Boys studied at cheder till the age of 13. The rebe prepared them for bar mitzvah. In 1937 I became of age according to Jewish traditions. I turned 13 years old. On Saturday the rabbi called me to the torah to read a section from it. I had a tallit on for the first time in my life. My parents brought honey cakes and vodka to the synagogue. After the bar mitzvah all attendants of the synagogue had treatments. In the evening my mother made a dinner for the family and relatives. They greeted me and it was quite a holiday for me.
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Displaying 31951 - 31980 of 50826 results
Ignac Neubauer
I finished school in 1938. My brothers were still at school and I became the only breadwinner in the family. I didn’t have a profession, but I couldn’t go to study since there was nobody to support the family through this time. I began to sell food products to Jewish families in Uzhgorod and soon I had my clients there. My mother kept poultry: chickens, ducks and geese. I bought eggs, chickens and veal from other villagers to sell them in Uzhgorod and later I also took my mother’s poultry to sell there. The shochet slaughtered them and on Monday I took 20-25 chickens to Uzhgorod. My clients ordered about 50-60 chickens for Sabbath. Later Jewish café owners began to order chicken from me. My father had a horse that he used to ride to his calls when he was working. I harnessed the horse to ride to Uzhgorod. So I earned our living. Of course, this was hard work, but we were not starving and managed to buy everything necessary for the family. Many other villagers earned their living in this way. There were also wealthy Jews in our village. One Jew whose last name was Weinberger had 300 hectares of land, many cows and horses. He also had equipment and tractors. Those who had land could feed their families by farming.
In 1938 Subcarpathia became Hungarian again. [Hungarian troops occupied Subcarpathia in March 1939. The western part where Malaya Dobron/Kisdobrony is was attached to Hungary as early as the 2nd November 1938, together with Southern Slovakia as a result of the First Vienna Decesion.] Though we had a good life during the Czech rule, many were happy that the Hungarians were back, especially older people. All children spoke fluent Czech, but older people didn’t know it. My mother, despite living 20 years under the Czech rule, never learned this language. She spoke Yiddish and Hungarian. At the beginning everything went well, but in 1938 persecution of Jews began, though we didn’t suffer from it since it was directed on wealthier people. In 1939 anti-Jewish laws 4 were issued. Under these laws wealthier Jews were to give away their shops, farms or stores to non-Jews or the state expropriated their property, if they didn’t. One way or another, Jewish owners didn’t get any compensation, but when they left their property with non-Jewish owners, they could at least keep the job, though their new masters paid them little. When the state expropriated the property, their former owners lost everything and were thrown into the street. Jews were not allowed to study in higher educational institutions [Numerus Clausus in Hungary] 5 or serve in the army. This was open state-level anti-Semitism and they didn’t even make an effort to camouflage it.
Jews served in Hungarian work battalions. In March 1942 I was to turn 18, but already in January 1942 I was called to the draft board examining recruits for work battalions. However, they released guys of 1923 - 1924 from service. They began to recruit my year of birth, when we were taken to ghettos, but I was not allowed to leave the ghetto.
Before Pesach in 1944 I was in Uzhgorod, but I came home for the holiday. I always celebrated all Jewish holidays at home and couldn’t imagine otherwise. I was planning to go back to Uzhgorod after the holiday. On the last day of Pesach they placed a poster on the building of the village council announcing that all Jews were to come to the village council on Sunday. We were to have food and clothing not to exceed 10 kg of weight with us. All Jews of Malaya Dobron came there. Our family, my mother’s sisters with their families and grandfather Moishe, my mother’s father, went there, too. We were taken to Uzhgorod on horse-driven wagons. The ghetto in Uzhgorod was at the former brick factory owned by Jew Moshkovich formerly. There were 16 thousand Jews from Uzhgorod district in the ghetto. There were also people taken from villages and few days later they began to take people from Uzhgorod to the ghetto. Since there was no space left, they were taken to another ghetto in a big timber storage facility owned by Jew Blick before the Hungarian rule. We lived in the open air, though it was still rather cold at night. Some families tried to stay in brick sections with furnaces for brick baking, but there was no ventilation and it was stuffy. So they couldn’t stay there whatsoever and had to stay in the open air with their small children. When we ran out of food that we took from home we began to starve. Then younger Jews were ordered to work. We sorted out furniture, household goods, clothing and shoes in the Jewish houses whose owners were taken to the ghetto. All Jewish houses were sealed. There were many valuable things left in the houses: pictures, china, and jewelry. Gendarmes broke the seals and we came into the houses to sort out everything there was there. The gendarmes searched the walls for money in hiding place. We loaded the things on trucks that drove the loads to the Hasidic 6 synagogue on the embankment of the Uzh River. This synagogue houses a Philharmonic now. I don’t know what happened to these loads. When we found food in the houses, the gendarmes allowed us to take it with us, but when we came to the ghetto they took it away and sent it to the kitchen that made food for inmates of the ghetto. There was also a Jewish kitchen on the embankment near the Hasidic synagogue where they also made food for inmates of the ghetto, but was it possible to feed 16 thousand people?! Those who had money could buy food. There was the family of Weinberger, a rich Jew from Malaya Dobron in the ghetto. I knew the town well and went to work every day. Weinberger gave me money to buy cookies and sausage for them. I remember bringing him sausage once and he invited me to eat with his family. I thanked him and said I wasn’t hungry, but the reason was that I didn’t want to eat non-kosher sausage, just couldn’t force myself to take a bite. This was how we were raised at home.
We arrived at Auschwitz. The train stopped at the platform where there were German soldiers and people in white robes, doctors, as we got to know later. They sorted us out sending old people and children to one side and those who were stronger – to another. Mothers were told to give their children to grandmothers and grandfathers and step to another side. Many women didn’t want to leave their children and went with them to the gas chamber, as we learned later. My brothers Dezso, Marton and Sandor were sent to the right where other young men and women gathered. My father, grandfather and younger sister Helena were sent to the left. I left the train after my father and wanted to follow him, but the officer pulled me by my sleeve and told me to step to the side where young people gathered. My mother held Hermina by her shoulders and they were sent to the women’s group. When we were separated, my mother shouted to me: ‘Don’t forget, you are the oldest and you are responsible for your brothers!’. Later I got to know that my father and grandfather were exterminated right away. I stood beside my brothers. Dezso and Marton were standing beside and I was holding Sandor, the youngest, by his hand. A soldier told me to let go of my brother’s hand. I didn’t and he hit me on my head with his gun butt so hard that I fell and fainted. When I recovered my senses, a man of average age, whose face was familiar to me from the ghetto in Uzhgorod approached me and said: ‘Sonny, you are not at home, you have to obey here’. We marched to the bathroom. When we finished washing and came outside, our clothes were gone and there were striped robes waiting for us. We got dressed and then a barber shaved our heads. My brothers and I tried to stay together. We lined up and marched to the Auschwitz work camp in 5-6 km from the central camp. There were big barracks with two-tier plank beds in them. We were given thin striped blankets from the same fabric as our robes. We were also given pieces of cloth with numbers imprinted on them. We were to saw them on our clothes on the chest and on the back. My camp number was 66, Dezso’s – 67, Marton – 68. We were ordered to line up in front of the barrack and they gave each of us a piece of bread and sausage. My brother Dezso was the biggest of us. He went in for sports, track-and-field events. In 1942 he won the first place in a district contest. Dezso was always hungry and pounced on the food. I only ate bread and couldn’t even look at the sausage. It was disgusting: there were pieces of pork fat in it. The same man, who talked to me in the central camp, approached us again and said that we had to eat what we were given here. God will forgive me this sin and I will need all my strength in the camp. I still couldn’t force myself at that moment an gave my piece of sausage to my brother, but some time later I really began to eat anything eatable without thinking whether the food was kosher or not.
9 days later we finally arrived at the Gleiwitz camp. When we got off the train, many of us began to pounce on the snow – so dehydrated we were. I saw my brother Marton there. He was swollen and dark blue – it was horrifying to look at him. I, probably, looked no better. We were sorted out on the platform. The weaker and older inmates were exterminated. My uncle Pinchas perished there. My brother and I went to a barrack. The next morning we were taken to a hospital barrack. Three days later my brother died in this barrack. I was recovering. Our senior man in this barrack was good. He told me to be in no hurry to leave this barrack. I was afraid of staying in this barrack. Many patients were dying every day.
Then I heard somebody calling me in Yiddish. A guy in a camp robe came out of the bushes. I recognized him. He was a Polish Jew; we were in the same railcar. His name was Janec, but I don’t know his surname. He said he was waiting for a survivor for about half hour. He didn’t see where the Germans went. We didn’t have anywhere to go so we went though the wood till we came to the edge. We saw a village in about 2-3 km from there and there was a battle going on there. There were explosions and firing and we were scared. We went back to the wood. It was rather warm and there was grass growing. We walked in the wood and ate grass and roots. Few days later we bumped into four Germans running from the edge of the wood. Janec told me to keep my mouth shut and remember the only thing that we were not Jews. He was Polish and I was Hungarian. He spoke German and English. The Germans asked us what we were doing in the wood. Janec replied that we worked for Germans and then they let us go and that we had nowhere to go and kept wondering in the woods. The Germans began to discuss what to do with us. One said that we had to be shot. Another replied that we were still children and why should they kill us. We were short and thin and looked young for our years. The Germans went away, but the one who suggested to shoot us kept looking back. We were so scared that we couldn’t walk. We stayed in the wood a whole day and at night it began to rain.
They were American soldiers. They gave us tinned meat and bread. When we finished eating they took us to the commander’s office in a village house on their truck. There were German prisoners in the house. The Americans took us to the cow shed. There was an attic with straw in the shed and they left us there. They gave us cigarettes, cookies and cocoa. We were both exhausted. I weighed 32 kg. Americans kept us there few days. We washed ourselves and they gave us clean American uniforms and took us to a hospital. They cordially bid ‘good bye’ to us and gave us cookies and chocolate. I was unconscious for few days. When I recovered my consciousness I discovered that I had no clothes or food left. Everything was gone. I stayed in hospital for about a month.
,
1945
See text in interview
In Budapest we were accommodated in the Jewish girls’ school building, near the railway station. I registered for departure to Palestine. Of course, I wanted the USA more, but Palestine was all right too. Anywhere, but home. There were lists of those who returned from concentration camps updated every day and I went there to check the lists hoping to find my family or acquaintances. I met a girl from Malay Dobron. I didn’t recognize her at once, but she ran to hug me. She asked me at once why I was still in Budapest, when my mother was home. I asked her how she knew it and she said she was in the concentration camp with my mother and sister. I went back to the hostel and told my cousin that I was going back with him. We got tickets to Subcarpathia. There were 6 of us. We got to Chop by train. I got off the train and saw a man and a woman standing nearby. The woman looked like mother from distance, but when I came closer, I understood this was not my Mama, but the man hugged me all of a sudden. I asked him to leave me alone, but he didn’t let go of me. He turned out to be my father’s younger brother Mendl. Of course, I didn’t recognize him. He had no beard, wore a short haircut and no head covering. Mendl said he was taking me to my mother right away. We came to a small house and Mendl shouted: ‘Faige, your son is back!’ My mother ran out of the house, pressed me to her chest weeping bitter tears. I shall never forget this meeting. Somebody had told my mother that I was back to Budapest and that I didn’t want to come home. She was afraid we would never see each other again. My younger sister Hermina returned with my mother. They temporarily stayed in Chop. When I returned we moved to Uzhgorod.
Mendl told me that his wife and four sons perished in the concentration camp. My grandfather and grandmother, my father and Mendl’s parents, perished in the ghetto in Dubovoye in 1944. Mendl didn’t know anything about his sisters living in Hungary before the war. Haskl perished in a work battalion and his family perished in a concentration camp.
We got information about my mother’s brothers and sisters. My mother’s older sister Elka and her husband Gersch Scher perished in Auschwitz during sorting out. Of their 8 children four perished in Auschwitz, 2 moved to USA after the camp was liberated by Americans. [Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Army.] There is no information about the other two children. Uncle Pinchas was with us in Auschwitz and Gleiwitz. His wife Baila and four younger children were exterminated in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Of four other children only their daughter Zsuzsa [Diminutive of the Hungarian name Zsuzsanna.] returned to Subcarpathia. She lived in Uzhgorod and died in the 1980s. After Americans liberated the camp, one daughter moved to USA and 2 sons moved to Palestine. My mother’s brother Lajos and his wife Blanka and Lipe with his wife Lea were exterminated in Auschwitz. Lipe’s two younger sons perished with their parents. His two older sons perished in a work battalion in Ukraine. My mother younger sister Riva’s husband Wolf Steinberg perished in a work battalion in 1942. Riva and her four younger children were in concentration camps. Riva perished in Auschwitz in 1944 and the younger children perished, too. Of her two older sons, who were in a work battalion one perished and one returned to Subcarpathia after the war. In the 1970s he and his family moved to Israel. My mother’s youngest brother Bernat survived in the camps and returned to Subcarpathia. His wife and two children perished in the concentration camp. Bernat married a Jewish woman and they had two daughters. When Jews were allowed to emigrate from the USSR, Bernat and his family moved to Israel. Bernat died in Israel in the 1980s. His wife also passed away. His daughters and their families live in Israel.
We settled down in Uzhgorod. When we came there, we were told to find a dwelling from where Jews had been taken to a concentration camp and move in there. We found a one-bedroom apartment: one big room, a kitchen and a toilet. The three of us moved in there. I became an apprentice of a tailor in a garment store. I had to support my mother and sister, being the only man in the family. It stimulated me to study well and two years later I became a good tailor. Many people ordered their clothes at garment shops since it was hard to buy anything in shops. I could make any clothes, but I was good at making men’s suits. The town and region’s top men were my clients. Besides my salary I got good tips from my clients, and they also brought me food products that were hard to buy.
Though the soviet power struggled against religion 9 my mother and we observed Jewish traditions after we returned to Subcarpathia. I didn’t go to the synagogue, though, in fear of having problems at work, but my mother went to the synagogue on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. On Sabbath evening my mother lit candles and made a festive dinner. I worked on Saturday, but my mother tried to do no work on Saturday. We celebrated holidays according to the rules. We always had matzah on Pesach. My mother baked it at first, but later matzah was brought from Budapest and we could buy it. On all holidays we had chicken broth with dumplings from matzah flour, gefilte fish, puddings and strudels from matzah flour. Of course, kosher food was out of question, there was nowhere to get it, but my mother followed kashrut. She didn’t mix dairy and meat products, didn’t eat pork or sausage and didn’t allow us to have any.
My sister and I spent all Jewish holidays with them. We didn’t celebrate Soviet holidays, but there were banquets at work and I attended them since it would have been defiant on my part if I missed them. Of all Soviet holidays the only one that I believed was truly mine was Victory Day 10, 9 May.
Anti-Semitism emerged in Subcarpathia with the soviet rule. Of course, it was there since 1938, when Hungarians came to power, but at least the situation was clear: Hungary was a fascist country allied to Hitler’s Germany, but the Soviet Union struggling against fascism seemed to be the country where anti-Semitism was impossible. We realized soon that we were wrong about it. When newcomers from the USSR arrived, we could often hear the word ‘zhyd’ [kike] in public transport and in the streets. Nobody had ever been surprised before hearing Jews speaking Yiddish, but it made the newcomers so indignant that they demanded that we spoke Russian, but the biggest surprise for me was that the majority of Jews from the USSR looked at local Jews as if we were enemies and this demand to speak Russian often came from them. (I didn’t study the Russian language, I just listened to others speaking it and gradually began to speak and then read and write in it.) This was terrible and hard to understand. I was surprised since even in the concentration camp we spoke Yiddish to Jews from other countries and German guards didn’t mind it. Jews were always friendly and supported each other, but these Jews from the USSR kind of wanted to separate from us and demonstrate that we had nothing in common.
Campaign against cosmopolites 11 that began in the USSR in 1948 were almost unnoticed in our area. The newcomers discussed them, but we had nothing to do with them. We also thought that the ‘doctors’ plot’ 12 that began in January 1953 was a lie. The majority of doctors in Subcarpathia were Jews and we trusted them, but those newcomers could say in a polyclinic: ‘I shall not have a Jewish doctor’. My wife’s sister, a children’s doctor, also said that the newcomers didn’t want her to treat their children. . In some cases, when she came to a house on call, the child’s parents closed the door before her saying: ‘Let them not send a Jewish woman again’. Anti-Semites raised their heads again. There were always meetings at work where employees had to speak against Jewish poisoners, the doctors. It was compulsory for members of the Party and desirable for others.
In March 1953 Stalin died. I remember well how grown-up men cried in the streets and were not ashamed of their tears. I didn’t have tears or grief for him, though I didn’t know the truth about Stalin’s crimes that Nikita Khrushchev 13 spoke about at the 20th Congress of the Party 14, but I already knew that those Jews who risked their lives to escape from the fascist Hungary to the USSR were sent to the GULAG 15 without trial or investigation. Some of them returned to Subcarpathia after Stalin died, but not all of them. I knew that those Jews who were liberated from concentration camps by Soviet troops were sent to camps for prisoners-of-war or GULAG. Besides, I couldn’t understand why newcomers were saying that the world was going to collapse after Stalin’s death and life was impossible without him. We lived in Subcarpathia without Stalin for many years and without the USSR and it was a good life. Leaders of the state come and go, but life goes on.
Actually, I didn’t bother about the life in the USSR. However, 2 events stirred up my senses. This was invasion of Soviet troops to Hungary in 1956 16 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 [Prague Spring] 17. These were my countries and I was very concerned about the invasion. I understood that it was the policy of the USSR to suppress freedom and exterminate those who wanted changes in the existing regime in the USSR and socialist countries. Subcarpathian troops also took part in those events and people coming back from there told us that it was different from what newspapers wrote about them. The official version was that the government and people of these countries requested the USSR for military assistance, but if it had been true would the people meet their liberators with the slogans ‘Ivan, go back home’, and likewise? Of course, I didn’t speak my mind: I didn’t want to be sent to GULAG after I was in a concentration camp. I knew many people sentenced to 10 to 25 yeas of imprisonment for expressing their unhappiness or telling an anecdote, therefore. I tried to keep my tongue behind my teeth.
We arranged a real Jewish wedding for my sister. Of course, we had to do it in secret. We had a chuppah in the room at home. After the war the soviet power closed most of synagogues in Uzhgorod, but there was one working. My mother asked the rabbi to conduct the wedding ceremony for my sister. We invited few friends and closed ones to the chuppah and my mother cooked a wedding dinner.
We got married in 1957. We had a civil ceremony in a registry office on 18 June and when vacations began at school and teachers went on vacation we had a Jewish wedding. We had to keep it a secret. My wife was a teacher, and authorities watched teachers’ ideology very strictly. If her management knew that we had a Jewish wedding she might have been fired with the comment that she ‘was not fit to raise the young generation in the spirit of communism’. It happened so at the time. With this entry in her employment records book she wouldn’t have found another job as a teacher, or even as a cleaning woman. Therefore, we secretly had a chuppah at home. My relatives and Lubov’s sister were with us. Her parents also arrived at the wedding. My mother was very happy that I finally got married and that I had a Jewish wife.
In 1959 our first baby was born. We named our son Avrum after my father. We had a brit milah ritual for him. Of course, this was also done secretly, but one of my wife’s colleagues heard about it and my wife had problems. Her director and the town educational department called her and asked her one question: ‘How could you do this?’ Fortunately, it ended just with a reprimand.
My wife and I spoke Yiddish for the most part. She never learned Hungarian. She thought she didn’t need it. Russian was a state language during the soviet regime. I spoke poor Russian. I still have an accent. Our children knew Yiddish and Russian.
Still my wife and I told our children about Jewish traditions and Jewish history, but we also told them to not discuss this with anybody else. We celebrated Jewish holidays at home. I didn’t go to the synagogue, but I prayed at home. I had a tallit, a tefillin and a prayer book.
The longer I lived in the soviet regime, the more I hated it. There was no freedom in the USSR and we got used to freedoms in Subcarpathia, particularly during the Czech rule. We could speak our minds without suspecting KGB informers in everybody else. Besides, we lived near the border and to travel to another town we had to obtain a permit from militia and have our passports stamped. We couldn’t buy train tickets if we didn’t have a stamp; and there was another stamp to be obtained for each trip. We could only walk in the town with our passport. Before I got married my friends and I often accompanied girls home in the evening. There were frontier guard patrols walking the town. They checked our documents and if the girl lived nearby they let her go home, but we couldn’t walk with her. Even to go to the woods we needed passports. In 1951 I went to get some wood for stoves in the forest and left my passport at home. In the woods a patrol stopped me. I had no documents, so they put me in their vehicle and took me to the militia office. They reported of having captured a spy. I was lucky that their commander was my client who had picked his new suit just the day before. We said ‘hello’ and laughed. He released the soldier. But how was I to go home without documents? I asked him to issue a card stating that they detained me, checked and released me. He said he didn’t have the right to issue such paper, but he promised to call all posts to tell them to let me go. There were other incidents; it’s hard to name them all. Could one live in this country? It was also hard from the material point of view. There were lines in stores and one had to stand for hours before buying a thing. What is this country like where people are not free and also, are miserably poor! For me to love this country, the country had to love me, but we lived like it was a prison. Sometimes it seemed to me that we had more freedom in the concentration camp.
When in the 1970s Jews began to move to Israel, I thought about it like it was a miraculous escape from everything I hated that the God sent me. My relatives also decided to emigrate. My mother and stepfather were the first to go. They were pensioners at that time. My mother was severely ill and her doctors were talking her out of emigration telling her that she was not fit for traveling and that the climate in Israel was not good for her, but my mother decided to move there, nevertheless. She lived 7 years in Israel: good medications and qualified doctors… They lived in Bnei Brak. When my father’s brother Mendl got to know that she was in Israel he visited her right away. Mendl supported and visited my mother. My mother died in 1977. Mendl died in the middle 1980s. My mother’s husband Gedale never remarried. He lived in Bnei Brak and died in 1988. He was buried near my mother. In 1972 my sister Hermina and her family moved to Qiriat Ono. I was eager to go to Israel, but my wife was against emigration. Her sisters supported her. They lived their lives in the USSR and were patriots of their country. They blindly believed the propaganda on the radio and in publications. They never gave it a deeper thought; they just believed what they heard. Their middle sister Donia, the children’s doctor, was particularly stubborn about it. She was telling me that Israel is a capitalist country and capitalists were exploiters and working people had a very hard life there. I was trying to tell her that she had never practiced capitalism while I lived during capitalism and those were the best years of my life, that if a person had a good job, he could make his living and support his family well while with socialism it didn’t matter whether one worked or he didn’t, didn’t matter – he will be miserably poor anyways. Besides, one feels a fool, when working hard he earns the same wages as lazy bones doing nothing. However, these were mere words for my wife and her sisters that they didn’t make an effort to think about. So it happened that we stayed in the USSR. I didn’t have much choice: emigration or the family and I chose the family.
After finishing school my son entered the Faculty of Biology of Uzhgorod University. He was fond of biology at school, took part in the Olympiads [There were school Olympiads where children competed in their knowledge of school subjects. The first round was at school, then in the district, region and the final was in the Republican level] and won prizes. Of course, this helped him during admission. Only 1-2 Jews were admitted at one faculty at the University. My son was admitted at his first try. We were happy about it since if he hadn’t succeeded he would have been taken to the army and being a Jew he wouldn’t have had an easy life there. My son didn’t face any anti-Semitism at the university. His lecturers were good to him: my son was a good student. When he was the last year student, my son got married. His wife Maria, a Jew, had finished the Medical Faculty of the university by that time and was working, which helped my son to obtain a free assignment diploma instead of a fixed job assignment upon graduation. However, he couldn’t get a job by his specialty and went to work as a lab assistant. His wife was appointed chief of department in her hospital, but she received a low salary and my son didn’t earn much. Avrum went to work as a taxi driver.
After finishing school my daughter entered the Faculty of Russian Philology of Uzhgorod University. Upon graduation she failed to find a job by her specialty. This didn’t have anything to do with her being a Jew. This was during the period of perestroika 20, when anti-Semitism receded. It was just that there were not so many schools in Uzhgorod and there were no job vacancies.
My initial attitude to perestroika that started in the late 1980s was the same as to everything else in the USSR – indifferent, but a short time later I realized that I was wrong. Gorbachev 21 truly wanted a democratic society with freedom of speech and press. Gorbachev allowed private businesses, though there were those who didn’t like it. Many of those who had come here from the USSR were saying that we were going to capitalism. For them this word was a curse word, but for me it meant a society where an individual could work to support his family and make a good living. Religion was allowed. People could go to synagogues and celebrate religious holidays openly. But unfortunately, the Soviet regime broke people of the habit to religion so much that at the beginning we couldn’t even gather 10 men for a minyan.
For me it was very important that during perestroika people at last got an opportunity to correspond with their relatives or friends abroad, visit them and invite them to visit them back. In 1988 I submitted my documents for a trip to Israel. At first they refused to accept my documents and I only managed in early 1989. They accepted my documents, but said that they didn’t guarantee that I would have a permission to visit Israel. However, few months later they issued a permit and I spent four months in Israel. I visited the graves of my mother, my sister and uncle Mendl and recited the Kaddish. I have many relatives, friends and acquaintances in Israel and I was happy to see them. Of course, Israel is a wonderful country. I admired patriotism of its people. They love their country and are proud of it. Service in the army of Israel is not a burdensome necessity that they try to avoid, but an honorary right of an individual. I spoke to young people and they are proud of the possibility to serve in the army and defend their country. Hermina’s older daughter Yudita has two children: son Elan, born in 1977, and daughter Mikhalka, born in 1980. My younger niece Erika has three sons: Galiz, born in 1977, Afir, born in 1982, and Cham, born in 1985. I traveled across the country and they wanted to show me the most interesting places. I was sorry to leave Israel, but I understood that at my age it was too late to move to Israel to start a new life. I keep in touch with my relatives in Israel. My niece has been here several times and my children traveled to Israel.