After 1989 the situation changed for the better. Democratization is good, it is right. I think that it won’t be worse than it used to be. In Soviet times we lived in the atmosphere of lies and hypocrisy, we couldn’t be sincere and honest with our pals, we were afraid of everything. I don’t want those times to return and I hope it will never happen!
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Naum Tseitlin
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The following year the school was closed, it was after the February Revolution and I went on to an ordinary Russian grammar school. [Editor’s note: The February Revolution was a democratic revolution in Russia in February of 1917, which led to the overthrow of autocracy: Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the crown. This specific revolution, not the October one, as many think, lifted the Jewish Pale of Settlement.] It was a private grammar school named after a teacher, Dobrovolsky.
Close to it was another school, the First Saratov grammar school, from which N. G. Chernyshevsky [8] had graduated in his time. I was going to enter that grammar school, the senior preparatory class. But I was ill for a very long time with various diseases. And I was too late for the entrance examinations because of my illness. Father agreed that I should be examined with those pupils who were lagging behind and failed to complete the previous grade. There were about 8-12 of them.
I went with my father, and it was a huge building with wide corridors, a rarity for those times. We went up to the teacher. ‘We received permission from the director of this grammar school for him to take the examinations.’ He said, ‘The first examination is mathematics, is he ready?’ Father said, ‘Yes, he is ready.’ ‘He will take it with a group of pupils who had bad marks in the subject.’ They showed me into a classroom. Father waited in the corridor. There were three teachers there, dressed in uniform with shining copper buttons, and dirks – that was the kind of uniform teachers wore then. And high-school students also had special uniforms. My parents bought me some inexpensive uniform – a cap, an overcoat, everything as it should be.
A teacher had stood up and written the conditions of a mathematical problem on the blackboard. In great detail. Then he ordered us to start solving it. I solved the problem straight off without any problems. While I was solving it, I heard a noise and looked back. It was our neighbor Volod’ka, a son of a christened Jew, who was baptized in order to finish the medical faculty of our Saratov Institute. Volod’ka had frequently beaten me, he was stout, three years older than me, and I was small. He usually bullied all Jewish boys, and frequently thrashed them hard. And suddenly this Volodka waves his arms at me, asking for a crib. And I had no idea what a crib was. I turned to him once or twice, but he was only moving his lips, trying to say something.
One of the teachers noticed and came up to me: ‘Why are you fidgeting?’ ‘It’s nothing.’ ‘You have to stand up when a teacher addresses you.’ I stood up, and the school desks had such folding tops, on hinges, and the folding part had fallen, when I stood up, with a big noise. He instructs me again: ‘You should hold the folder, you don’t have to make such a noise.’ At last I am standing up, and he says, ‘When an older person talks to you, it is necessary to turn to him.’ I turned to the man, already grown red from embarrassment, not knowing what he wanted from me. ‘So why did you fidget?’ I say, ‘I do not know.’ ‘And who will know?’ I thought: ‘Now he will expel me.’ At that moment he looked into my notebook: ‘What, are you finished?’ I answered, ‘Yes, I am.’ ‘All solved? Well, give it to me.’ And, without saying another word, he approached the other two teachers and showed them my paper. They were greatly surprised.
Nobody had completed the task yet, and here comes the green boy, small and shabby, and solves everything almost instantly. It turned out, as I learned later, that they admired the fact that I, having read the question, had decided at once what I needed in the end. The teacher noticed this. I still remember the maths problem today. The teacher came up to me, smiling for some reason. He approached me and took me by the shoulder: ‘Let’s go.’ I was frightened. How is this, all the guys sitting, and I must go somewhere. We went out of the classroom and behind the door were my father and a priest, who had come to wait for his son. Father rushed towards me at once, ‘What’s the matter? Were you confused?’ And the teacher slapped him on the shoulder, ‘Don’t worry, everything is all right, take your son home.’ And he shut the door.
Father continued to worry, because it was only me alone who had been let out. We decided to wait. One and a half hours, two hours – it seemed like ages to me. The priest took me by the hand and asked, ‘Listen, boy, was the problem the same for everyone?’ – ‘Yes.’ – ‘Was everyone solving it?’ – ‘Everyone.’ – ‘And, you were the first to accomplish it?’ – ‘Yes, I was the first, and the others are still working on it.’ ‘Can you tell me the problem?’ I told him. ‘And how did you solve it?’ I began to show him the solution to the problem right there on the window-sill. Father was standing nearby, he saw that I had solved it correctly, and clapped me on the shoulder: ‘Good fellow.’
We were standing and waiting for what seemed ages, but still the other guys had not finished. One of the teachers came out and Father asked him, ‘Shall we wait longer?’ – ‘No, everything is all right, you can go, and, by the way, he does not have to take the Russian exam.’ Father said, ‘How come, the day after tomorrow they are supposed to take a Russian examination?’ – ‘He’s fine; he has put down all commas and semicolons perfectly, exactly where necessary, don’t bring him.’ This was the way I entered grammar school.
The Dobrovolsky Russian private grammar school was a three-storied building. We were all the time competing with the First grammar school. Mainly Russian children studied there. Many Germans lived in Saratov. The Volga Republic was across the river. Two bridges were built over to the town of Engels, now it is a part of Saratov, but earlier it was Pokrovskaya village. [Before 1931 the town was named Pokrovsk and after that up to now it is called Engels]. Germans studied in our grammar school, too. We had a Singer, a Miller, etc.
Close to it was another school, the First Saratov grammar school, from which N. G. Chernyshevsky [8] had graduated in his time. I was going to enter that grammar school, the senior preparatory class. But I was ill for a very long time with various diseases. And I was too late for the entrance examinations because of my illness. Father agreed that I should be examined with those pupils who were lagging behind and failed to complete the previous grade. There were about 8-12 of them.
I went with my father, and it was a huge building with wide corridors, a rarity for those times. We went up to the teacher. ‘We received permission from the director of this grammar school for him to take the examinations.’ He said, ‘The first examination is mathematics, is he ready?’ Father said, ‘Yes, he is ready.’ ‘He will take it with a group of pupils who had bad marks in the subject.’ They showed me into a classroom. Father waited in the corridor. There were three teachers there, dressed in uniform with shining copper buttons, and dirks – that was the kind of uniform teachers wore then. And high-school students also had special uniforms. My parents bought me some inexpensive uniform – a cap, an overcoat, everything as it should be.
A teacher had stood up and written the conditions of a mathematical problem on the blackboard. In great detail. Then he ordered us to start solving it. I solved the problem straight off without any problems. While I was solving it, I heard a noise and looked back. It was our neighbor Volod’ka, a son of a christened Jew, who was baptized in order to finish the medical faculty of our Saratov Institute. Volod’ka had frequently beaten me, he was stout, three years older than me, and I was small. He usually bullied all Jewish boys, and frequently thrashed them hard. And suddenly this Volodka waves his arms at me, asking for a crib. And I had no idea what a crib was. I turned to him once or twice, but he was only moving his lips, trying to say something.
One of the teachers noticed and came up to me: ‘Why are you fidgeting?’ ‘It’s nothing.’ ‘You have to stand up when a teacher addresses you.’ I stood up, and the school desks had such folding tops, on hinges, and the folding part had fallen, when I stood up, with a big noise. He instructs me again: ‘You should hold the folder, you don’t have to make such a noise.’ At last I am standing up, and he says, ‘When an older person talks to you, it is necessary to turn to him.’ I turned to the man, already grown red from embarrassment, not knowing what he wanted from me. ‘So why did you fidget?’ I say, ‘I do not know.’ ‘And who will know?’ I thought: ‘Now he will expel me.’ At that moment he looked into my notebook: ‘What, are you finished?’ I answered, ‘Yes, I am.’ ‘All solved? Well, give it to me.’ And, without saying another word, he approached the other two teachers and showed them my paper. They were greatly surprised.
Nobody had completed the task yet, and here comes the green boy, small and shabby, and solves everything almost instantly. It turned out, as I learned later, that they admired the fact that I, having read the question, had decided at once what I needed in the end. The teacher noticed this. I still remember the maths problem today. The teacher came up to me, smiling for some reason. He approached me and took me by the shoulder: ‘Let’s go.’ I was frightened. How is this, all the guys sitting, and I must go somewhere. We went out of the classroom and behind the door were my father and a priest, who had come to wait for his son. Father rushed towards me at once, ‘What’s the matter? Were you confused?’ And the teacher slapped him on the shoulder, ‘Don’t worry, everything is all right, take your son home.’ And he shut the door.
Father continued to worry, because it was only me alone who had been let out. We decided to wait. One and a half hours, two hours – it seemed like ages to me. The priest took me by the hand and asked, ‘Listen, boy, was the problem the same for everyone?’ – ‘Yes.’ – ‘Was everyone solving it?’ – ‘Everyone.’ – ‘And, you were the first to accomplish it?’ – ‘Yes, I was the first, and the others are still working on it.’ ‘Can you tell me the problem?’ I told him. ‘And how did you solve it?’ I began to show him the solution to the problem right there on the window-sill. Father was standing nearby, he saw that I had solved it correctly, and clapped me on the shoulder: ‘Good fellow.’
We were standing and waiting for what seemed ages, but still the other guys had not finished. One of the teachers came out and Father asked him, ‘Shall we wait longer?’ – ‘No, everything is all right, you can go, and, by the way, he does not have to take the Russian exam.’ Father said, ‘How come, the day after tomorrow they are supposed to take a Russian examination?’ – ‘He’s fine; he has put down all commas and semicolons perfectly, exactly where necessary, don’t bring him.’ This was the way I entered grammar school.
The Dobrovolsky Russian private grammar school was a three-storied building. We were all the time competing with the First grammar school. Mainly Russian children studied there. Many Germans lived in Saratov. The Volga Republic was across the river. Two bridges were built over to the town of Engels, now it is a part of Saratov, but earlier it was Pokrovskaya village. [Before 1931 the town was named Pokrovsk and after that up to now it is called Engels]. Germans studied in our grammar school, too. We had a Singer, a Miller, etc.
I was admitted to school. There was a Jewish school in the main street. It was founded by Jews. They rented a building, because Jews were not allowed to buy real estate. They made an agreement with the owner that the building would be completely refurbished inside. Thus, they had a school building in the main street. The Mitnagdim, the rich, wanted the school to be close to their houses, all of them lived in the main street. It was prestigious to live in the main street and to have your family signboard in it. I remember, when I walked there, I read: Mitsvakher, or some other Jewish surname. All of them were concentrated in one quarter.
Inside the rented building they made two classrooms out of one apartment, two out of another and there were one or two classrooms on the ground floor. So the Jewish school was organized. Teaching was in Russian, but sometimes in Yiddish, too. I went to that school, in the first grade. The teacher was surprised: ‘The smallest boy, and he can already read?’ I went to that school in 1917. I studied for two weeks and fell ill, I was very weak. I was admitted, but they were still studying letters, and I could read already, it did not interest me at all.
Inside the rented building they made two classrooms out of one apartment, two out of another and there were one or two classrooms on the ground floor. So the Jewish school was organized. Teaching was in Russian, but sometimes in Yiddish, too. I went to that school, in the first grade. The teacher was surprised: ‘The smallest boy, and he can already read?’ I went to that school in 1917. I studied for two weeks and fell ill, I was very weak. I was admitted, but they were still studying letters, and I could read already, it did not interest me at all.
I learned to read all by myself. I like to tell people how I learned to read. There was a big market place two blocks from our house. It was called the lower market, a big square with huge stock facilities, and a lot of trading from camp-beds. There were many shops, and all shops had signboards. Signboards were not typed then, but painted with oil paint on tin, with big letters. I used to ask, ‘What is this letter? And what is that letter? What is written here?’ ‘Krestovnikov Brothers, Kazan,’ ‘Soap and Candles.’ That’s how I got to know all letters. Another sign said: ‘Bread,’ and the name of the shopkeeper, the merchant. A drugstore, a bakery, and so on. I learned all letters and started to read little by little. I learned to read from signboards very fluently, understood how words were made. Then I went to the next street, Moskovskaya, also a central street, there were some stores there, too, with inscriptions in large letters.
When I grew up a little bit, I used to go to Grandfather and Grandmother’s place, they lived nearby when they came to Saratov. I always took two or three challot to Grandfather and Grandmother. Even after the revolution, during the lean years, when famine struck the Volga region and people were dying in the streets – I remember, it was in 1919-1921 – I still took two challot in a clean, ironed napkin to Grandmother, so that she, too, could read a prayer. [Editor’s note: The famine of 1920-1921 was mostly in Povolzhye and connected with disastrous lack of crop. This famine had nothing to do with the famine in Ukraine of 1931-1933, inspired deliberately by Stalin.
Father read prayers in the morning. He used to wrap a belt around his arm [Mr. Tseitlin refers to the tefillin], so tight, that he could hardly bend it and I read a prayer, too. We observed Sabbath, lit candles. Mother lit the furnace every Friday, made dinner for Saturday, because on Saturday one was not allowed to work. On Friday she baked challot in the Russian stove, and as my grandmother was already old, she baked challot for us and for her, too. Each time the challot were laid out in a certain order, a prayer was said, this was on Friday night, and on Saturday, too, and only after that were you allowed to eat this plaited white bread.
Father frequently took me to the synagogue, or I just ran up to the second floor, where it was. Public worship is frequently interrupted by blessings. Everyone who bears the surname Kogan [Kogan is the Russian version of Cohen], steps forward, to where the Torah is, in a special big cabinet, the tabernacle. They turn to all of us, who are not Kogans, and bless us, even the Kogans, who had just reached the age of 13, that is, had just had their bar mitzvah. All the others stand, with their eyes closed or looking downwards, and the Kogans fold their arms like this: hold their arms above our heads, including the thirteen-year-old boys, they look at us, and we have no right to look at them. So they are holding their arms like this and reading the prayer of blessing. And even the 90-95-year-old men are standing with their heads bowed.
My father was a gabbai – a representative. The word gabbaim means the administration of a synagogue. My father and grandfather were elected to it. We occupied honorary seats in the synagogue, in the first row. All seats were bought out. Father had chosen a seat next to a window for himself, it was permanently his. The chair had a seat that could be lifted up, and it was possible to keep the tallit there. It could be locked, too.
There was one funny incident. Once I am sitting on Father’s chair, he’s standing nearby, and an old man – our neighbor Levit, a god-fearing old man, of whom I was very afraid because he was so strict – slapped me on the knee and said, ‘So, do you know, how they bless us?’ – it was right after the Kogans had blessed us. I said, ‘How? – Like this.’ – and I bent my head and closed my eyes. ‘But did you know, that if you look at them first, you will go blind? And if you look up a second time, you will die.’ I was really scared to death, and blinked at him. And he waited a little bit and said, ‘Shame on you, little boy, you didn’t even hear or understand what I said.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He answered, ‘How can you possibly look a second time if you go blind after the first? My grandson guessed it, but you are not so bright.’ I took great offence at him.
My father was a gabbai – a representative. The word gabbaim means the administration of a synagogue. My father and grandfather were elected to it. We occupied honorary seats in the synagogue, in the first row. All seats were bought out. Father had chosen a seat next to a window for himself, it was permanently his. The chair had a seat that could be lifted up, and it was possible to keep the tallit there. It could be locked, too.
There was one funny incident. Once I am sitting on Father’s chair, he’s standing nearby, and an old man – our neighbor Levit, a god-fearing old man, of whom I was very afraid because he was so strict – slapped me on the knee and said, ‘So, do you know, how they bless us?’ – it was right after the Kogans had blessed us. I said, ‘How? – Like this.’ – and I bent my head and closed my eyes. ‘But did you know, that if you look at them first, you will go blind? And if you look up a second time, you will die.’ I was really scared to death, and blinked at him. And he waited a little bit and said, ‘Shame on you, little boy, you didn’t even hear or understand what I said.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He answered, ‘How can you possibly look a second time if you go blind after the first? My grandson guessed it, but you are not so bright.’ I took great offence at him.
All Jews were divided into two groups in the town. One consisted of mainly prosperous Jews with their feet firmly on the ground – the Mistnagdim [6]. It was the bigger Jewish group. The second, fewer in number, was called the Hasidim [7] in Yiddish and Khoseds in Russian. My father used to say with pride, that we were in this group – he called it ‘sect’ in Russian, Jews do not like the term. The rich men, as they were called, had everything well organized. They had chazzanim, singers, who sang during the service, and often acted as civil singers. And we, Hasidim, Father said, were a philosophical sect, and he was proud that in the 18th century and later many philosophers were born to this smaller section of the Jews.
The moment World War I started I was in the synagogue yard, we were playing. And suddenly the son of the synagogue servant, the shammash Kostya Levin, runs in with a newspaper in his hands and shouts: ‘War has broken out, war has broken out!’ Being a six-year-old boy, I could not understand, what war meant, who was fighting against who, etc. I ran with him to his apartment and to his father. The latter put on his glasses, started to read, Kostya helping him. ‘The Tsar’s manifesto. War has broken out.’
There was a big waste ground opposite our house, over the street. In a few days the recruits started to march there, because there was not enough space in the streets of the settlement. I took advantage of the situation and quickly learned all the intricacies of this square-bashing. Turn right, turn left, attention! – all this front-line service I mastered perfectly when I was seven. None of our relatives had been called up then. Jews were somehow not drafted then at all.
There was a big waste ground opposite our house, over the street. In a few days the recruits started to march there, because there was not enough space in the streets of the settlement. I took advantage of the situation and quickly learned all the intricacies of this square-bashing. Turn right, turn left, attention! – all this front-line service I mastered perfectly when I was seven. None of our relatives had been called up then. Jews were somehow not drafted then at all.
And when my father was called up to the Russian-Japanese war and was summoned to the enlistment office, he said, ‘Why should I be drafted, I have just recently got married and brought my family here, what should I do?’ And they answered, ‘Find a substitute from among your relatives.’ The family council gathered, and his younger uncle Noi said, ‘I’ll go.’ He had not yet been called up for some reason. And the Russian-Japanese war began, and Noi was sent to the East and was besieged in some town. This town was blockaded for a long time and he died there like a hero and was awarded posthumously for his courage.
Before World War I, there was the Russian-Japanese war. Father was of call-up age then. And he had to go to the recruitment office. The rules then were that Jews, and not only Jews, but Jews in particular, were to be called up, and in times of war they had to be drafted in the location where they had been registered as subject to the draft for the first time.
There were eight apartments in our yard. The neighbors were Russian orthodox people. One of the apartments was occupied by the leader of the Union of Russian People, that is, the Black Hundred [4], he lived in our yard. And, when there was a pogrom in 1905 [5], before my birth, two weeks after my sister Sonya was born, he said to his men in the yard, ‘Don’t touch these Judes [Jews],’ and left to plunder the town. This leader Vaska, as father called him, was a kind of protection for us. My grandfather came running to us, Grandmother remained at home, and he came to us because they mainly hunted for men. We tried to think of where to hide him, there were two sheds by the entry to our apartment, with cellars. He climbed down into the cellar, followed by my father and his brother, my uncle Michael.
Mother had a two-week-old daughter, Sonya. She did not know what to do, to go down to the cellar with the baby would have been difficult. She was thinking and thinking, and right then shouting was heard in the synagogue, which was in the next building. Many Jews wanted to hide in the synagogue, which had big cellars. Mother grabbed the two-week-old girl, some of her clothes and a bottle of baby food and decided to run towards the center.
The center was three short blocks away. We lived near the center, but the place was already considered a suburb. She ran and ran, and didn’t meet any policeman in the suburbs, where only poor Jewish people lived. Police mainly patrolled the central streets, guarding rich Jews, who calmly stayed there, although some of them were robbed as well. But the police were concentrated there. Mother ran, and there was not a single policeman, just deserted streets. She reached the central street, it was called German Street. She passed two more houses, until she came to a smaller street crossing – Groshovaya. She turned into that dark street, and soon came across an old woman. ‘Where are you running to?’‘Well, you know, we are in trouble down there.’ ‘Oh, you are Jewish, let’s go.’ And that Russian woman took her to her home. And the baby cried, needed swaddling. The woman even helped to change the diapers. And then the daughter of this old lady appears. ‘Mother, what have you done, brought a Jude home?! Kick her out immediately!
Mother had a two-week-old daughter, Sonya. She did not know what to do, to go down to the cellar with the baby would have been difficult. She was thinking and thinking, and right then shouting was heard in the synagogue, which was in the next building. Many Jews wanted to hide in the synagogue, which had big cellars. Mother grabbed the two-week-old girl, some of her clothes and a bottle of baby food and decided to run towards the center.
The center was three short blocks away. We lived near the center, but the place was already considered a suburb. She ran and ran, and didn’t meet any policeman in the suburbs, where only poor Jewish people lived. Police mainly patrolled the central streets, guarding rich Jews, who calmly stayed there, although some of them were robbed as well. But the police were concentrated there. Mother ran, and there was not a single policeman, just deserted streets. She reached the central street, it was called German Street. She passed two more houses, until she came to a smaller street crossing – Groshovaya. She turned into that dark street, and soon came across an old woman. ‘Where are you running to?’‘Well, you know, we are in trouble down there.’ ‘Oh, you are Jewish, let’s go.’ And that Russian woman took her to her home. And the baby cried, needed swaddling. The woman even helped to change the diapers. And then the daughter of this old lady appears. ‘Mother, what have you done, brought a Jude home?! Kick her out immediately!
When the store was ready, one apartment was turned into the sales premises, another into the warehouse, and we all lived in the third apartment, a basement. Then my aunt arrived, my mother’s half-sister from their mother’s second marriage. When she arrived in Saratov, she opened a workshop, with a sign-board, in the same house, on the ground floor. We actually lived in this apartment by then, not in the basement any more, but on the ground floor. But everything that indicated a living room was taken away during the day, when rich and even elite customers came.
There was a small, two-storied wooden house near this synagogue, and it had a basement. So Father and Grandfather asked, ‘Can we have a store here?’ ‘Yes, you can.’ They wrote the ‘Grocery store’ sign-board themselves. Mother was both the manager and the salesperson. They started to trade little by little, before they could collect some capital. Gradually, with the increase of the turn-over, the store extended to two inter-connected apartments. In one apartment was the salesroom, and the warehouse was in the other. They sold mostly household commodities.
As soon as my father moved to Saratov, he began to look for work at once. They found a place in a house next to a synagogue. There were two synagogues in town. One synagogue was big, with a dome and a magen david, all properly built. On the same site of land, leased from a bankrupt nobleman [Jews were not allowed to buy land], another two-storied house was built, and after internal restructuring the second floor accommodated another synagogue. There was one reformist synagogue for well-off people and an Orthodox one for others.
Father had not studied in school, he studied at home. Father did not learn Russian at school, since he did not attend it; he studied it at home with a teacher. They were rather well off, able to hire a melamed for him. The teacher taught him various subjects, and besides, he taught him all prayers properly. He was capable of learning, grasping things fast. He learned Russian and wrote correctly. I keep an album of my sister’s from when she was but a schoolgirl. Father wrote verses for her and put them down in her album himself.
Father had to take examinations for a trade, because without a profession Jews were not allowed to move. He had passed an examination for drugstore assistant. It meant being able to prepare distilled water, make mixtures, obtain goods for a drugstore, in short being a worker in a drugstore.
My father moved almost simultaneously with Grandfather, they broke away from the Pale of Settlement. Although it cost great efforts, as my father used to say, they managed to settle in Russia. It was before the revolution [3], at the end of the 19th century, when my father was newly married and decided to take advantage of the opportunity, which presented itself then – of course, they had to bribe some officials to be able to leave. Since Jews were authorized to settle only in some cities, he chose the town of Saratov on the Volga River. Grandfather followed right after him.
My mother had not received any education. Her childhood was such that she had to start working very early. She met her husband-to-be, Efim, in Orsha, when she was seventeen years old and she worked as a saleswoman in a big store in Orsha, in Belarus. Soon they got married.
my aunt Fanya, who later lived with us. They were quite rich, could educate their children in Warsaw, and as a young girl she completed a corset-making school in Warsaw.
My grandmother, grandfather and parents were religious people. My grandmother did not change her habits during all her life; she baked challah on Fridays, in order to celebrate Sabbath, though she wore secular clothes every day. Both my grandparents and parents spoke mainly in Yiddish amongst themselves, and with us – only in Russian. All of them knew Russian.
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Before WW2
See text in interview
Her other son’s name was Michael Yakovlevich. He received a good education, was a dental technician, and such a good one, that he eventually became a professor at the Moscow Medical Institute’s dental surgery faculty. After the war he worked, being already prominent in his trade, in the dental surgery clinic of the Main Moscow Department of the GPU [1]. I have no information about the sisters.
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Before WW2
See text in interview
My grandfather Yakov in particular was a craftsman specializing in many things. His basic trade was pitch-making, so he called himself a pitch-maker. This place in Belarus abounds in woods, so they were very much taken up with extracting pitch, turpentine and rosin. Grandfather was certainly the source of well being for his family. He was really a jack-of-all-trades, and Father, too, inherited all his skills.
Since Jews were not allowed to own land and it was prohibited to sell land sites to Jews, they were mostly dealers, merchants, craftsmen.
I noticed that those were only men's tombstones, and remembered what Father used to tell me. According to Jewish custom, men are buried in one row, and women in another, so that a husband’s and wife’s graves will be found in different places. Only men's tombstones.
I was always very enthusiastic about my job and social activities, and I was never in opposition to the system. When at the beginning of the 1970s the process of emigration to Israel started, we never censured those people leaving, but for our family it was out of the question.
From 1954 I worked as a scientific employee in the research institute of general and polytechnic education at the Academy of Teaching Sciences, and from 1962 until retirement I worked in the Moscow State Teaching Institute as senior lecturer.
With co-authors I have published more than 100 works devoted to methodological issues, including more than 20 monographs. I wrote many articles. Some books had more than ten publications, have been translated into the languages of the peoples of the USSR, and were even issued in some countries of the then National Democracy [countries of Eastern Europe: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Eastern Germany, which together with the USSR formed the Warsaw Treaty countries] under the patronage of UNESCO. Copyrights didn’t exist in the USSR then, and I got nothing for the translated books. Only for my first monograph, published in Russian in 1948, I was paid quite a good fee, and we could buy furniture for our apartment and clothes after the war, because, in fact, I returned from the war without a thing.
Apart from my main work, I had been involved in a lot of public activities: I was a member of the Scientific and Methodical Council of the Ministry of Public Education of the USSR, an associate editor of the journal ‘Elementary School,’ a member of the Academic Council of the Institute of Polytechnical Labor Education, the vice-president of Council of Veterans of the 82nd Yartsevo division. I keep a file of names and addresses of the surviving veterans at home.
With co-authors I have published more than 100 works devoted to methodological issues, including more than 20 monographs. I wrote many articles. Some books had more than ten publications, have been translated into the languages of the peoples of the USSR, and were even issued in some countries of the then National Democracy [countries of Eastern Europe: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Eastern Germany, which together with the USSR formed the Warsaw Treaty countries] under the patronage of UNESCO. Copyrights didn’t exist in the USSR then, and I got nothing for the translated books. Only for my first monograph, published in Russian in 1948, I was paid quite a good fee, and we could buy furniture for our apartment and clothes after the war, because, in fact, I returned from the war without a thing.
Apart from my main work, I had been involved in a lot of public activities: I was a member of the Scientific and Methodical Council of the Ministry of Public Education of the USSR, an associate editor of the journal ‘Elementary School,’ a member of the Academic Council of the Institute of Polytechnical Labor Education, the vice-president of Council of Veterans of the 82nd Yartsevo division. I keep a file of names and addresses of the surviving veterans at home.
At the end of the 1940s, the campaign against the ‘rootless cosmopolitans’ [17] – i.e. Jews working mainly in science, art and culture – was launched in the country, and finally in January 1953 the Doctors’ Plot [18] was fabricated. Though, thank God, our family was not affected by the repressions – neither those of the 1930s [the interviewee is referring to the so-called Great Terror] [19], nor the post-war ones.
I was nevertheless summoned to the authorities and suggested to remove my last name from the list of the compilers of the professional collections. Thus, in books or articles, beside my last name – and sometimes instead of it – much more favorable last names would appear. Apart from the moral harm, this caused a material one as well: I did not get the author’s fee. Of course we were ‘short-sighted’ then and did not link all the negative things going on in the country with the name of Stalin. Stalin’s death in 1953 was a national tragedy, and all my family members were questioning themselves in terror: ‘What will happen now to all the country and to us, Jews?
I was nevertheless summoned to the authorities and suggested to remove my last name from the list of the compilers of the professional collections. Thus, in books or articles, beside my last name – and sometimes instead of it – much more favorable last names would appear. Apart from the moral harm, this caused a material one as well: I did not get the author’s fee. Of course we were ‘short-sighted’ then and did not link all the negative things going on in the country with the name of Stalin. Stalin’s death in 1953 was a national tragedy, and all my family members were questioning themselves in terror: ‘What will happen now to all the country and to us, Jews?
Having returned home, I, without a day for rest, went to the place where I had worked before the war. I was received with open arms, and I immediately resumed my favorite job. Gradually I became not simply a teacher in circles, but also a propagandist of manual labor at secondary schools. At that time I supervised the department of science and technology in the Moscow Municipal House of Pioneers, directed the club of young craftsmen, I was the initiator of the first ‘Skilful hands’ hobby groups in this country, for which I created the program and the first methodical recommendations.
In 1944, at the front, I joined the Communist Party. I was demobilized in November 1945.
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1944
See text in interview