My mother was born in the city of Baku in 1918. Mom was brought up by a nanny in Baku. When she was a small girl, she went to the synagogue with her grandfather Lazar Grigorievich, and her schoolmates used to make fun of her, and she was even criticized somewhere in a newspaper: they wrote that ‘Rita wears a pioneer tie [8], but visits a synagogue with her grandfather.
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Galina Natarevich
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While working in Kirovsky Theater [1939-1959], my mom found herself in a specific environment, with its own rules and traditions. That was a special theater, the Imperial Маriinsky Theater, where Jews had never been admitted! A tradition remains a tradition. But that tradition was broken in the Soviet times. Before the revolution there were no Jews in ballet, even musicians of the orchestra all got christened.
When the war began in 1941, the Kirovsky Theater was evacuated to Molotov in an organized manner. Artists were permitted to take no more than 20-30 kilograms with them on the train. It was a train especially provided for the employees of the Kirovsky Theater. Families of artists and employees were allowed to go by the same train. By miracle that train wasn’t bombed on the way. Many trains were heading East then – to Perm, to the Urals. The trip in general was a hard and long one; some babies were born on the train. By the way, Grandfather attended to a delivery there, on the train.
And the return to our destroyed two-room apartment in Rubinshtein Street, that is among the brightest of my memories, too. We found out that someone had put some hot objects, like hot kettles or pans – there were characteristic spots – on pieces of furniture, and that more than half of our things had been simply burned. We were left with nothing after the war. Complete strangers from the street lived in our apartment in our absence. Here and there, Mom saw some of our belongings in other people’s hands, but it was impossible to prove it.
Jewish traditions in our family were kept only by Grandfather.
Then Mom finished a correspondence course at the Conservatory and taught in the famous Leningrad Ballet on Ice. After a serious operation she left the stage. By then she had another husband, who was very devoted to her and took care of her after the operation. He saved my Mom, but died himself, and Mom’s mother-in-law could not forgive her for that. Having left the theater, Mom hadn’t lost her interest in ballet. She participated in the restoration of the city after the war. The Kirovsky Theater needed repairs, but there was a lack of manpower. Actors mended their costumes, washed the interiors of the theater after the war, participated in the restoration. It is all true, they really washed the boxes, dress circles and so on.
Strangely enough, our house in 23 Rubinshtein Street remained intact, and those two rooms that our family occupied on the fourth floor remained our property, because we were a family of a soldier lost in action. Stalin signed a decree then, granting the families of officers and soldiers, dead and alive, the right to use the apartments they occupied before the war, in spite of the fact that those apartments could be inhabited by others.
I never saw my father, Boris Leibovich Zilber, as he was killed in 1942 at the front.
Lazar Grigorievich Raitsykh was born in 1850 in Temirkhan-Sura in the Northern Caucasus. For those times, he was quite an educated man, technically competent and literate in Russian. But, nevertheless, he was an Orthodox Jew and observed absolutely all Jewish customs. Lazar served in the imperial army, in engineering troops. When he was demobilized, he mastered the profession of building contractor in oil-fields and conducted some kind of research into oil deposits.
My maternal great-grandmother, Lazar Grigorievich’s wife, Hanna Iosifovna Raitsykh, was born in Astrakhan in the middle of the 19th century. Hanna was completely illiterate, uneducated, spoke poor Russian, basically spoke Yiddish, but observed all Jewish traditions very accurately. For instance, if they had meat for dinner, she wouldn’t let herself eat ice-cream, which she loved very much, earlier than four hours after that. She was patiently waiting those four hours, because any other conduct was prohibited. Hanna was a housewife and had a very imperious character.
The other of my maternal great-grandmothers, Shifra Shamesh – unfortunately I don’t know her patronymic – was a native of Lithuania, she came from Vilno. She lived in Kharkov and was married twice. She had children both from her first and from her second marriages. In the second marriage she had two daughters, my grandmother Sara Yankelevna and her sister Reizl Yankelevna. Shifra was an extremely religious woman and observed all Jewish customs. For example, as soon as she got married, her own hair was shaved off and she wore a wig ever after.
I know hardly anything about my great-grandfather on my father’s side, Gdaliy Dombrovsky. He was a very rich man, an owner of steamships, but I don’t know when – all his steamships sunk and he went bankrupt. My great-grandmother on my father’s side, Augusta Borisovna Dombrovskaya, came from Tomsk. I don’t know when she was born, or when she died. She was a very educated lady, knew several foreign languages, and she left Tomsk right after the revolution with her children and headed for Moscow, where, as I was told, she became one of the secretaries of Sverdlov [Sverdlov, Yakov (1885-1919): one of the leaders of the Communist Party of the USSR].
By the age of 22 Iosif finished the grammar school named after Alexander III in Baku. But it took him some effort to graduate, he encountered big problems there. Once he asked why he had received a mark lower than he actually deserved, and he was told that he was a bloody Yid. And he was ready to fight with the offender. He was expelled and had to go to Tiflis [today Tbilisi, Georgia], to some Georgian Duke, who supervised all the education in that region, to ask, to implore, and to submit an application on his reinstating in that grammar school. He had to pass many examinations as an external student, not attending lectures. Therefore his education was a little bit stretched out in time.
In 1908, Iosif entered the University in Munich. He graduated from the medical faculty of that university, attended lectures in other universities besides Munich, in particular, the University in Halle and the Berlin University. Among other lectures, he attended those of Professor Virhoff, a well-known scientist in the medical circles. Iosif’s thesis was typed and published in German, a language he knew perfectly, and his diploma was a very significant work. And in spite of the fact that he had received his education in a solid European university, Iosif returned from Munich to Petrograd, where he was assigned to carry out medical service in the hospital of Prince Oldenburgsky.
In 1917 he married Sara Yankelevna Shamesh in Petrograd, and left with her for Baku. Therefrom he went to pass examinations in Kharkov to obtain a degree of an ordinary doctor [the first degree of medical doctor in those years in Russia]. He later received a rank of therapeutist in Kharkov, and returned to Baku. There Iosif supervised commodity warehouses, performing the duties of a sanitary doctor, examining the goods that were transported from Baku and back, for signs of any infections. He sometimes went to Persia with his wife. In summer, as a rule, Iosif went for medical practice to Azerbaijan and Khasavyurt [North Caucasus].
During his whole life Grandfather was a very religious man. The Soviet power was officially established in Baku in 1922. Observation of all customs – celebrating of Pesach and Rosh Hashanah – was permitted, but was supposed to be done privately, in someone’s apartment [7]. It was allowed to visit the synagogue. But it wasn’t encouraged. I remember very well, that Grandfather used to put on a silk hat, a kippah, when he prayed. In everyday life he didn’t wear a kippah, as far as I remember, because it would have given away his Jewishness to other people, and this was in the Soviet times. He was a medical doctor and worked among atheists.
They celebrated Pesach and Rosh Hashanah in our house, and read the Haggadah. On Pesach, he always performed the seder. It was such a long prayer, and he necessarily wore a kippah.
In 1932, when my mother, Genrietta Iosifovna was 14, she moved with Grandmother Sara from Baku to Leningrad to study ballet.
If my grandfather had stayed in Baku, when Bagirov came to power at the end of the 1930s, he certainly would have been executed. Bagirov was the chief of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the Caucasus in general and Baku in particular. Bagirov had subjected many of Grandfather’s friends to repressions. Grandfather had many friends, in particular a lawyer by the name of Mikhtibek, an Azeri. That Mikhtibek perished.
In Leningrad Iosif wasn’t touched by the repressions, because his life wasn’t interesting to anybody any more.
In Leningrad Iosif wasn’t touched by the repressions, because his life wasn’t interesting to anybody any more.
My maternal grandmother, Sara Yankelevna Shamesh, was born in 1887 in Kharkov in Ukraine. She had received an education there, became an obstetrician, or a midwife, as they used to say then. But as a medical nurse she could also work in other fields. She aspired to education, attended language courses and accounting courses. She passed examinations, took a great interest in Marxism, and was a member of a Marxist circle, where they read ‘The Capital,’ and where they were supposed to keep revolutionary leaflets. In general she was involved in the revolutionary life of Kharkov, since Kharkov was an industrial city, and there was a strong revolutionary mood there.
If it hadn’t been for the intervention of her mother, Grandmother would probably have had a different fate. Her mother had literally implored her to quit that infatuation with Marxism, and Grandmother got rid of it after all. Grandmother definitely went to the synagogue. Still in Kharkov, as it was customary, she was taught Judaism. A teacher of Jewish traditions and Hebrew language used to come to their house, and he treated her rather harshly. Whenever her answers were incorrect, he used to batter her, and Grandmother was a brisk girl, she would reply, ‘Why are you fighting?!’ And at that time her father was praying. And during prayer you are not allowed to talk. And only when he’d finished, he would turn and ask, ‘Who is fighting, what’s the matter, who is fighting?!
And then Sara left Kharkov for Petrograd, though her father and mother, her sister and brothers tried very hard to talk her out of that decision. She left all the same, and found a job in Petrograd, however strange it is. It was very difficult to find a job in Petrograd then. She had the right of residence, because she was the daughter of a Nikolai’s soldier [Yankel]. In Petrograd she worked in the house of rich people by the name of Shuster, in the position of a nurse. The family was so rich that they could afford to hire their own nurse. Her duties included providing massages and injections, as they weren’t very healthy people, all of them. And there in Petrograd in 1917 she met Iosif Lazarevich and married him. They got married in Petrograd, and then went to Baku.
Tatiana Nemizanskaya
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My grandfather’s name was Borukh, he was a farmer like everyone else in the village.
Grandpa Iosif Gendel – Jewish name Ysef Leisar – was born in 1866. He finished cheder and was a religious and educated man. He prayed a lot, attended the synagogue regularly and observed all Jewish traditions. Mom told me that he always wore tallit and tefillin when he prayed. He also wore a kippah, he had a beard and moustache and he wore a frock coat during holidays. Mom also told me that Grandpa was a very wise man.
His job was not common: he gold-painted Russian Orthodox churches. He also had a business of his own. Such gold-painting experts’ teams were not only involved in gold-painting Russian Orthodox churches and icon frames, but also worked in rich people’s households. A Jewish gold-painter was considered a craftsman; he was hired for fulfilling private orders: gold-painting candlesticks, mirror frames and other expensive household goods in rich homes. When such a gold-painting craftsmen team was hired for the restoration of the Nevel convent, the craftsmen received an order to gold-paint the domes of the convent Cathedral. Fulfillment of the order required a lot of time – several years – since gold painting is a very thorough and laborious operation.
I remember my maternal grandma very well. Her name was Rakhil – Jewish name Rokhl Leya – Gendeleva, nee Tseitlina. She was born in Nevel in 1871 and never left the town. She was as religious as my grandpa, she prayed a lot, attended the synagogue often, kept kosher, observed Sabbath and all Jewish holidays. As children we very often visited her on holidays and thus felt ourselves part of the Jewish community. Grandma also treated us to very delicious Jewish meals.
Grandma’s mother tongue was Yiddish, she spoke this language to all adults. She spoke Russian to us, the children. We knew Yiddish, however, we could not speak it very well, but we could understand everything perfectly.
Grandma didn’t wear a wig, but always covered her hair with a headscarf. She wore a black lace shawl on holidays. She was a very beautiful woman, but her clothes were always very modest.
Grandma lived in a house of her own with three rooms and a large hall. The house had extensions and there was a shed and a vegetable garden near the house. Grandma kept a cow and was busy with the household.
Nevel is located in a beautiful place. There is a big lake in the middle of the town, where young people spent a lot of time in summer, swam in the lake and went boating. A forest with a lot of mushrooms and berries surrounds the town, there are a lot of lakes; it is an area rich in lakes and fish. There were a lot of gardens in the town and a wonderful town park with brass band performances and dancing during the weekend.
Nevel, the ‘fish town,’ supplied all surrounding regions and almost all Russian cities with fish. There was a lot of fish in Nevel’s numerous lakes. Merchants arranged deliveries and sales of fish as well as exchange of fish for other goods.
Nevel, the ‘fish town,’ supplied all surrounding regions and almost all Russian cities with fish. There was a lot of fish in Nevel’s numerous lakes. Merchants arranged deliveries and sales of fish as well as exchange of fish for other goods.