My father, hearing about it, wrote Ola a letter stating that he would take care of Ola and her daughter and promised to take them to live with us after he returned from the front, but my father never returned. He perished during the liberation of Western Ukraine on 16 August 1944. I remember my mother turning into stone, when she received the death notification holding it in her hand. We were assigned to receive a little pension for our father.
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Displaying 35701 - 35730 of 50826 results
Rimma Leibert
In early 1945 the military unit where my mother was working in the headquarters, relocated to Western Ukraine. My mother decided to move with them. She didn’t want to stay back. So we arrived in Lvov in January 1945 in a military train. My mother went to work in the officer’s restaurant. There were many vacant apartments in Lvov and my mother received a posh two-bedroom apartment in the center of Lvov. There were furniture and household utensils in it. Its owners must have perished in the ghetto. My mother understood that they were Jews, when she saw a silver ritual dish for Pesach in the apartment. My mother sent an invitation letter to her sisters in Kazakhstan, and in autumn 1945 Ola, her daughter and Tsylia joined us. We lived together in our apartment. My mother brought food leftovers from her work, so we tried to manage through those hard postwar years.
I went to a Russian school in Yavorov in 1947. There were no Jewish children in my class. I remember how the children in another class teased Valia Finkelstein, a Jewish black-haired curly girl. I had fair hair and didn’t look like a Jew, but I became very quiet fearing being insulted. I clearly identified myself with the Jewish nation since my early childhood and not in association with Jewish holidays or traditions. I didn’t have these, but I caught hostile glimpses and heard whispers, sometimes direct insults. To make the long story short, I never felt one of them among Russian and Ukrainian children. I always felt inferior about it and tried to draw no attention to my person. In the course of time this type of conduct became my way of life and I’ve remained quiet and distant.
My mother was a housewife. Boris earned well and we were doing rather well in this regard. In summer we went on family vacations to the Crimea. We rented a little hut at the seashore and enjoyed the sun and the sea, each other and doing nothing for few weeks in a row. These were the happiest moments of my life.
I remember everybody’s concern in the early 1950s, when the state anti-Semitic campaign called ‘the doctors’ plot’ 13 began. My stepfather was very nervous. He smoked a lot reading newspapers with all those articles accusing rootless cosmopolites and poisoning doctors. However, this campaign had no impact on out family or acquaintances. The town was very small and there were not many Jews in it.
I liked chemistry and was attracted by medicine, when at school. After finishing school I tried to enter the Medical College for two years, but… it was next to impossible for a Jewish girl to get there. On the third year I submitted documents to the Faculty of Chemistry of the Polytechnic College. Some time before I went to work at the chemical laboratory of the sugar factory – this was the vocation I was going to learn. However, I failed to enter the college again. They reasoned this by saying that I didn’t have sufficient work experience. I worked at the sugar factory some time going home after night shifts across the dark town. It was next to impossible to get another job. Only on the fourth year I entered the Lvov Technical School of Cinema Logistics only because they didn’t get sufficient number of students against their requirements. After finishing it I got employment at the Ternopol Department of Cinema Logistics where I worked as an engineer/economist till retirement. I also entered the extramural department of Kiev College of Public Economy and finished it. I had no conflicts or problems at work. Everything went quiet. I dutifully did my work as an engineer of the cinema physical plant. I got a small salary that was only enough buy sufficient food, necessary clothes and spend one week per year in the Crimea. I’ve never dreamed of having a car, a dacha or traveling far away. However, the majority of people in the USSR lived like this, and I never felt uncomfortable about it.
I had friends and we went to the cinema and theaters and on tours together, but there was nobody with whom I might want to live my life. At work I was an active Komsomol member and even applied to the party, but the party district committee invited me there telling me that I wasn’t mature enough to join the party. This was another demonstration of anti-Semitism.
Galina has visited him there and now my brother’s family is going to move to Israel. I will probably go with them. Traveling will be hard and I will have to cope with the hot climate in Israel, but I am so eager to see Israel. I dream of approaching the Wailing Wall and visit towns in Israel and I hope to be needed in Israel and if not – I will come back here.
I was having a hard time, but it happened so that at that time I came to the newly founded Jewish community in Ternopol. I felt myself at home and among my own people. I became an activist in the community. I go there for Sabbath every week, I help them to prepare for Jewish holidays, enjoy their celebration and study Yiddish in the community. I like everything about it. I feel that I missed a lot, when I was young. My mother or father were far from the Jewish life, but now I feel like discovering the Jewish world.
This is exactly why I am grateful to independent Ukraine. It gave the Jewish communities and traditions a chance to develop and prosper. Ukraine, almost the only one among the former Soviet Union republics, peacefully builds up a democratic society and I like it, because many other republics are at war – this is horrifying. In 2002 I visited Kerch, my mother’s hometown. I was struck by its contrasts: ruined plants and mines, half-ruined dock and the shining sea, ancient fortresses and plundered burial mounds. It will take time and effort to make Kerch and Ternopol developed town. What else struck me in Kerch was the reconstructed synagogue in a beautiful street with young cypress trees, nice Hesed and the Jewish community. This wasn’t possible during the Soviet rule, and I am happy that the Jewry has revived in my grandfather and mother’s hometown. I also went to the common grave outside the town where my grandfather and his family perished. The community installed a modest monument on the spot where the Jews of Kerch were killed (later Krymchak and Karaim people were killed here), where the mortal remains of my kin lie.
My maternal great grandfather Zalman Blumenzweig, an outstanding strong redhead man, was a loader in the Odessa 1 dock. My great grandfather was very religious. He prayed every morning, went to the synagogue, though it didn’t keep him from using ‘juicy’ jargon of Odessa dockers.
As for Haim, he lived as long as the beginning of the Great Patriotic War 3. He, his son, daughter-in-law and his little grandson Monia perished during the German massacre of the Jews of Odessa in 1941.
My grandfather Abram, born in 1880, went to study vocation after finishing cheder. He became an apprentice of a blacksmith.
After the wedding the newly weds moved to Kerch town in the Crimea, in the east of the Crimean peninsula, where my grandmother’s distant relatives lived. This town recently celebrated the 2600th anniversary of its foundation. It was founded by ancient Greeks and was called Panticapea. There was a big fish and trade dock in Kerch. The population dealt in fishing and fish industries. The population was Russian, Ukrainian, Greek, Turkish, Crimean Tatar, Karaim and Jewish, of course. The Krymchaks and Karaims belonged to the Judaic faith like Jews. There were Christian churches, a Muslim mosque, six synagogues, a Karaim kinasa and a Krymchak synagogue in Kerch. There was a Jewish school for boys and girls in the town. The biggest synagogue was attended by Jewish doctors, lawyers and wealthy merchants. There were two synagogues for the military: there was a garrison in Kerch. One was for officers and another one – for soldiers. There was a craftsmen’s synagogue and two smaller synagogues. My grandfather Abram went to the craftsmen’s synagogue on Friday, Saturday and Jewish holidays. On weekdays he prayed at home with his tallit and tefillin on starting his days with a prayer. Grandmother Riva was also very religious. She was a housewife, as Jewish traditions required.
Gherda Kagan
Grandfather Boris went to cheder. He inherited his father’s store. He expanded his business and was selling wheat for export. He studied Italian, French and German. He needed foreign languages to interface with his foreign partners. When he became a merchant of guild II 5, my grandfather provided financial support to revolutionaries. After the October revolution, when authorities came to expropriate his property, my grandfather gave away everything he had on his own good will. There were never any regrets in the family in this regard. After the revolution my grandfather worked as lid operator in a small factory of diet tinned food located in the yard of our house. Later he became a cashier in Odessa hydro airport in Odessa harbor.
My grandfather’s mother tongue was Yiddish. He talked Yiddish with grandmother Esphir sometimes.
In 1920, when the grammar school closed, my mother went to the Odessa school of applied arts. There were wonderful teachers in this school. My mother made friends with two girls and they kept in touch until the end of their lives. The name of one of them was Gherda and my mother named me after her. My mother finished this school in 1925.
My grandmother Revekka was a housewife. They spoke Yiddish at home. Revekka wasn’t strongly religious, but she went to the synagogue with her husband and children on holidays.
My father finished a Russian grammar school and went to work at the glass factory: he needed some work experience to be able to continue his studies. My father told me that he intentionally didn’t wash after his work shift and went home in Bolshaya Arnautskaya Street across the town by tram so that everybody could see what a real worker he was! When he gained some work experience my father entered Odessa Chemical School. When he was a student, this school was given a status of college. My father finished it in 1928 and became a specialist in food preservation. He went to work at the tinned food factory at the Karpovo station near Odessa.
My parents got married on 11 November 1929, a year before my mother finished her college, on my father’s birthday.
At that time my father was arrested in Tiraspol. He was arrested for being a favorite student of his professor related to ‘Prompartia’ (‘the Industrial Party’) [The trial in the end of 1930 wherein the group of engineers were accused of creating anti-Soviet illegal organization.]. The professor was executed and my father managed to survive. He was transferred to a jail in Odessa. They began investigation and half a year later my father was released. Through this period he never had a chance to notify his mother or wife where he was. In the 1980s, shortly before he died, I began to ask my father what happened to him then, but my father said: ‘No, I signed a non-disclosure agreement’. In the middle 1980s, at the incentive of perestroika, 12, I thought of visiting Odessa KGB office 13, to read my father’s file and find out the truth, but I never overcame my fear of KGB that was in my blood to go there. After my father was arrested my mother went to her sister Yulia in Moscow.
My mother worked in ‘Selkhozgiz’ publishing office in Moscow illustrating agricultural books. She had a hard life in Moscow. There was a coupon system. When my father was released he came to Mother in Moscow. In Moscow he managed to find a job in the people’s committee of Food Industry. My father worked there few months. Since he hated routine paperwork he requested a transfer to another job. They sent him to Leningrad where the newly weds settled down in my father sister Clara’s apartment.
After we arrived in Odessa my father went to work at the local affiliate of the All-Union scientific research institute of refrigeration industry. My mother was a housewife and activist in the women’s council of the house of scientists.
I attended classes of a Frebel teacher 14. Her name was Wilhelmina and she was German. We, kids, called her Tante Minna. My parents sent me there hoping that I would study German, but all we learned was ‘Oh, tanenbaum’. She taught us embroidery and modeling. Wilhelmina lived at the dacha in Srednefontanskaya Street. Every now and then some men visited her. She called them nephews. We, children, couldn’t stand them. After the war I got to know that Wilhelmina’s place was an office of German intelligence and her ‘nephews’ were agents. It was a smart disguise: children, dancing classes and holidays.
There was a staircase behind one wall of or apartment and my father told me that they couldn’t sleep for months hearing boots tapping on the stairs at night and they didn’t know who was to be arrested that night. During the period of arrests [Great Terror] 19 my parents never discussed this subject in my presence since I was an open-minded girl and a chatterbox. I remember that Ira Ghefter, granddaughter of my grandmother’s sister Luba, visited us before the war. She was a little older than me and I asked her usual questions about where her mother or father was and she avoided answering me as much as she could. When I grew up I got to know that her parents fell victims of arrests. Milliant, director of the institute where my father was working, who contrived polish for lids was arrested in 1937. His wife, a former class tutor of my aunt Yulia in her grammar school, and her sister didn’t have anything to live on and I remember that my family tried to support them.
At five I learned to read well, but my writing was poor. They didn’t want to admit me to school at the age of 7, but when I turned 8, I took an exam and admitted me to the second grade. I felt very hurt. First grade schoolchildren were greeted with an orchestra and flowers and when I came to school nobody paid any attention to me.
Before the war I didn’t understand the difference between Jews and Russian. I believed that since I was born in Leningrad in the USSR I automatically became Russian. My parents never told me that I was a Jew. I saw all children with painted eggs at Easter while I never had one. When I asked my mother she said: ‘All right, next time you will have one’ and I calmed down.
In 1939 my father went to work in ‘conservetrest’. All food preserve factories all over Ukraine were under its supervision. He also did diploma designs at the institute to earn more for the family. My father was very strict, serious, pedantic and demanding and was a very hardworking person. He read many technical books and wrote articles. Before the war he was awarded the title of candidate of sciences 20. The subject of his dissertation was introduction of glass containers in food preserve industry. This subject was significant for economy and Mikoyan [then narkom (minister) of food industry of the USSR] awarded my father a trip to Sochi in 1938. My parents went for this vacation in a recreation center together. Our life improved. We bought new furniture: a wardrobe, a double coach and a desk. We also had an old carved cupboard of my grandmother’s. There were carvings of game, fruit and a fowling bag. My father dressed modestly, but my mother gave much thought to her clothing. Before the war she had a faille de Chine purple dress made by Ivia, a popular dressmaker in Odessa. She also ordered matching shoes. My mother tried to get nice clothing for me. I remember having a fancy velvet dark green suit. My mother met a less expensive dressmaker when she was young and she made clothes for me.
On 22 June, on Sunday, I was having a music class in our neighbor’s room since there was no space for a piano in our room. As a rule, my mother sat there with me, but this time she sent me to practice alone. An hour later the hostess said to me: ‘Your mother is looking out of the window. She wants you to come home’. They told me at home that a war began. From the first days a public garden near the railway station was full of refugees from Bessarabia 21. Tenants of our house went to dig shelters under the supervision of our house maintenance manager. We, children, delivered water in cans.
On 12 July uncle David, the first one in our family, left Odessa with the Bolshevik plant. People were saying: ‘Why leaving? Germans are decent people’. I witnessed my grandmother arguing with Jewish glasscutter Kogan. He was yelling furiously: ‘Germans are decent people!’ They were almost on the edge of fighting.
My parents and I and grandmother Esphir evacuated with Conservetrest at dawn on 22 July, actually one hour before the heaviest bombardment of Odessa. There were small boats called ‘dubki’ hauling watermelons from Kherson to Odessa. We went to Kherson on one of them. Then we went by boat up the Dnieper to Zaporozhiye. My father went to town to listen to news and he bumped into two of his colleagues from Odessa. They yelled at him: ‘Are you out of your mind? Go pick your family and join us in the train’. This was one of the last trains leaving Zaporozhiye shortly before the town was given away. This train often stopped on its way. We arrived in Northern Caucasus. When the train stopped we bought everything people brought to sell: hard-boiled eggs, bread and boiled potatoes.
My parents and I and grandmother Esphir evacuated with Conservetrest at dawn on 22 July, actually one hour before the heaviest bombardment of Odessa. There were small boats called ‘dubki’ hauling watermelons from Kherson to Odessa. We went to Kherson on one of them. Then we went by boat up the Dnieper to Zaporozhiye. My father went to town to listen to news and he bumped into two of his colleagues from Odessa. They yelled at him: ‘Are you out of your mind? Go pick your family and join us in the train’. This was one of the last trains leaving Zaporozhiye shortly before the town was given away. This train often stopped on its way. We arrived in Northern Caucasus. When the train stopped we bought everything people brought to sell: hard-boiled eggs, bread and boiled potatoes.