He worked in his field of specialization, in the Research-and-Production Association ‘Positron’ in Leningrad, but he was barred from defending his candidate’s thesis [20] as a Jew. He was not religious, knew some Yiddish, but spoke and wrote Russian in everyday life; he did not serve in the army.
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Genrikh Len
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As I mentioned before, when the war began, we were evacuated to Kuibyshev where Father worked and Mother got a job in a drugstore. We were given a very bad living space in the district called Bezymyanka [‘nameless’ – in Russian]. I was attending a kindergarten there. We lived in one room with Grandmother Golda, all together.
Living with Grandmother Golda in Vsevolozhskoye, I brought her matzot from the synagogue on Pesach, lit candles for her on Sabbath, so I could see her performing all the religious customs, but still we didn’t have a very strict religious atmosphere at home. Grandmother observed the kashrut.
From Grandmother Golda I learned a little bit of Yiddish, so I can understand the language and I know some Jewish traditions from her stories. She died in Leningrad in 1970 in the family of her granddaughter Polina. The burial service was in keeping with Jewish tradition in the Small Synagogue, which was situated in the Preobrazhenskoye Jewish cemetery. She is buried in the Jewish section [21] in the ‘Cemetery of Victims of the 9th of January’, in which two plots – numbers 62 and 64 – were specially allocated as burial places for Jews. I remember how I took the rabbi back to the synagogue after he had completed the prayers.
As I mentioned earlier, we returned to Leningrad in 1946. Father got married for the second time, and we had a stepmother. I was not on very good terms with my stepmother, so my sister Polina stayed with Daddy, and I moved to live with Grandmother Eugenia. We lived for several years in Zagorodny Avenue; it was a large communal apartment consisting of 12 rooms, where Jews and Russians coexisted, sometimes in peace and sometimes at enmity. By the way, such a well-known man as Nechiporenko, people’s actor, had also lived in that apartment for some time, with his daughter, with whom we were friends. The apartment is shared until today.
From 1952 to 1956 I was a student of the Technical School of Communications in Leningrad specializing in ‘governmental communication.’ I was only 18 years old, and according to legislation of those times I had to wait until I turned 19 in order to enter a higher educational institution. I worked at a factory for one year, and then, due to excellent graduation marks from the technical school I was to be admitted to the Military Academy of Communications. But in 1957 the leader of our state, Nikita Khrushchev [22] announced the reduction of the armed forces, and plenty of reservists were written off, and all the first-year students of the Academy were transferred to the Leningrad Electro-Technical Institute of Communications named after Bonch-Bruevich, and to other educational institutions as well.
So from 1957 to 1963 I studied and graduated from the Institute of Communications, evening department. I combined my studies with working at the factory ‘Mezon’ as a technician. After graduation from the institute I received the specialty ‘engineer/ officer of communications’, and started to work in the same institute as an engineer, later entering a post-graduate course.
So from 1957 to 1963 I studied and graduated from the Institute of Communications, evening department. I combined my studies with working at the factory ‘Mezon’ as a technician. After graduation from the institute I received the specialty ‘engineer/ officer of communications’, and started to work in the same institute as an engineer, later entering a post-graduate course.
After completing the post-graduate course in 1971, I encountered a serious problem of anti-Semitism. I became a candidate of engineering science then, but had not received an assignment for work. Such assignments were given to all post-graduate students who had defended their thesis at the same time with me, except for three persons – all Jews, and I was among them. We received the so-called ‘free employment,’ that is, we were supposed to find work ourselves, and it was not an easy task for Jews in those times.
At first I worked as a non-staff teacher in the institute, but then I was compelled to shift to the research-and-production association ‘Thermoinstrument,’ where I worked in the position of chief quality control engineer from 1973. But that work did not suit me, and in 1977 I changed jobs and worked as head of the design bureau in the ‘Sputnik’ factory. From 1981 to 1989 I occupied the post of senior scientific employee in the institute ‘Lengiprokhim’ [research and design institute of chemical industry]. They still didn’t allow me to be staff professor in the Institute of Communications, and from 1990 to 1997 I taught in the technical school of communications. Now I am a pensioner. In 2000 I received the rank ‘Honorary Radio Operator.
My personal life was not traditional for a Jew. I was married more than once, which is usually unacceptable in Jewish families. My first wife, Inna Mikhailovna Ablavskaya, was Jewish. I met her in the Institute of Communications. She was born in 1940. We had a son. But our family life didn’t shape up properly, our relations became absolutely unsatisfactory. I divorced her long ago. It was, probably, in 1970, when we finally parted. And, being a Jewish wife, she complained about me being in the Party Committee at work, which doesn’t add credit to her personality either. But the Party Committee took my side.
Since my position at work demanded that I have a family, I married Tatyana Anatolievna Pomazanskaya two years later, taking a considerable share of risk. She was born in 1946, and seemed to me to be Jewish at first. She worked as a teacher. We officially registered our marriage. In 1973 my second son Anatoly was born. He lives in St. Petersburg now. Tatyana turned out to be Russian. There was much confusion with that. I was mistaken, my father was mistaken, we both believed that she had Jewish roots, but her relatives insisted that they were all Russian. When the mass emigration of Soviet Jews began, she declared, that she hadn’t intended to marry a foreigner, that she was not going to leave for Israel, if I decided to move there. She addressed the director of her school asking not to dismiss her from work [as was customary then], if it became clear that her husband had emigrated to Israel, and that she would rather break off her marriage, and that she had nothing in common with me. Notwithstanding all the fuss, I remained on good terms with Anatoly.
Now I am married for the third time. My wife, Eleonora Leonidovna Dubovitskaya, was born in Leningrad in 1938. She didn’t leave Leningrad, was in town throughout the period of the blockade. She is not Jewish. Her native language is Russian; she graduated from the Leningrad University in 1963, the Philology Faculty, German language department. She worked as a teacher at school, and later as an interpreter in Inturist [organization of foreign tourism]. Now she is a pensioner. We didn’t have children together and she had no children before.
My children have not received a Jewish education, but realize their Jewish roots, Anatoly – on his father’s side, and Vitaly – on both his father’s and mother’s side. Vitaly immigrated to the USA when he was 19, completed a university in Boston and became a programmer. We have managed to keep warm relations with him. He has never been to Russia since. We exchange letters and telephone calls, congratulating each other on Jewish holidays, which he observes, not being religious.
My son Anatoly first obtained basic legal education in a sort of vocational school. It means he received the right to act as a legal adviser, but not as a judge or lawyer. He was very much attracted to the legal profession. It might have got something to do with his genes, and so he continued to study in the Faculty of Law of Leningrad University. Now he has two professions according to his military ticket: driver and lawyer.
Then for some time this correspondence was interrupted. But in the meanwhile another thing happened. My sister was suddenly summoned to the special department at her place of work and charged with serious accusations based on the fact that her relatives were corresponding with people from the USA. She was even deprived of the opportunity to work with secret materials, which meant for her the loss of certain privileges and a possible dismissal from her job. She burst into tears and said that she was absolutely innocent, not implicated in anything and knew nothing. They told her, ‘Your brother receives letters from two people abroad.’ They told her the names.
She came to me in tears: ‘What have you done? You are going to ruin all of us! There are two people writing to you from America.’ I said, ‘Tell them that it’s not two persons, it’s the first and the second name of one and the same man, that this man had served in the Red Army, was a soldier on the Soviet side and is a friend of the Soviet Union, not its enemy. At present he is already retired, and there mustn’t be any claims against you.’ But still they lowered her degree of access to information, complicating her work to a certain extent, but her direct boss, respecting her business qualities, kept her at work all the same, actually saving her family from big trouble. And the officer, who wanted to gain promotion and show that he had found a ‘leak’ of information at his enterprise, did not receive the next ‘star’ on his shoulder straps, as this affair was not really credited to him.
She came to me in tears: ‘What have you done? You are going to ruin all of us! There are two people writing to you from America.’ I said, ‘Tell them that it’s not two persons, it’s the first and the second name of one and the same man, that this man had served in the Red Army, was a soldier on the Soviet side and is a friend of the Soviet Union, not its enemy. At present he is already retired, and there mustn’t be any claims against you.’ But still they lowered her degree of access to information, complicating her work to a certain extent, but her direct boss, respecting her business qualities, kept her at work all the same, actually saving her family from big trouble. And the officer, who wanted to gain promotion and show that he had found a ‘leak’ of information at his enterprise, did not receive the next ‘star’ on his shoulder straps, as this affair was not really credited to him.
. I work in Hesed as a volunteer in the ‘Consulting program,’ I read lectures on Yiddishkeit and the current vital problems.
It is only in recent years that the world began changing and the Soviet Jews started to show interest in their national traditions, forgotten by us in the past. Undoubtedly, the opportunity to visit Israel had a serious influence on me in this respect. I was in Israel in 1994. I liked the country very much. I have a lot of friends there. I am very concerned about what is happening in Israel now.
I am studying literature on Judaism and Jewish history and then pass it all over to other Jews at lectures.
My wife is Russian and we don’t celebrate Jewish holidays at home. But I often attend the synagogue and all events in Hesed and the Jewish Cultural Center – concerts dedicated to Chanukkah and Pesach, each of which are sometimes attended by over 12,000 St. Petersburg Jews in major concert halls of this city.
Piotr Levitas
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The name of my paternal grandfather was Bentsij Levitas. He was a hatter. He had five sons and two or three daughters. I don’t remember what my grandmother’s name was. The parents of my father were born in Brusilovo.
My father, Yankel Bentsionovich Levitas, was born in 1881 or 1882 in Brusilovo. Father finished сheder, then became a hatter. His brothers were tailors and blacksmiths. Four of his brothers left for America when I was two or three years old. One of his brothers lived in Canada and was engaged in construction of trams, what the others did I do not know. My father wasn’t able go away as he didn’t have enough money for it. Those of his brothers left, whose work turned out to be more profitable and who were able to make some money. The sisters remained with my father.
My mother’s name was Hanna Peisakhоvna Levitas, nee Lakhterman. Mom, too, finished сheder. She worked as a dressmaker and when my parents got married, Father also became a tailor. Our family was of an average well-being. We had no nannies.
When we were small, we went to сheder. Later, my sister and I studied in the Ukrainian school. I went to school in 1920 and studied there for three years.
I had several brothers and a sister, but all my younger brothers died at an early age in an orphanage, when Father had to send us there. It happened in the time of the Soviet regime. At that time Father didn’t have enough money to keep us, and he had to send us to the orphanage, where we lived for three years. The only ones who survived were me, my sister Manya, born in 1913, and my two grown-up brothers: Boris and Syoma. Syoma was born in 1905, and Boris in 1908.
About my grandfather and grandmother on my mother’s side I know absolutely nothing, because in 1916, when just another pogrom took place in Brusilovo, they were shot by gangsters. Pogroms were a usual thing in Brusilovo [3].
Jewish traditions were strictly observed in our family. All our women would always wear kerchiefs. We observed Sabbath. On Saturday we went by foot to the synagogue, because during Sabbath it was prohibited to ride. The synagogue was situated not far off. At all times we went there by foot. Our borough was a small one, with a population of about 20,000. There was only one synagogue. It was a small synagogue, for about twenty persons. We frequently went to the synagogue. The synagogue was also a place of communication.
It was also prohibited to work until the end of Saturday. We used to have a big feast on these days, where they necessarily served stuffed fish, though fish was rare where we lived. Fish was bought at the local market. Russians used to come to our place on Saturdays and for a little money they did the work, that couldn’t be done by Jews on Saturdays: put the lights on and off and so on.
It was also prohibited to work until the end of Saturday. We used to have a big feast on these days, where they necessarily served stuffed fish, though fish was rare where we lived. Fish was bought at the local market. Russians used to come to our place on Saturdays and for a little money they did the work, that couldn’t be done by Jews on Saturdays: put the lights on and off and so on.
The language that we spoke at home was ‘loshn koydesh’ [‘Holy tongue’ in Hebrew] – it is a dialect that the Jews in those places use. Yiddish was different in different locations. In our place Yiddish was referred to as ‘loshn koydesh’ and was different from the Yiddish spoken by Jews in other places. We also knew Russian, because it was necessary to communicate with Russians, but at home we spoke only ‘loshn koydesh.
Jews lived as friends. They often went to see each other, baked various tasty things – pies, lekakh. Lekakh is a cake made of biscuit dough, with some honey in it. They baked challah. They baked patties with raisin and millet porridge, but I’ve forgotten what they are called. They also cooked some broth.
There was a kosher shop in the town, where people bought clean ground wheat on Pesach. This wheat had to be absolutely clear, without any rye. At first this wheat was examined by a rabbi. In the case it turned out to be clear, that is, without any rye, the rabbi sanctioned to put it on sale, so that people could bake matzah. People bought it and baked matzah in the special bakery or at home.
There was a kosher shop in the town, where people bought clean ground wheat on Pesach. This wheat had to be absolutely clear, without any rye. At first this wheat was examined by a rabbi. In the case it turned out to be clear, that is, without any rye, the rabbi sanctioned to put it on sale, so that people could bake matzah. People bought it and baked matzah in the special bakery or at home.
At home we sang a lot of songs in Yiddish. We celebrated all Jewish holidays. There was a tradition: when a child was born, neighbors took children from сheder, gave them lekakh and other sweets, and came to congratulate the parents to admit the newborn in our community. On Chanukkah, we, the children, were given money.
Jews in our small town worked both as merchants and workers. Basically, Jews were engaged in trade and crafts. There were carpenters, tailors, shoemakers.
In 1914, when the World War I began, Father was drafted into the army. And then he returned and worked again as a tailor.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview