I have dim memories of my father, but I remember the day when he went to defend Odessa from the White Army [the Whites] [9]. I was only 5 years old then. I remember that three visitors came that night - my mother said that they were from the Bund - my father's comrades. My father left with them. He was wearing his casual trousers and a jacket. He was tall and wore a moustache. My nice, kind father kissed me and said to my mother: 'I must go with them so that our daughter can have a better life'. My mother was crying and didn't want to let him go. That was the last time when we saw him. We were told later that he had perished. My mother told me that he had loved her very much. She waited and waited for him to return, but when she realized that he was gone she grew old and gray. I don't remember the Civil War. I only remember when a neighbor came in saying 'Leya, Petliura units are leaving the town'. My mother said, 'Thank God!' 'What will happen now?' 'Now the Reds [10] will come.
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Rosa Gershenovich
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Rybnitsa was a town on the Dnestr River. The Dnestr was the border separating Soviet Moldavia from Romania. It was necessary to obtain a permit to go to Rybnitsa. Frontier guards checked everybody's documents on the train. Rybnitsa was a Jewish town surrounded by mountains. The Moldavians lived in the mountains and the Jews lived in town.
In Rybnitsa my mother got a job as a nurse. She worked a lot. First, she worked at a hospital, and then she had some further training and began to work at the children's clinic. The doctor she worked with neglected her responsibilities and my mother did most of the work by herself. Patients respected my mother and knew her well in the small town where most people knew each other. Sometimes, in case of an emergency mother was called to a patient at night. The hospital in Rybnitsa had three or four wards. There were three doctors: Dr. Waister, Dr. Shmelianskiy and Dr. Kogan. All three were Jews. My mother was a trade union activist and was elected Chairman of the Medical Trade Union Unit. She wasn't a party member.
Surah's family observed all Jewish traditions and spoke Yiddish among themselves. I remember them asking me 'di fir kashes' [the four questions] on seder night, which goes like this: 'Why is this night different from any other night?'. I replied, something but I don't remember what. They asked me to open the door for the prophet Elijah to come in. They also set an extra place for him on the table. According to the Jewish legend the prophet Elijah visits every home on the first day of Pesach and drinks from the cup that has been poured for him. He is invisible but he can see everything in the house. The door is kept open for the prophet to come in and honor the holiday with his presence.
My mother and I went to synagogue only on major holidays. It was a small synagogue. We sat in the women's gallery and watched the men in their tallitim praying.
My mother didn't cook kosher food during the era of Soviet power. There were no conditions for this. However, we didn't eat pork. We ate chicken and beef. There was a river in the town and we had a lot of fish. My mother made stuffed fish. She cooked on a primus stove.
In 1922 I started going to the Russian lower secondary school, which I attended for seven years. There was also a Jewish school in Rybnitsa. But my mother told me that she and my aunt had discussed the subject of which school I should attend and they decided that it was better for me to study Russian in order to be able to continue my education later. My school was in a two-story building in the center of town. The majority of the children at the school were Jewish. I mastered my Russian at this school. There were Russian and Moldavian children, but we Jews stood separately. We stayed together - not on purpose, it just happened to be so. We communicated and played with the other children, but were not close friends with them. I can't say that there was any anti-Semitism. Only once, I remember, when we went out with other children and there were Russian girls there, one of them approached me and asked me to say the letter 'r'. It was a common belief that Jews couldn't pronounce this sound. I pronounced it perfectly and she said, 'Good'. They didn't want to play with any of the children who mispronounced this letter.
Soon afterwards we became pioneers. We wore red neckties and badges bearing a portrait of Lenin. I became a pioneer so that I would be no different from the others, but when it was time to become a member of the Komsomol [11] I didn't want to join. I don't know why, I just couldn't be bothered. Everyone accepted the reality of living in a communist state.
My uncle, a storeowner, was expelled from Rybnitsa. He lived in a village and had no rights. He was classified as 'an owner' by the Soviet authorities, which didn't like such elements. My cousin Dora couldn't find a job. Their family moved to Odessa. My uncle got a job working at the Red Komintern Machine Building Plant. They left their house to my mother and me. My mother and I stayed in their house while mother continued to work and I went to school.
Life in Rybnitsa back then was like living in the Middle Ages. Electricity came to this town in the late 1930s only. There was no sewerage system or running water, and no central heating. There were only dirt roads. People had no education and the general level of culture was very low. Young people were always trying to leave Rybnitsa. There was Vizin, a Romanian town on the other side of Rybnitsa, but we were not allowed to cross the border. Sometimes we heard shooting at night. This meant that someone was trying to cross the border. Some were captured or killed and others managed to cross.
I was admitted to the Financial College in Odessa.
There were many Jewish students and teachers at the college. Nationality was not an issue at that time.
I didn't have any real friends, but there were companions for going to the cinema or for a walk. I like Odessa very much. I liked going to the port, Richelieu Street and the center of the city. Once, I saw Verdi's Aida at the Opera.
My aunt's family observed the Jewish traditions and celebrated holidays, but I took no interest in them. I believed traditions and religiosity to be a vestige of the past.
In 1936 I returned to Rybnitsa where I worked as an accountant for the District Party Executive Committee. I didn't want to become a party member. Besides, I was too young for that. Life was very dull. I embroidered in the evening and went to the cultural center sometimes to watch old silent movies.
I stayed behind in Rybnitsa and moved to Tiraspol, the capital of the Moldavian Republic, in 1939. Tiraspol was a big, beautiful town compared to Rybnitsa. My friend Polia Finegersh lived there with her husband, and I stayed with them. I got a job as a cashier and then as an accountant in the Central Bank. There were many Jews in Tiraspol. The chief accountant at my workplace was Russian; all the other employees were Jewish. I rented a room from a Jewish family, the Roizmans. They were not religious. I believe they did observe some traditions, but I took little notice of anything of this kind.
I met my future husband, Ruvim Gershenovich in 1940. He came from Kiev to visit his relatives, the Roizmans, the couple from whom I was renting my room. Ruvim was born in Nezhin in the Chernigov region in Ukraine in 1905. He graduated from the Financial College in Kiev. He was an ordinary man, and very nice and caring. He worked as an accountant in Kiev. He stayed in Tiraspol for a few days and then returned to Kiev. Later, he sent me a letter, writing that he liked me very much. The letter was in Russian, but he spoke Yiddish. When we got married he used to speak Yiddish to me and I addressed him in Russian. We corresponded for a year. He came back at the end of 1940 and we registered our marriage in Tiraspol. After we got married he used to speak Yiddish to me and I addressed him in Russian.
Our plans were thwarted by the events of June 22, 1941 [the day Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union]. The war began. I remember this day so clearly. I went to the market in the morning and heard loud roaring. I thought there was some kind of military training going on. Many people thought so, too. But then the bombing of the aerodrome near town began. We still didn't know anything about the war. Then at noon we heard Molotov [18] on the radio. The war began at 5am.
,
1941
See text in interview
Our plans were thwarted by the events of June 22, 1941 [the day Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union]. The war began. I remember this day so clearly. I went to the market in the morning and heard loud roaring. I thought there was some kind of military training going on. Many people thought so, too. But then the bombing of the aerodrome near town began. We still didn't know anything about the war. Then at noon we heard Molotov [18] on the radio. The war began at 5am.
There were many Jewish refugees from Poland. From them we heard about the mass shootings of Jews by the fascists in Europe. We realized that we had to run away.
,
1941
See text in interview
Some acquaintances of my husband got a horse-driven cart and let us join them. This was in August 1941. On this cart were my husband's parents, another couple, the cart man and I. We went along the Dnieper River to the south. We passed Nikolayev and reached Kherson. Crowds of people were waiting for transportation at the Golaya Pristan station. It was the end of August and the heat was oppressive. We managed to get on a train. Somewhere in Donbass we changed the trains and were going now in railcars for cattle transportation. We were bombed on the way and had to get off the train to scatter around and come back later. We finally reached Tashkent.
My husband went to the military registry office, but they let him go due to his poor eyesight. They summoned him at the end of July. He was at the front for four long years. Kiev was bombed.
I met somebody I knew in Rybnitsa and he employed me in his shoe shop. There were four shoemakers working there. One was a Polish Jew and the others were Russian, I think. I lived in this shop, working as an accountant during the day, and at night I slept on my desk. I had a pillow and a blanket for colder nights. I had very few clothes: a coat, a couple of dresses and some shoes. I kept them under my desk. There was an aryk [water channel] in the yard of our shop where I could wash and do the laundry. The water was very clean and potable.
I liked Lvov. It was a beautiful European town with European architecture typical of the Middle Ages, beautiful churches and cathedrals, streets and buildings. The local population hated the Soviet power, but was scared of Stalin. They were afraid to open their mouths. Our janitor took off his hat when he came to us and kissed my hand. I felt very strange. Nobody had ever kissed my hand before. And he bowed endlessly. There were Jews coming to town from evacuation. At first the locals were afraid of the Jews, but then their anti-Semitism burst out. There were inscriptions everywhere on the walls: 'Zhyds [kikes], get out of Ukraine!' and 'Get out of Lvov!
When I arrived in Lvov, my husband was working as an accountant at a tailor's shop. Later, it became a garment factory. my Our daughter Maya was born in 1949. She went to kindergarten when she turned 3 years old, and I got a job as an accountant at the garment factory where my husband was working.
In 1953 Stalin died and I cried like everybody else. We believed that anti- Semitism in Lvov was a local phenomenon and had hoped that Stalin would protect us. We didn't understand then that anti-Semitism in the USSR was a state policy, initiated by Stalin.
My husband was a very decent, quiet, kind man. He loved our daughter dearly. He liked to speak Yiddish when there were no outsiders around. Anti-Semitism in Lvov was stronger than anywhere else. It always existed in this area regardless of the regime. It grew stronger after the war, because it was common knowledge that the majority of the communists who had established the Soviet power in Russia were Jews. People in Lvov hated the Soviet power and had much fear of it. They believed Jews to be supporters of the Soviet power. We were openly despised and we could often hear in the streets and in public transportation: 'Zhyds [kikes], go to Israel!' It was not advisable to show one's Jewish identity and we gave up our Jewish traditions. We had Jewish colleagues and we had friends among them, but we were not demonstrative about our friendships because we thought it might cause undesirable reactions.
I always told her to have Jewish friends, because they would always be supportive and never call one a 'zhyd'. It was one of the ways to feel more confident in a hostile environment. She studied at the Russian school. There were very few Jewish girls there.
After graduating she tried to gain admission to the Polytechnic Institute in Lvov several times, but failed. It was next to impossible for a Jewish girl who came from a low-income family to enter an institution of higher education.
In 1966 Maya got a job as a computer operator. She held this job for 30 years. She went to work at age 16, because the state of our finances was grave. Later, after 30 years, the factory where she worked was closed and she lost her job. It was difficult for a Jew to find a job in Lvov. Once, she was told about a vacancy. She went to the human resources department to inquire. A woman there confirmed that there was a vacancy and told her to come by the following day with her passport. On the following day the woman opened her passport and saw that Maya was a Jew. She said 'You know, we have already employed someone'. My daughter lost all hope of finding a job. She was feeling hurt and offended. She felt as if she had been shrugged off.