First he was getting ready for the Kibbutz, through an illegal relocation to Palestine [2]. Then he came across the communist movement. He was a young man, very young, when he joined the KPP section [3] of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine [4].
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Displaying 4561 - 4590 of 50826 results
rena michalowska
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My father could write and read in Yiddish, so he must have gone to cheder as a child. He was circumcised and most likely he had bar mitzvah. I'm sure he also went to a Polish school. In addition to that, he studied at the teachers' seminar in Stanislawow. He was an extramural student, commuting to some classes and taking exams. I think it was a Polish school because it gave him teaching qualifications. What kind? I can't say. Maybe general?
She spoke very good Polish: without an accent, without deforming it and with perfect grammar. Despite the fact she finished only 6 grades of elementary school, as she herself emphasized, she was a polyglot, as most of the people from Tysmienica were; she spoke good Yiddish, Ukrainian, Polish and relatively good German. My parents spoke to each other in Yiddish.
My mother didn't have a profession, she took care of the house.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
The house where I lived with my parents was the only house in town which went above the ground floor, it had two floors. It was a brick house, with a gallery which run along one side. There was a one-story annex, perpendicular to it. At the end of the gallery there was a toilet - no water of course. There was a big courtyard with a garden divided into three sections. We lived on the second floor. It was a rented apartment which consisted of a large kitchen, a dining room and a room one entered from it. There was an unpainted wooden floor in the kitchen - I think a girl came once in a while, not very often, to scrub that floor. In the two rooms the floor was painted brown. I can remember a lampshade with beads - on top of an oil-lamp of course, there was no electricity.
What I do remember - and that must have been quite an accomplishment on the part of my parents, or my father's stubbornness to save enough - is a Telefunken radio we had. There was this big box on the desk, with a round speaker and under the desk there sat a huge battery on which the radio run. We had tile stoves in the rooms and the kitchen was heated by a coal stove. Obviously the house had no plumbing. A special water carrier brought water in barrels, pulled by a horse. I can still hear this man going round - I think he was a Jew - and calling: 'Waaater, waaater, who needs water...' He would unplug the barrel, which was stopped with a wooden peg, and poured water into buckets. He had a special plank for carrying those buckets on his shoulders and he'd bring them up the stairs. I don't know where he got the water from. Maybe straight from the river?... There was one kind of tub for the laundry and another one, resembling a bathtub - oblong in shape, tin, covered with zinc, with a wooden stop - for taking baths. When it wasn't used we put it behind some curtain. And so, we took a bath, once a week, I'm afraid. As in any typical small-town Jewish family, first in went I, then my father and my mother last, in the same water. Such was the hierarchy.
What I do remember - and that must have been quite an accomplishment on the part of my parents, or my father's stubbornness to save enough - is a Telefunken radio we had. There was this big box on the desk, with a round speaker and under the desk there sat a huge battery on which the radio run. We had tile stoves in the rooms and the kitchen was heated by a coal stove. Obviously the house had no plumbing. A special water carrier brought water in barrels, pulled by a horse. I can still hear this man going round - I think he was a Jew - and calling: 'Waaater, waaater, who needs water...' He would unplug the barrel, which was stopped with a wooden peg, and poured water into buckets. He had a special plank for carrying those buckets on his shoulders and he'd bring them up the stairs. I don't know where he got the water from. Maybe straight from the river?... There was one kind of tub for the laundry and another one, resembling a bathtub - oblong in shape, tin, covered with zinc, with a wooden stop - for taking baths. When it wasn't used we put it behind some curtain. And so, we took a bath, once a week, I'm afraid. As in any typical small-town Jewish family, first in went I, then my father and my mother last, in the same water. Such was the hierarchy.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
The street language was Polish-Yiddish, I think. Among the inhabitants of Tysmienica was a colony of Armenians; that was quite exotic. The group was big enough to have their own church. Maybe people came to that church from all the small towns and villages around Tysmienica? There were also two Orthodox churches - one in the town square the other basically outside of town - and a Roman Catholic church.
There was a railroad, but the distance to it from the town square was so great that it made more sense to travel by carriage, only 10-12 kilometers to Stanislawow. I suppose Tysmienica was a typical little town with a town square and some streets going out of it. No street lights. There were pavements, but not everywhere. Not all streets had cobblestones, some were plain beaten dirt roads. Once a week there was a fair and then the traffic was immense! Carriages would come from the neighboring villages. I can still remember the sound of the wheels sheathed with metal, rather than rubber. The cobblestones were uneven, of course, so from early morning, particularly in the spring and summer, when the windows were open, one could hear the horses' hoofs and the metal wheels.
The population of Tysmienica was several thousand: Poles, Jews, Ukrainians. The street language was Polish-Yiddish, I think. Among the inhabitants of Tysmienica was a colony of Armenians; that was quite exotic. The group was big enough to have their own church. Maybe people came to that church from all the small towns and villages around Tysmienica? There were also two Orthodox churches - one in the town square the other basically outside of town - and a Roman Catholic church. Everything was close at hand. I remember one synagogue, also close by, and there was another, I think. It was a white building, but I can't tell whether it was wooden, painted white or covered with lime, or stone. I know there was a Jewish cemetery. I've never been there. I don't know whether it's a ritual or a custom that children are not taken to the cemetery. Luckily no one from my close family died, I didn't have a funeral to go to. As far as I remember women didn't go to the cemetery, only to the funeral home. I can't remember very orthodox Jews in Tysmienica: those that would wear long side curls and the like. They did wear those... I don't even know what they are called [tallit katan]. There was a Rabbi or two, three Rabbi. There were some Jewish store- owners. They owned general stores, with barrels of herring next to barrels of paraffin-oil. There were some furriers - tanners and sheepskin coat makers. I remember one Jew who was considered very rich, I think his name was Blum. He had a textile store. He or one of his sons also had a hardware store.
The population of Tysmienica was several thousand: Poles, Jews, Ukrainians. The street language was Polish-Yiddish, I think. Among the inhabitants of Tysmienica was a colony of Armenians; that was quite exotic. The group was big enough to have their own church. Maybe people came to that church from all the small towns and villages around Tysmienica? There were also two Orthodox churches - one in the town square the other basically outside of town - and a Roman Catholic church. Everything was close at hand. I remember one synagogue, also close by, and there was another, I think. It was a white building, but I can't tell whether it was wooden, painted white or covered with lime, or stone. I know there was a Jewish cemetery. I've never been there. I don't know whether it's a ritual or a custom that children are not taken to the cemetery. Luckily no one from my close family died, I didn't have a funeral to go to. As far as I remember women didn't go to the cemetery, only to the funeral home. I can't remember very orthodox Jews in Tysmienica: those that would wear long side curls and the like. They did wear those... I don't even know what they are called [tallit katan]. There was a Rabbi or two, three Rabbi. There were some Jewish store- owners. They owned general stores, with barrels of herring next to barrels of paraffin-oil. There were some furriers - tanners and sheepskin coat makers. I remember one Jew who was considered very rich, I think his name was Blum. He had a textile store. He or one of his sons also had a hardware store.
I don't know how long my mother lived there. She was supposed to be taken in as an orphan, out of pity, but she was basically a servant at her aunt's house. Was it there that she met my father, or in Tysmienica? I don't know anything about their wedding, but I assume some rituals were observed. My father adored his mother and he wouldn't want to disappoint her by simply signing marriage papers at the magistrate. They may have had a wedding with a Rabbi, most likely in 1927 or 1928.
My mother became an orphan at the age of 12. She went to elementary school in Tysmienica.
My grandfather's name was Leon; that must have been Lejb, Fischbein. What he did earlier, I don't know, but as far as I can reach with my memory, he was always said to work in the horse trade. It probably amounted to going around to horse trade fairs. Everybody made fun of him for being completely inept; they said he usually loses money on his horse transactions - he never made any profit. To my mind, it was my grandmother who provided financial support to the family. I know from stories I heard that she started out by washing, starching and ironing all those things one used to attach to shirts: collars, fronts, cuffs. She was good at it. I remember her say, 'I got those sent even from Stanislawow, and Lwow.' When she gathered a little capital, she bought two cows and made dairy products from the milk. These were not educated people.
Eta. Hesia stayed there frequently, but she worked in Stanislawow, at a Jewish dentist's office, as, you would say today, a dentist technician. She must have had some professional education, which she must have gotten in Stanislawow, for it wouldn't have been in Tysmienica. Once she even took me to the office. I was very impressed. She warmed something up over a gas burner. She was making dentures and showed me her work. She had great manual skills. When she was not is Stanislawow making various crowns and such, she was at home embroidering, crocheting or knitting.
My father's sister, Chana was a big woman. My father was about 1,76 meters and she was as tall as him. I remember a hefty woman, with pretty large breasts and quite wavy black hair. I remember her from the time when she was already married, so her hair was gathered, rather than loose; she must have worn it in a bun or something. Her husband's name was Icchak, I think, but I can't remember his last name. I am sure that, following my grandmother's example, they ate kosher, but they were only mildly religious.
My father was formally the co-owner of his brother-in-law's (his oldest sister Chana's husband's) little store, but from what I understand that was merely the cover for the police, even if my father did show up over there once in a while.
The store was small, situated at the town square. It was not a grocery but a general goods store. There were basically a few pieces of everything there: from underwear to shoes. I can't remember any clothes, only some haberdashery, shoes, stockings, some underwear. The kind of shop you can find in a small town: three pairs of shoes and underwear elastic.
The store was small, situated at the town square. It was not a grocery but a general goods store. There were basically a few pieces of everything there: from underwear to shoes. I can't remember any clothes, only some haberdashery, shoes, stockings, some underwear. The kind of shop you can find in a small town: three pairs of shoes and underwear elastic.
when my father wasn't working, I think my grandmother simply supported me and my mother.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Even if my grandparents were surely very simple people - apart from having taught themselves to read and write in Jewish, they had no education - they were full of dignity and understanding, especially for my father.
At my grandmother's, he sat at the table without a covering for his head. His parents let him get way with that. But when he once lit a cigarette on a Saturday in front of my grandmother, there was a huge row and he was scolded like a bad little kid. They knew he wouldn't want them to draw me too much into this religious thing, so I think they didn't take me to the temple too often. After all, my father started his affair with communism even before I was born.
I remember her gorgeous strudel, pastry made without eggs, with flour, olive oil and water. It required a tremendous amount of work. You had to knead the dough long and well and then roll it out very thin. You then stretched it on a tablecloth until it was thin like paper. The pastry was filled with: cherry preserves, nuts, raisins, a little bit of apple went in as well, sugar and vanilla. The richness of this filling was unbelievable. After you sprinkled it with bread crumbs and laid it out on paper, you rolled up the pastry and put it in the oven. My mother's cooking was typically Jewish. I think she didn't cook pork, she was simply not accustomed to it.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
I also remember how my grandmother lit the candles [for Channukah], but I don't remember getting presents, maybe some pennies. But I remember Purim very well and the triangular cookies shaped like Napoleon's hat. I can remember their taste to this day. I don't know the recipe, only that it was shortcake made with honey. Those 'humentash' [Yiddish], or Hamman's pocket [ear] were filled with poppy seed mixed with raisins, sugar and honey. My grandmother made those, as the celebrations were held mostly at her house.
I remember the 'kuczki' celebrations [Sukkot] and all the booths built in the courtyard from tall corn stalks, for lots of corn grew in that area. A number of houses shared that courtyard, but I think each family had their own booth. There were tables made of wooden boards, and one sat down to eat at those tables. That's one of my memories.
I remember broth with dumplings which simply dissolved in your mouth. And matzah. Matzah was always fresh for Pesach, as there was a Jewish bakery in Tysmienica, near the town square. If there was matzah left from Pesach, my grandmother made 'matsebray,' pastry made from matzah crumbs. I know the recipe. Matsebray: dampen the matzah with water and mix with beaten egg. If you want it spicy, you can add salt and pepper, or you can make it sweet, with sugar or fruit preserves. Fry it on a pan.
All of the seders were also held at my grandparent's house. But I remember them somewhat vaguely. For example, I can't remember my father asking the questions, and if he didn't, I don't know who did. I can't remember ever answering.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
My grandmother prayed over the candles and my grandfather did that at the beginning of the dinner. After the candles were lit and the prayers were said, my grandfather broke the freshly baked challah and gave everyone a piece. There was a dish with salt on the table. I remember I was supposed to begin dinner with breaking a piece of challah and dipping it in salt. Such was the ritual.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
My grandmother made Jewish dishes. There was not much variety, but then Jewish cuisine is not particularly known for its variety, unlike the French- Italian cooking with its finesse and broad range of choices. She baked and cooked, but I never saw a cookbook and I don't remember any recipes. Among the dishes she made there was herring, mostly pickled, meat balls, chopped liver, of course, potato pancakes, beef roast and chicken stew. Veal was a delicacy that was quite rare, because it was very expensive. On Friday my grandmother baked challot.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
My grandmother kept a kosher house and when she came to visit us at our home, which was not kosher, she only drank tea from a glass. If there was sugar in cubes, she put a cube in her mouth, if there was none, she drank her tea without it. She didn't use a spoon, for while a glass doesn't make things unclean, the metal spoon does. She never ate anything at our place. I remember how the meat was koshered in her house. It was placed in a kind of wicker, sieve-like container, salted and kept like that, I don't remember for how long. Then it was rinsed and prepared, cooked. But where did they get the meat? I have no idea. There were a few butcher stores in Tysmienica, one of them run by a Pole and one by a Ukrainian. There was also a Jewish slaughterhouse.
My grandmother kept a kosher house and when she came to visit us at our home, which was not kosher, she only drank tea from a glass. If there was sugar in cubes, she put a cube in her mouth, if there was none, she drank her tea without it. She didn't use a spoon, for while a glass doesn't make things unclean, the metal spoon does. She never ate anything at our place. I remember how the meat was koshered in her house. It was placed in a kind of wicker, sieve-like container, salted and kept like that, I don't remember for how long. Then it was rinsed and prepared, cooked. But where did they get the meat? I have no idea. There were a few butcher stores in Tysmienica, one of them run by a Pole and one by a Ukrainian. There was also a Jewish slaughterhouse.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
In Tashkent I was first a pioneer [18] and then I joined the Komsomol [19]. Instead of going to summer camps we were sent to pick grapes one year and cotton the next. It was heavy and unpleasant work. It must have been after the 6th grade; I was 13 or 14. We were treated as working women, so we got 60, not 40, decagrams of bread a day [20]. And the bread was almost white, not like Tashkent bread which was black and sticky and you couldn't cut it. And once a day we got heavy, thick soup in which, unfortunately, sometimes there were pieces of lamb. Over there, lamb was killed only when it was old and fatty and by that time the meat had a very intense, unpleasant smell. But we ate it anyway. Mostly we ate bread and grapes.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
I learned Russian pretty fast. Maybe because I had the Ukrainian base encoded somewhere from my childhood and the year at school when I studied in Ukrainian. So I didn't have problems adapting to a Russian school. My parents still spoke Yiddish to each other, and so did I, as far as I remember. But my father decided that I have to study Polish. So he found - I have no idea where and how - Arnold Slucki [15], to give me lessons. After a few lessons - for which my father paid him as he had no other means of support - the lessons were stopped. My teacher decided it's a waste of money, as I said point-blank that I'm never going back to Poland, so why should I study Polish. I learned how to talk back by then.
Initially, in Tashkent, my dad was a porter at the railway station. Later, in Lunaczarsk, since he knew how to sharpen a razor on a belt, he got a job as a barber in the military hospital for the soldiers evacuated deep East. There was a psychiatric ward at that hospital I was very afraid of; the war gathers a rich harvest of mental diseases. I don't know whether he got references or took advantage of his acquaintance with the staff of the hospital where he was the barber, but later, when we were back in Tashkent, he got a job in the storage room of a military canteen. His job was to move boxes and take crates, sacks and other heavy things off the trucks. My mother, when she decided it was safe to leave my sister in my care, went to help him.
When the war started in June 1941 [the German-Soviet war], we left with that man's family. My father had the opportunity to send my grandparents with us and begged them to go; places on a train were very hard to get. But they flatly refused. So three of us left: my mom, me and my tiny baby sister, who was born in March 1940. My father stayed behind and then followed and tried to catch up with us. I was placed in charge, that is, my father said, 'Son, remember that until you reach the Polish border, your mother will want to get off every time the train stops. Give her the suitcases but keep the baby. Leave it at that; if she insists, let her get off, but you and the baby must go on.'
Our aim was to get to Dniepropetrovsk, together with the wife and the two children of that man my father worked with. But the Germans were moving so fast, such heavy bombing begun, that even before we got to Dniepropetrovsk, we decided to go further. We caught a train to Kharkov [city in North- Eastern Ukraine, ca. 200 km from Dniepropetrovsk], where we were all kicked off the train. It was probably needed to move the army. So we spent two nights at the train station in Kharkov, then another train came. We were getting on it in a mad crowd. My mother climbed on with my sister and two suitcases; I was still at the platform with the third suitcase, when the train started moving. Somehow people pulled me onto that train, by my hair, my hands. I was also trying to hold on to that suitcase, our only possessions... The wife of this acquaintance of my father's had a family in a village whose name I actually remember: Junakovka. But the train didn'd go there. So we got off in Sumy [Northern Ukraine, around 150 km from Kharkov].
There was an 'evakpunkt' [Russian for evacuation point] there, where everybody found some space and somehow survived on bundles. The woman said she will sent a message to Junakovka, that she's waiting in Sumy and a cart will come for us. And so it happened. My father found us in that village, because at each stage, wherever we could, we left notes where we're going. We spent 2-3 weeks in Junakovka, maybe even less than that. We then returned to Sumy and looked for a train, because the Germans were already breathing down our backs. We got on a train which must have been transporting equipment from the factory in Rostov upon Don [ca. 540 km south-east of Sumy].
We ended up somewhere in Kazakhstan [then a republic of the Soviet Union in central Asia] for about two or three months, in a village where Kazakh was the only language you could communicate in. There were no houses there, only yurts. My father engaged in some superhuman efforts over there; he even left us there for a while and somehow managed to get to Tashkent [the capital of Uzbekistan, then a republic bordering on Kazakhstan from the north, ca. 3400 km from western Ukraine]. He decided that would be a good place to take us. So we ended up in Tashkent, where the population multiplied fast, because everybody was escaping as deep into the Soviet Union as they could, at this point into Asia.
Our aim was to get to Dniepropetrovsk, together with the wife and the two children of that man my father worked with. But the Germans were moving so fast, such heavy bombing begun, that even before we got to Dniepropetrovsk, we decided to go further. We caught a train to Kharkov [city in North- Eastern Ukraine, ca. 200 km from Dniepropetrovsk], where we were all kicked off the train. It was probably needed to move the army. So we spent two nights at the train station in Kharkov, then another train came. We were getting on it in a mad crowd. My mother climbed on with my sister and two suitcases; I was still at the platform with the third suitcase, when the train started moving. Somehow people pulled me onto that train, by my hair, my hands. I was also trying to hold on to that suitcase, our only possessions... The wife of this acquaintance of my father's had a family in a village whose name I actually remember: Junakovka. But the train didn'd go there. So we got off in Sumy [Northern Ukraine, around 150 km from Kharkov].
There was an 'evakpunkt' [Russian for evacuation point] there, where everybody found some space and somehow survived on bundles. The woman said she will sent a message to Junakovka, that she's waiting in Sumy and a cart will come for us. And so it happened. My father found us in that village, because at each stage, wherever we could, we left notes where we're going. We spent 2-3 weeks in Junakovka, maybe even less than that. We then returned to Sumy and looked for a train, because the Germans were already breathing down our backs. We got on a train which must have been transporting equipment from the factory in Rostov upon Don [ca. 540 km south-east of Sumy].
We ended up somewhere in Kazakhstan [then a republic of the Soviet Union in central Asia] for about two or three months, in a village where Kazakh was the only language you could communicate in. There were no houses there, only yurts. My father engaged in some superhuman efforts over there; he even left us there for a while and somehow managed to get to Tashkent [the capital of Uzbekistan, then a republic bordering on Kazakhstan from the north, ca. 3400 km from western Ukraine]. He decided that would be a good place to take us. So we ended up in Tashkent, where the population multiplied fast, because everybody was escaping as deep into the Soviet Union as they could, at this point into Asia.
I remember my mother stood a table on its side to shield us. And the man was a heavy drinker. When he was quite drunk, he took an ax, shook it, and yelled, 'Etoy nochyu ya uzhe etih Yevreyev ubiyu!' [Russian for 'Tonight I will kill those Jews at last']. A neighbor took pity on us.