My grandmother was very religious. She always prayed and celebrated Sabbath and all Jewish holidays.
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Displaying 3181 - 3210 of 50826 results
Naomi Deich
Israel was a distant country to me, but after my friends started moving there I felt like getting more and more information about it. I ask my friends to send me books about Israel, and they do. I wish I could visit this country. I'll never leave Kiev though. This is my hometown, and I don't think I would be able to live elsewhere or that I would be needed anywhere else.
In 1953 Stalin died. It was such a blow to me that I fell ill. Like many other people I believed that Stalin was an exclusive man and that nobody could replace him. I remember that I felt like killing anyone who was glad that it had happened. I even submitted my application to become a member of the Communist Party, but in the course of my illness my passion faded, and I didn't join the Party in the end. My mother and father sympathized with me and repeatedly said that someday I would understand. They hoped that Stalin's death would put an end to the period of repression and that the Soviet people would be able to enjoy freedom.
Soon after we returned we went to the apartment where we used to live before the war. Our neighbors told us that our rooms were occupied by other people. At the end of 1944 our parents returned from evacuation. My father asked the people that occupied our apartment to move out and let us live in our apartment. He had a certificate confirming that this apartment had belonged to us before the war.
Rita Kazhdan
My mother Rozalia Fridman [nee Vselubskaya] was born in Minsk in 1898. Her childhood and young years were spent in luxury and insouciance. Her family was a very well-to-do family. Before the Revolution she finished a Russian secondary school. One can say that my grandparents were rich, because secondary education was rather expensive. When my mum got married, they had no children for 10 years and she was engaged in self-education. Mum knew English, French, German, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Polish.
When all grandpa Fridman's property was nationalized and he escaped from Minsk to Petrograd with a part of the family, my father remained in Minsk. He got married to mum in 1918. The wedding was in Petrograd. Both families were present at the wedding.
Minsk was a semi-provincial, semi-European city, because Belarus was within the Jewish Pale of Settlement [3] up to 1917 when Jews were not permitted to live where they liked. So there were a lot of Jews in Minsk. For example, according to my recollections and people's stories, before the war the total population of Minsk was 250,000, out of which 80,000-100,000 Jews were confined to the Minsk ghetto - in spite of the fact that some Jews were able to leave the city before the war.
We lived in a good two-room deluxe flat, which was bought for my parents by grandpa Grigory Vselubsky after their marriage. The flat was heated with firewood. After the reduction of living space per person by the Soviet authorities, before my birth, a Latvian lady was accommodated in my parents' flat. She was a government official and was given one of our rooms. Before this reform, our flat was considered a luxury one because everyone around lived in communal apartments. We had a dining room of 30 square meters and our bedroom was 18 square meters plus a small corridor and a kitchen. We had meals only in the dining room.
Amongst the furniture we had a walnut couch - a small sofa made of walnut padded with green velvet. We had a dark oak sideboard with nice wood engraving, and on it there was a pink tea set, a 'Kuznetzovsky'. [Kuznetzov was a famous pre-revolutionary owner of porcelain works.] It was of magnificent beauty, a superfine one.
Amongst the furniture we had a walnut couch - a small sofa made of walnut padded with green velvet. We had a dark oak sideboard with nice wood engraving, and on it there was a pink tea set, a 'Kuznetzovsky'. [Kuznetzov was a famous pre-revolutionary owner of porcelain works.] It was of magnificent beauty, a superfine one.
Whenever grandfather went abroad on business, he always brought something for my mum. She was a very attractive young woman (of course, before I was born). Grandfather brought all sorts of trinkets for her. And I was keen on her trappings. I was simply keen on them. She had a sack made of the black playing glass beads, and there was a yellow rose or lily on it, or something of this kind, made of beads. And the sack was half-full of that jewelry. Daddy saved them, but when we found ourselves in the ghetto, mum left all these things in the housemaid's charge. We didn't see them again.
In 1936, when I began to go to school, and my brother Grigory grew up a bit, mum became proficient in accountancy and went to work in the State Railway Administration.
Mum never cooked common dishes - soups and so on - but she knew how to bake in a very delicious way. In the kitchen there was a Russian stove [4], and on holidays she baked very tasty, fancy cakes with the housemaid.
In those years there were special shops in the USSR, the so-called Torgsin stores [5]. And there, in Minsk - I recall it as if it happened yesterday - there was a huge shop on Lenin Street, where everything was sold for special bonds or currency. One could obtain these bonds in exchange for gold or silver, mostly silver. We had a lot of silver things in our family. Maybe father's salary was insufficient because, you see, mum didn't work, and the best goods were sold in Torgsin stores. So mum made use of our valuables exchanging expensive stuff - spoons, silver forks, heavy silver things - for currency from time to time. This way she was able to buy everything we needed. We were well-provided for, we lived comfortably. Mum didn't wear the jewelry she had, because it was considered indulgent. One should go through all of it and see it with one's own eyes, because however hard I'm trying to explain this to you, if you hadn't experienced all that, your idea of that period will certainly be incomplete.
Unfortunately we didn't observe Rosh Hashanah or Sabbath. People used to gather at our home on Saturday or Friday, it was a 'visiting day', one might say. The parents had polite conversations. Mother always played the piano very well, sang well; so we always had good company. There was never any vodka on the table, only at the New Year Party.
I don't remember going to the synagogue. Only after the war did I learn where it was situated. By the way, the Germans didn't blow it up but our people pulled it down. It was intact after the war. I saw it. Well, then they modernized Minsk architecture, and they thought the synagogue spoilt the city's outward appearance. Now there is another building in its place.
Before the war nearly every summer we rented a summer cottage in the village, where our housemaid came from, and my parents let out a room for actors from Moscow and Leningrad on tour in Minsk.
For instance, father had a close friend named Rudolf, who had retained his German citizenship and was not shot like other people of German origin during the Stalinist repression [the so- called Great Terror] [6], but was given the option of leaving Russia within twenty-four hours. And shortly after they left, father was summoned to the GPU [7], because they had been great friends with Rudolf. Everybody was suspected of espionage. But that was only one reason. The other was that they were looking for gold in our house.
I have terrible recollections. Daddy was repeatedly taken to the GPU. Once he was under arrest for six months, around 1936-1937. Mum once interrupted my summer vacation and took me to the city. She took me with her, as if we were shopping, to the center of the city along a street where the prison was situated, as I learnt later. Mum said: 'Stand still here and look that way.' I was uncertain about why. And then, when they let daddy out, I found out that mum had taken me with her so that he could look at me from his cell. After this, they rather often conducted a search in our flat. It happened mainly in the summer when we were in the country.
On 22nd June 1941 the Great Patriotic War [8] broke out. My parents were working on the 22nd, when the war was announced. It was a Sunday. Everybody was shocked and panic-stricken, but no one believed it was true. On 24th June they [the Germans] began bombing Minsk from early morning. My parents didn't believe that they were bombing Minsk. They decided it was an alarm practice. My parents left for work. I remained at home with the housemaid. At 12 o'clock mother came running from work. When the massive bombardment of Minsk city was launched we went downstairs with the housemaid and my brother into the air-raid shelter.
Daddy was at work, and wasn't back yet and mum couldn't go anywhere without him. By 10 o'clock in the evening Minsk was completely bombed-out. Houses were on fire, I begged mum to leave. I was very afraid. We took some cereals, some bread with us, and walked to the village, in which our housemaid's relatives lived. And mum left a note for daddy about where we had gone.
On 25th July we were herded into a ghetto. They sealed the territory off with wire. There we settled together with the family of mum's friend. Father got fixed up as an electrician in the printing house where Mayer worked and maintained the family. At that time we had nothing - everything burned with the house. According to the order of the authorities we had to hand in the list of all lodgers of our house. My father, a very respectable person, was elected a house senior man, and he was to carry our lodger's lists to the Judenrat [9]. It was 31st August 1941. Suddenly Gestapo men appeared in helmets, with chains on their chests, with number plates, with sub-machine-guns. They cordoned the district off and began to search everybody, including our house lodgers. This is what a raid is: the Germans cordon some district off and start to catch people. The Gestapo did this, but with the assistance of our policemen. My father wasn't back by the evening. It turned out that when he was going to take the documents to the Judenrat mum asked him to drop in on her sister Fanya, who lived in the next street. But there was also a raid there. Everybody was captured. Only a four-year boy, my cousin Boris, whom they kicked under the bed, was left. Thus he survived, but later perished all the same.
We didn't see father again. The three of us remained with my mother. After the massacre our street became a Russian district and we were resettled in Stolpetsky Lane. Mum went to work at the Judenrat as an accountant. The authorities ordered the handing over of all furs, fur collars, fur coats - everything expensive that people had - to the storehouse in the Judenrat so that the Germans could choose everything they needed for their army, for their wives and for themselves. In brief, we suffered from deprivation and hunger. We had nothing to barter with. It was a very hard time. Once a week mother got a loaf of bread and that was all we had. But we lived somehow because mother was with us.
To find out about father's fate Mum had hidden her laty [number identification plates of Jews in ghettos] and went to see Rudolf's friend, also a German, who, after having married a local girl, had been living in Minsk since before the war. This friend found out what happened to my father and informed mum that they were all caught during the August raid. They were urged along the street, forced to raise hands and sing songs. They were herded into the prison where dad had already served a term earlier, and there they were shot.
On 2nd March 1942 another pogrom took place. The massacre lasted for three or four days, I don't remember now. We were hiding in a room separated from the next room with literally a plywood wall. Each word in the next room was audible. In the room that was fifteen meters big we herded together 12 to 15 of us plus a nursling and a woman ill with cancer. When the massacre was over, we were found in this room. But, luckily, the mobile gas chambers and the policemen who guarded Jews were already gone, so we were simply kicked out.
Mother got into the habit of smoking. 15 to 20 people were hiding in the room. We were told the massacre was over and it was possible to come out, but Abram Aronovich nevertheless made sure that we didn't leave. But mum came out and Abram's wife asked her to go home and pick up certain things. As mum was a working person, she had special documents with her. Everybody knew the Germans were catching (and shooting) only unemployed people. We never saw mum again. Then we were informed that she had been taken away with other Jews, and there was a baby in her arms. Mum had a perfect command of German, but apparently there were not only Germans but policemen as well - the traitors, who served for the Germans - so she didn't manage to leave the column.
Once as I was walking out of the ghetto, I came across my classmate who helped get me fixed up in the plant where one could do hard unskilled work. 75 Russian Jews were working at the plant. They were roofers, cleaners, carpenters, and laundrymen. Before the war it had been the machine-tool plant named after Voroshylov [10], and during the occupation German tanks were repaired here. I was a pin-up, very beautiful girl, especially as I did not have a pronounced Jewish appearance, with long light brown braids; by and large, they accepted me for employment. I got a ladle of soup every day. It was nearly a liter, with rotten meat, and a small slice of bread. I ate some of it and the rest I carried to the ghetto for my brother.
Nearly all the people in the ghetto were annihilated.
Once, having covered over 30 km, we met partisans from the Semyonovsky regiment. But they were on their way to a military mission and weren't able to take us with them. They explained which village we had to go to, which hut to enter and where we should wait for their return. They kept their word: on the way back they took us along to the partisan district. Thus, we found ourselves in the Zorinskiy partisan group, as we got to know later, in the 106th regiment. They constructed shelters from fir boughs, gave us boots and two sheepskin coats. In the winter we moved to the central camp. We dug up potatoes, our principal food, in the burnt villages. Our regiment fought the last battle with the Germans in June 1944, when the Soviet army liberated Belarus. The Germans fell back. So for us the war was over on exactly this day. In our regiment we each were issued a certificate, straight on the cart, stating that from 12th September 1943 until 6th June 1944 we were in the 106th partisan regiment.
We went to school in Moscow as if for the first time. I always remember Moscow teachers thankfully - those half-starved, threadbare ones, who had neither textbooks nor writing materials for us. They were devoted to us with all their hearts. Thanks to these teachers I understood all the richness of the Russian language, and still recollect this when I hear my granddaughter talking to her coevals in an incomprehensible Russian slang.
By March 1945, I had already moved to Leningrad and went to school. My aunt persuaded the school to accept me into seventh grade, as I was grown-up enough.
I didn't experience any anti-Semitism. All children had gone through the blockade.