The partisan unit we met was the one named after Adam Mickiewicz. Its commanding officer met with us and asked us a few questions. A beautiful blonde woman, who looked like a Lithuanian woman was sitting beside him during the interrogation. He suggested that we joined his unit, but the woman said: 'I shall not let Jewish girls join your unit!' I was shaking from being hurt: did we escape from the ghetto just to get into the hands of an anti-Semitic woman. Later it turned out that this woman whose last name was Glezer, was Jewish and just felt sorry for us, innocent Jewish girls. There were vague morals in the partisan unit and she was concerned about us. However, the partisans treated us like their sisters.
- Tradíciók 11756
- Beszélt nyelv 3019
- Identitás 7808
- A település leírása 2440
- Oktatás, iskola 8506
- Gazdaság 8772
- Munka 11672
- Szerelem & romantika 4929
- Szabadidő/társadalmi élet 4159
- Antiszemitizmus 4822
-
Főbb események (politikai és történelmi)
4256
- örmény népirtás 2
- Doctor's Plot (1953) 178
- Soviet invasion of Poland 31
- Siege of Leningrad 86
- The Six Day War 4
- Yom Kippur War 2
- Atatürk halála 5
- Balkán háborúk (1912-1913) 35
- Első szovjet-finn háború 37
- Csehszlovákia megszállása 1938 83
- Franciaország lerohanása 9
- Molotov-Ribbentrop paktum 65
- Varlik Vergisi (vagyonadó) 36
- Első világháború (1914-1918) 216
- Spanyolnátha (1918-1920) 14
- Latvian War of Independence (1918-1920) 4
- Nagy gazdasági világválság (1929-1933) 20
- Hitler hatalmon (1933) 127
- 151 Kórház 1
- Thesszaloniki tűzvész (1917) 9
- Görög polgárháború (1946-49) 12
- Thesszaloniki Nemzetközi Vásár 5
- Bukovina Romániához csatolása (1918) 7
- Észak-Bukovina csatolása a Szovjetunióhoz (1940) 19
- Lengyelország német megszállása (1939) 94
- Kisinyevi pogrom (1903) 7
- Besszarábia romániai annexiója (1918) 25
- A magyar uralom visszatérése Erdélybe (1940-1944) 43
- Besszarábia szovjet megszállása (1940) 59
- Második bécsi diktátum 27
- Észt függetlenségi háború 3
- Varsói felkelés 2
- A balti államok szovjet megszállása (1940) 147
- Osztrák lovagi háború (1934) 9
- Anschluss (1938) 71
- A Habsburg birodalom összeomlása 3
- Dollfuß-rendszer 3
- Kivándorlás Bécsbe a második világháború előtt 36
- Kolkhoz 131
- KuK - Königlich und Kaiserlich 40
- Bányászjárás 1
- A háború utáni szövetséges megszállás 7
- Waldheim ügy 5
- Trianoni békeszerződés 12
- NEP 56
- Orosz forradalom 351
- Ukrán éhínség (Holodomor) 199
- A Nagy tisztogatás 283
- Peresztrojka 233
- 1941. június 22. 468
- Molotov rádióbeszéde 115
- Győzelem napja 147
- Sztálin halála 365
- Hruscsov beszéde a 20. kongresszuson 148
- KGB 62
- NKVD 153
- Magyarország német megszállása (1944. március 18-19.) 45
- Józef Pilsudski (1935-ig) 33
- 1956-os forradalom 84
- Prágai Tavasz (1968) 73
- 1989-es rendszerváltás 174
- Gomulka kampány (1968) 81
-
Holokauszt
9685
- Holokauszt (általánosságban) 2789
- Koncentrációs tábor / munkatábor 1235
- Tömeges lövöldözési műveletek 337
- Gettó 1183
- Halál / megsemmisítő tábor 647
- Deportálás 1063
- Kényszermunka 791
- Repülés 1410
- Rejtőzködés 594
- Ellenállás 121
- 1941-es evakuálások 866
- Novemberpogrom / Kristályéjszaka 34
- Eleutherias tér 10
- Kasztner csoport 1
- Jászvásári pogrom és a halálvonat 21
- Sammelwohnungen 9
- Strohmann rendszer 11
- Struma hajó 17
- Élet a megszállás alatt 803
- Csillagos ház 72
- Védett ház 15
- Nyilaskeresztesek ("nyilasok") 42
- Dunába lőtt zsidók 6
- Kindertranszport 26
- Schutzpass / hamis papírok 95
- Varsói gettófelkelés (1943) 24
- Varsói felkelés (1944) 23
- Segítők 521
- Igazságos nemzsidók 269
- Hazatérés 1090
- Holokauszt-kárpótlás 112
- Visszatérítés 109
- Vagyon (vagyonvesztés) 595
- Szerettek elvesztése 1724
- Trauma 1029
- Beszélgetés a történtekről 1807
- Felszabadulás 558
- Katonaság 3322
- Politika 2640
-
Kommunizmus
4468
- Élet a Szovjetunióban/kommunizmus alatt (általánosságban) 2592
- Antikommunista ellenállás általában 63
- Államosítás a kommunizmus alatt 221
- Illegális kommunista mozgalmak 98
- Szisztematikus rombolások a kommunizmus alatt 45
- Kommunista ünnepek 311
- A kommunista uralommal kapcsolatos érzések 930
- Kollektivizáció 94
- Az állami rendőrséggel kapcsolatos tapasztalatok 349
- Börtön/kényszermunka a kommunista/szocialista uralom alatt 449
- Az emberi és állampolgári jogok hiánya vagy megsértése 483
- Élet a rendszerváltás után (1989) 493
- Izrael / Palesztina 2190
- Cionizmus 847
- Zsidó szervezetek 1200
Displaying 23311 - 23340 of 50826 results
Fania Brantsovskaya
At this moment Haya Shapiro, another girl from the ghetto, joined us. She said the ghetto had been eliminated the very night we left. My friends, who were with my mother at the time, but survived, told me that the inmates were taken to some place in the open air. It was pouring, and my mother kept saying: 'We are alive, but how is Fania out there?' On that same day a big group of underground members left the ghetto through the sewer. Samuel Kaplinskiy, who had worked for the water maintenance agency, led them out of there. Kaplan, Asia Bik and Hvoinik, who were supposed to get out of the ghetto as well, got lost, were captured by fascists and hanged.
A local guy offered us shelter. He may have understood that we were going to join the partisans. He took us to a shabby forester's hut where we stayed overnight. In the morning he brought us a bottle of milk and half a loaf of bread. There were swamps ahead of us and he made us sticks for walking. We followed him. The guy showed us out of the swamp and left. He showed us the way, though. For no particular reason we got overwhelmed with joy all of a sudden. We started singing Soviet songs aloud, when someone halted us: 'Halt, who's there?' Instead of saying the password, we started laughing and crying. We got hysterical. This was a distant patrol of the partisan unit that we bumped into. One of the guards went to report on us and another one stayed with us.
I don't remember how we left the town and got to the woods. We ate the peas my mother had given me and then we found wild strawberries in the woods. Wasn't that a miracle - strawberries in September! We walked through the woods all night. In the morning we came to a village called Zverinets and realized we had lost our way: the village was not supposed to be on our way. We approached a woman telling her that we were heading to our aunt in the village of Staryie Matseli to help her dig potatoes. The woman gave us some milk and boiled potatoes and we moved on. In the evening we arrived in the village of Zhagaryay. The village of our destination was the next one. Some Lithuanian women digging potatoes yelled at us: 'Zhidovki!' [Jews]. We saw some armed soldiers in the village, but what else were we to do but continue on our way.
My father's sister Zelda, who was two years younger than Tyoma, finished a teachers' training seminar in Vilnius. This was a workshop for Yiddish teachers. Zelda was single. In 1939 she went to work in a Jewish school in Belarus and disappeared there at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.
My father's older sister Tyoma, born in 1906, finished the 'Ikh Duh Arbet' school for Jewish girls where they were trained in crafts. [Editor's note: 'Ikh Duh Arbet', lit. Assist by Working, Jewish organization established by the Jewish community in Vilnius in the 1920s. It was an 8-year school for girls who were taught various crafts there. The school only existed before WWII.] Tyoma learned to sew, knit and embroider and worked in a handicrafts store owned by Russian immigrants. The store sold yarn and embroidery accessories. Tyoma wanted me to be good at handicrafts and gave me embroidery sets as birthday gifts. Only once she bought me an umbrella on my birthday. Her husband's surname was Finskiy. Tyoma had a daughter with two names: Genia was her name registered in the documents, but her family called her Bira after the Jewish autonomous region of Birobidjan [9]. Tyoma, her husband and their child perished in the Vilnius ghetto.
, Lithuania
My father's youngest brother, Meishke Joheles, was born in 1914. He followed into his father's footsteps and made his living by painting. Meishke kept his fondness of poetry a secret from his family. Many years after the Great Patriotic War I learned that Meishke was a member of 'Young Vilnius' [public organization uniting young Jewish people in Vilnius before WWII], the organization of young poets, writers and artists. He wrote beautiful romantic poems. The only living poet from this organization, Sutzkever [7], who was a witness at the Nuremberg trials, lives in Israel. I met with him and he spoke warmly about Meishke. In 1938 Meishke got married. His wife Niusia was an agronomist. Meishke and Niusia moved to Lvov in 1939. Niusia continued her education there and Meishke entered the Lvov Teachers' Training University. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War Meishke disappeared. Niusia evacuated to Uzbekistan. After the war she moved to Moscow, defended a candidate's dissertation [see Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees] [8], remarried and gave birth to two children. If my memory doesn't fail me, she died in 1998.
My father was the next child in the family, and then came Berl, who moved to Palestine, when he was young. He changed his name to Dov. [Berl is the diminutive of the Yiddish Ber, meaning Bear in English, just like the Hebrew Dov is.] He had two children: Zipora, a daughter, and a son whose name I can't remember. Dov passed away a long time ago; his son died in 1990. His daughter is still alive. My father's brother Girsh, born in 1907, and his wife Esther lived in Vilnius. They had no children. Girsh had a small shop. He was an engraver and made skilful monograms on jewelry, dishes and tableware. Girsh and Esther perished in the Vilnius ghetto [6] during its elimination in October 1941.
Velvl and Rohe-Gisia had many children, which was common for Jewish families then. My father's older brother Dovid Joheles, born in 1895, and his family lived in Kaunas. He was a baker. He owned a bakery and a store where he sold bread, cakes, and pastries that he made. I don't remember his wife's name, but I remember that they had two children: a son named Ariya and daughter, Feigele, named after one of our ancestors, in the same way I was. Dovid's family perished. They were killed in Kaunas in 1941. My uncle's name is not on the list of those who were killed in Kaunas, but some people who knew my uncle told me about it.
, Lithuania
I've never been in Svencionys. All I know about my grandmother's relatives is that her brother Dovid Gilinski was a painter and he was the one who introduced my grandmother to Grandfather Velvl. Dovid's son Mordke Gilinski was popular in the Jewish circles. Before the war there was the Meidem recreation home near Warsaw. It was well known in Poland and Lithuania. [see Annexation of Vilnius to Lithuania] [1] It was founded by a Bund [2] activist named Meidem for poor children in Poland. There were two employees there whose surname was Gilinski: one was the director, who wasn't related to our family. The other one was Mordke Gilinski. Mordke was a teacher. The children liked and respected him and addressed him 'father', 'batka' in Polish. Many Jewish teachers knew Mordke in Poland and Lithuania. Children spent two to three months in the recreation home. There was a puppet theater, a radio station broadcasting in Yiddish and a brass orchestra. The classes were conducted on a high professional level. Mordke and his wife, who was also a teacher, arrived in Svencionys at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War [3]. Mordke was a member of Judenrat [4] in the ghetto in Svencionys. Later he moved to the ghetto in Vilnius. I saw him last before I escaped from the ghetto. Most likely, Mordke Gilinski, a great pedagogue and educator, ended his life in Ponary [5]. People said his wife survived, but we lost track of her after the war.
, Lithuania
I have no information about my grandfather's parents, brothers or sisters. His wife, my grandmother, Rohe-Gisia Joheles, was three years younger than my grandfather. Her maiden name was Gilinskaya. She was born in the town of Svencionys, about 70 kilometers from Vilnius. There were actually two towns: Svencionys and Svencioneliai. There was a big Jewish community in Svencionys where my grandmother came from. From what I was told I know that my grandmother had many brothers and sisters. She came from a big family.
Grandfather Velvl had a natural sense of humor. During World War I, when there were no medications available he used to cure children using just a thermometer. They never doubted that when he measured the temperature, they would promptly recover, and they actually did, however strange this might seem. He also cured his children and grandchildren from bruises by putting an old galosh as bandage over their injuries. I once fell and injured myself and when my grandfather wanted to apply an old galosh, I told him this was nonsense, that I had no faith in. My grandfather was stunned and couldn't forget it for a long time repeating, 'How can you like modern young people, these children... they have no faith!
My grandfather was a painter. He was a very skilled and artistic painter. He made art paintings and exquisite Alfrei works [a technique of interior decoration and renovation]. He was believed to have been one of the best experts in his specialty. Many years after my grandfather perished a friend of mine told me that her father was one of my grandfather's best apprentices. My grandfather also completed the most important tasks during the renovation of the Vilnius University. A few years later, when he needed an eye surgery, he was taken to the university clinic where he had benefits as an employee of the university. I remember my mother and me visiting my grandfather in hospital where he proudly told other patients and doctors how smart and good I was being his older granddaughter.
My maiden name is Joheles. It's an old Jewish surname and has a local Lithuanian coloring. My paternal grandfather, Velvl Joheles, was born in Vilnius in 1868. At that time Lithuania belonged to the Russian Empire. Jews constituted a big part of the population of Vilnius that consisted of Lithuanian, Russian and Polish people. Before World War II Vilnius was a center of Yiddish culture in Eastern Europe. There were over 100 synagogues in Vilnius, educational and prayer institutions, a charity fund, professional guilds, a Jewish hospital, an elderly people's home, a charity children's fund, a Jewish public school, a Jewish theater and choirs, a health organization, a labor association, a few schools and gymnasiums teaching in Yiddish and Hebrew. There were many Jewish craftsmen. They were hat makers, tailors, bronze workers, leather men, etc.
Dina, my younger daughter, married Boris Baver, a Jewish man from Vilnius. In 1990 she, her husband and their sons Maxim, born in 1982, and Beniamin, born in 1984, moved to Haifa, Israel. They are doing very well there and have good jobs. In Israel Dina gave birth to two more children: Mikhail, named after my husband, was born in 1994, and Sapi, my granddaughter, in 2001.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
My work and children helped me to survive. I retired in 1990. My daughters have had a good life. They finished school with gold medals. Both graduated from the Faculty of Cybernetics of Vilnius University, nine years one after another. There was no oppression on ethnic issues toward them. Vita defended her dissertation in Moscow. She works at the Ministry of Labor and Social Services. Her husband Mikhail Safian, a Jewish man from Minsk, is a mathematician. Vita's daughter Anna, born in 1975, works for a Norwegian/Lithuanian company. She is married to a Lithuanian man. Anna's son Simon is my great-grandson. He'll turn four in July.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
My husband worked till his last days. In 1985, at the medical examination before his trip to a resort, they diagnosed cancer. He was operated on and the doctors told us he was to be all right when in truth cancer struck him all over. On 20th May 1985 he was admitted to hospital for high governmental officials and stayed there for seven months. He died in December 1985. He was buried in the town military cemetery. Our combat friends and his colleagues living in various towns came to his funeral. They made speeches by his casket for a few hours. I lost my beloved husband and my best friend.
The denouncement of the cult of Stalin in 1956, at the Twentieth Party Congress [44] was an inspiring moment and gave us hope again. I remember our friend Kovalski, a tailor, staying a whole night with us arguing and trying to convince us that we had to leave this country. We stayed and so did he. We've never considered emigration. We didn't consider it during the mass emigration in the late 1970s. However, we never cared about possible troubles following our acquaintance with those friends who decided to move to other countries. Our friends spent their last days here with us and we accompanied them to the railway station. Vilnius is closer to Europe than Moscow and we didn't have such incidents as expulsion from the Party for this kind of anti-Soviet conduct.
In 1947 all former Polish residents could move back to Poland. We also had this opportunity, but we believed in our country [the Soviet Union], in socialism, peace and justice. There was another opportunity in 1957. Our convictions were not so strong any more then. We went through the period of state anti-Semitism, the Doctors' Plot [43]; these were terrible years. My husband was summoned to the state party committee where we were offered to go to provincial areas and organize a Polish newspaper there. When my husband refused saying that it wasn't quite his specialty, they had a rough talk with him and even mentioned that he must have survived under some vague circumstances during the war, being a Jew. However, there were no follow-up actions on their part.
, Lithuania
We raised our children to be hardworking and modest. I remember the following incidence. My husband had an office car to take him to work; we never owned a car or a dacha. One day his new driver arrived in the morning to take my husband to work and our daughters to the kindergarten. But my husband said he would walk to work and our daughter was ultimately disappointed considering that it was a cold nasty day. My husband told him to drive back to the office.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
My husband held official posts and earned well, but my salaries were rather low. My husband could have free stays in recreation homes each year. I bought a trip from trade unions and went with him [see Recreation Centers in the USSR] [42]. We usually traveled to Palanga [resort on the Baltic Sea], and once I went to the Caucasus with him, but the hot climate there was too much for me.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
We were given two rooms in a four-room apartment. The apartment was divided into halves [see communal apartment] [41]. We got a kitchen and two rooms, and our co-tenants got two rooms and the bathroom, so we had to install a bathtub in the kitchen. The bathroom was in the kitchen; we made a curtain to separate it from the kitchen. This other was a Lithuanian family and we became friends. In 1950 my first daughter, Vita [Safian, nee Brantsovskaya] was born in this apartment. This name means 'life' in Latin. This was what my husband and I valued to the utmost and what we paid a high price for. In 1956 we received a separate apartment on Gorkogo [presently Dijoli] Street. This was one of the first houses with central heating in Vilnius. It was very cold in the first year. In 1958 my second daughter was born. We named her Dina [Baver, nee Bratsovskaya] after my husband's mother. The children went to a nursery school and a kindergarten. They had no grandmothers to help us raise them.
I knew I had relatives in Israel. My mother's parents, her brother and sister had moved there before the war. I wrote to them from Belarus back in 1939 and they replied, but after the war it was no good to try to get in touch with them. The Soviet regime didn't trust people who had relatives abroad [39]. People could lose their jobs and the party membership. Besides, at this time the prosecution of Jews and campaign against cosmopolitans [40] began. It had no impact on us and we truly believed the propaganda.
We didn't observe Jewish traditions. We spoke Yiddish to one another. Shortly after the war the synagogue opened in Vilnius. We attended it, but not to pray. There was a sort of Jewish center there where Jewish survivors searched for information about their families. I found my friend through the synagogue. She lives in Israel, in Haifa. Almost right after Vilnius was liberated I received a letter from aunt Niusia, my uncle Meishke's wife. I was very happy to learn she had survived. I visited her in Moscow several times. Once I met a few girls from Taurag at a Komsomol gathering. I mentioned that my uncle Shimon had lived there before the war, the only one of my mother's brothers who managed to evacuate, and it turned out that Shimon had survived. He visited us with Shulamit, his daughter, the only one of his daughters who also survived. He and his daughter visited us in Vilnius to bid us farewell. Shimon couldn't bear to stay in the town after losing his wife and four daughters and they moved to Israel.
In 1945 the factory where my husband was working burnt down. We were very concerned that my husband might get in trouble. There were many people taken to jail for sabotage or negligence. Fortunately, my husband's investigation officer from the NKVD [38] happened to be a decent man. He knew my husband was not to blame. My husband went to work as chief of department in the Lithuanian Industrial Council and then worked as chief of Department of State Planning of Lithuania for 25 years. He finished Moscow Institute of Engineering and Economics extramurally. We joined the Communist Party following our convictions. We joined it very consciously.
,
1945
See text in interview
Life was gradually improving. In 1944 Vilnius was bombed several times, but this wasn't all that scary. I was offered a teacher's job, but I only wanted to teach Jewish children, and there were very few of them in Vilnius. In 1945 I finished the technical school of statistics. In April 1945 I became a statistical analyst in the Central Statistical Department of Lithuania. I worked there till I retired. I was promoted to personnel manager, and then became chief of the registration department.
The Soviet regime needed specialists to restore the economy. We were invited to the Komsomol central committee where they asked where my husband and I had worked before the war. My husband had been a worker at a shoe factory and they made him director of the factory. He turned down this high level position and became its technical manager. My friend, who was just a first year student of the Faculty of Economics, was appointed manager of the planning department. Since I knew Russian, I was sent to work as secretary of a ministry. At first all ministers sat in one office. Later the minister I worked for got another office. I used to take my rifle to work putting it in the corner. The minister joked: 'One day you'll shoot me!' We didn't care for any material riches. They didn't seem to matter in comparison to victory and freedom. However, we had to get used to peaceful life. Some time later we were ordered to submit our weapons. In summer 1945 Mikhail and I were in the Lithuanian delegation standing on the Red Square [in Moscow] at the Victory Parade. These were unforgettable moments. My husband and five others were awarded the 'Medal for Partisan of the Great Patriotic War' [37], Grade I, and they were one of the first awardees.
The whole unit celebrated our wedding. All partisan groups stayed in cottages in Vilnius together. Our group got a big mansion on Anglu Street. Later we got a big apartment in Pilimo Street. My husband and I had a big room there. We slept on mattresses on the floor. We spent our evenings with the group and also shared the food with them. We were intoxicated by the victory, our youth and love.
There were hardly any Jews left in Vilnius. When I saw older Jews, or they looked old to me considering how young I was, I felt like kneeling before them to kiss their hands. I approached them to talk to them and find out where they had been during the war. What happened to our dear ones made my attachment to Mikhail much stronger. On 22nd July 1944 we actually became husband and wife, we started living together, and we got married on 17th August that year. We had no passports. We had our marriage registered in our partisan ID's; the registry office that had just been opened made an entry about our marriage.
,
1944
See text in interview
Later I heard more details about my parents. My father perished in the concentration camp in Klooga in Estonia at the very end of the war. I don't know the exact date, but in fall 1944 he was still on the lists of the prisoners of this camp. The girls, who were with my mother, found me. They were taken to Riga. One day all women over 35 were taken away. My little sister wanted to come with Mama, but a German pushed her away telling her she was too young. According to the information I have the women were taken into the sea on a barge and drowned. My husband's mother Dina Brantsovskaya perished in the same group with my mother. My sister worked at the weaving factory in Riga. Riva wrote poems and the other girls told me a few lines from her poems. She wrote something like 'I'm standing by a machine weaving belts to hang fascists on them'. All I know is that my little sister perished in a death camp, one of those that fascists were destroying before the Soviet army came.