with him. Well, it's always like this: one has good intentions, but they don't usually work. Another woman told mama about my father's arrest. My mother started bleeding and had to stay in hospital for a long time. My grandfather Velvl's apprentice, a rather high official, pulled strings for my father. My father was released from prison, but was to leave the town within three days. I have some vague memories of us moving out. I remember the horses dragging our wagon across a little river.
I was born on 22nd May 1922 in Kaunas. I was named Feige, but since my early childhood everybody called me Fania, which is a Russian name [see common name] [17]. Mama told me she got severely ill when I was born. She had to send me to my grandfather and grandmother in Varena where I lived the first year of my life. My grandparents often showed me my parents' pictures in a photo album, and when my parents came to pick me, I said 'Mama, papa - album'. I don't remember any details of my life in Kaunas. My father worked a lot at the railway power station [local power plant owned by the railway station, supplied energy to railroad utilities].
My mother Rohl [Joheles, nee Galunskaya] - her family called her Rachil affectionately - was born in 1901. I think she finished two or three grades of elementary school, but I don't know any details. My parents had their wedding in Varena on 22nd July 1921. My parents got married under a chuppah at the synagogue and had a traditional Jewish wedding. It couldn't have been otherwise in Jewish families at the time. My parents rented an apartment in Kaunas.
My mother's youngest brothers, Motl and Yitzhok, lived in Kaunas. Motl became an electric mechanic. Yitzhok was a building contractor. Motl and Yitzhok had one daughter each. Motl and his family perished during the Great Patriotic War. Yitzhok's daughter lives in Israel. My mother's brother Shimon lived in Taurage, near Konigsberg [Russia, 1,000 km from Moscow]. He had five children. On the day the war began, Shimon and his daughter Shulamit went to see a doctor. When bombs started falling, his wife and the children left their home. That way, they lost each other. Shimon and his daughter evacuated to Tajikistan. When he returned to Taurage, he heard that his wife and four children had perished. He couldn't bear the thought of staying in his hometown and moved to Israel. Shimon died in the middle of the 1980s. Shulamat still lives in Israel.
My mother's sister Shifra moved to Palestine [today Israel]. She married Avigdor Miller. She had two sons and a daughter. Her older son, whose name I don't remember, was the mayor of Shefar'am for a number of years. Bencion, her second son, was born after my Granny died and he was named after her. He worked as a journalist for the Jerusalem Post [major Israeli English language daily.]. He is a pensioner now. His daughter Dale, a teacher, lives in Vardiya [a neighborhood in Haifa], Israel.
Israel
My mother's sister Sarrah moved to the USA in the early 1920s. From there she sent an invitation to my mother. However, my mother had a double name of Rohlia-Dveire, common for Jews, but it was different from the name given in the documents. While thinking about obtaining new documents my mother met my future father. She fell in love with him and the issue of moving to America became irrelevant. Sarrah got married in America and had two sons. They became military pilots and perished on the Western Front during World War II. My cousin sister found their grave in France. She visited the place several times. I don't remember Sarrah's family name. I don't know when she died either.
, United States
Grigoriy's wife was a Jewish woman from Kaunas. She was also a convinced communist. Esther was a dentist by profession. She provided her services to prisoners in the local jail. After finishing his military service in Lithuania, Grigoriy was appointed consul in Trieste, Italy. My mother never saw him again. It was only in the late 1930s when a newspaper published the information that Grigoriy Galunskiy, a famous Bolshevik [16], had died in Odessa. My father decided not to mention to my mother that her beloved brother had died hoping that she would never find out, but she did. Her neighbor visited her and together they were looking at old photographs, when the neighbor expressed her regrets about my mother brother's early death. She also mentioned that she had read about it in the newspapers. Her brother's death was a tragedy for my mother. She mourned for him for seven days sitting on the floor wearing torn clothes [she sat shivah]. I don't know what happened to Grigoriy's wife or children. I failed to find them after the Great Patriotic War however hard I tried.
Grigoriy Galunskiy, the oldest of the siblings, was born in 1896. He became a communist. Mama told me he was under arrest frequently and once he was even sentenced to death. Then the rabbi himself spoke for Grigoriy. Though it was Saturday, he signed a petition, which saved Grigoriy's life. [According to the Jewish Law saving life is the single most important command; it overrules all other commands, including the Sabbath restrictions.] After 1919 Grigoriy lived in the USSR and later he moved to Vilnius as Consul of the Soviet Russia in Lithuania [Lithuanian independence] [15]. The capital of Lithuania at that time was Kaunas [since Vilnius (Wilno) belonged to Poland then] and Grigoriy, his wife Esther Grinblat and their children lived in Kaunas. My mother, who loved her older brother, left Varena to live with them. Mama told me that Grigoriy's children loved her dearly.
My mother came from the town of Varena [85 km from Vilnius] at the border of Lithuania and Poland [in 1934, 393 Jews lived in Varena]. My mother's father, Bencion Galunskiy, was born in the 1870s. He worked at the local carton factory. He also dealt in beer wholesales. He owned a warehouse where he had beer stocks. Grandmother Hana-Leya [Galunskaya] was a housewife. The Galunskiy family celebrated Jewish holidays and went to the synagogue. They also raised their children to respect traditions. However, the children were a new generation, growing up during World War I and the Revolution in Russia in 1917 [see Russian Revolution of 1917] [14]. Almost all of their children became atheists. In 1938 Bencion and Hana-Leya moved to Palestine [today Israel]: their son and daughter had settled down there before them. Therefore, my maternal grandfather and grandmother escaped falling victims to fascists like my father's parents and the majority of Lithuanian Jews. They died in the 1960s and were buried in the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem [the oldest and most holy Jewish place for burial]. Their grandchildren visit their grave each year.
My father, Beniamin Joheles, was born in Vilnius in 1898. I don't know whether he attended cheder, but I think it was mandatory for all boys. I have no information about where my father studied. My father knew Yiddish, Russian, Lithuanian, Polish and German. He was trained to become an electric mechanic at a company in Germany and later stayed to work with this company. He became a highly skilled mechanic. By the time he met my mother at his older brother Grigoriy Golunskiy's place, he lived in Kaunas and worked as an electric mechanic at the railway station.
In my childhood we visited my grandfather and grandmother on Saturday. We hired a wagon and I was looking forward to it with pleasure each time. We arrived on Saturday afternoon. My grandfather asked my grandmother to turn on the lights and she lit a lamp grumbling. The Sabbath was still on and it wasn't allowed to turn on the lights till the end of Saturday. However, our visit was more important than Jewish traditions for my grandfather. In the late 1920s my grandmother had a stroke and got a problem moving her hand. Though her daughter lived with her she always waited till my mother came to wash her. My grandfather, grandmother and Etha were among the first to fall victim to the fascists. They were killed in one of the first shootings when Jews from Antokolis were taken to Ponary and executed there.
, Lithuania
In the 1920s Grandfather Velvl and Grandmother Roche-Gisia lived in the Antokolis district in Vilnius. They had a small apartment. Their daughter Etha lived with them. My grandfather went to a nearby synagogue. He had his kippah, tallit and tefillin on, when praying. My grandmother wore a wig. However, they were moderately religious. They just followed traditions because they were brought up this way and they couldn't imagine it any different. I never saw them praying at home. They didn't follow the kashrut, nor did they insist that their children or grandchildren observed Jewish traditions.
The owner of the jewelry store sold it and the new owner hired new staff. Etha went to sell inexpensive tea. She offered tea in wholesale bundles. She also offered her customers a nice teacup as a gift. Her customers bought tea from her on installments and she collected their payments on a monthly basis.
Etha was fond of singing. There were two Jewish choirs singing in Yiddish. One was the choir of the Jewish educational society in Vilnius. Another choir was named after its conductor: Gerstein choir. Etha's music teacher was Vilbikhor, who also gave classes to my grandfather Velvl, who was also fond of singing. Six years ago I traveled to Israel where I visited the kibbutz, founded by the former inmates of the Jewish ghetto in Vilnius. There was a museum of the ghetto in the kibbutz. I saw a photo with the choir and my aunt Etha in the first row. I was truly moved when I saw this picture.
My father's younger sister Etha, born in 1916, was a shop assistant at the jewelry shop on the main street in town. During the tsarist time this street was named Georgievskiy Prospect after St. George. During the Polish rule from 1920-1939 this was Adam Mickiewicz [11] Street, named after the popular Polish poet. During the Soviet rule the street was called Stalin Prospect. During the Nazi occupation it became Hitlerstrasse. After the war and until 1956, when Nikita Khrushchev [12] denounced the cult of Stalin, the street was named after this great tyrant [Stalin]. Then the avenue was given the name of Lenin, and only in 1991, after the breakup of the Soviet Union and establishment of the independent Lithuanian state the street was given the name of Gediminas [13], the founder of Vilnius. I remember my mother and me went to the shiny store where Etha was working. Mama enjoyed looking at the jewelry in the window, but she couldn't afford to buy any. This was a store for wealthy people.
, Lithuania
When the Soviets came to power [see Invasion of Poland] [10], Esther's husband started working in the town department for education. On the first day of the war a shell hit their house, but fortunately, nobody was hurt, though at times I think it would have been better for Esther's family if they had perished on that first day. They walked to Vilnius, which was occupied by the Germans. Esther's husband was one of the first Jews whom the Germans killed. Somebody reported that he was a communist. Their son starved to death in the ghetto during the first months and beautiful Esther followed him a short time later.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
Esther had a son, and our family used to tell a funny story related to his coming into this world. Grandfather Velvl went to his daughter in Grodno for the brit milah ceremony. He hired a wagon at the railway station. It took the wagon driver a long time riding him around town till he brought him back to the station. Esther's house was right next to the station. My grandfather kept talking about the Jewish wagon driver's greediness for making him pay three times over the price for the ride.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
My father's sister Esther, born in 1912, was a beauty. There was even a duel between the son of the brewery owner and another admirer. Esther gave preference to a poor Jewish teacher whose surname was Fink. They moved to Grodno in Poland [Grodno belonged to Poland in the interwar period; in 1939 it was annexed by the Soviet Union and today it is in Belarus, 230 km west of Minsk]. Esther's husband was a convinced communist. The Polish authorities didn't appreciate such convictions and he rarely had a job. Esther supported the family by making clothes. She even had clients from other towns.
I was trained in shooting and installing mines. I had no good boots, but was wearing shabby high-heeled sandals. I had small feet. Borovskaya, the commissar of the unit, gave me the boots of her son who had perished. My first task was to saw down the telegraph supports to break the communications. There were three of us: Haim Lazar, Rashka Markovich and I. We got lost and came to a village we didn't know. We slept on Haim's coat at night and he was very unhappy that we destroyed it. In the morning I realized that this was the village where a guy had given shelter to Doba and I. I knew the way from there and I led the group. My comrades thanked me and I was happy.