There I needed an access permit (I lost it in Moscow) and received it rather quickly. I understood that that person from KGB helped me.
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Anatoly Lifshits
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About a year later I was suddenly deprived of the access permit. They gave me no explanations, but I was sure that the point was in the state anti-Semitism (at that time it flourished everywhere). I felt annoyed with all that, called KGB [25] (Navy representative) and asked for an audience. I met there a polite naval officer. I showed him the list of my scientific articles and he said ‘You are a research worker, why do you work at the Navy Staff?’ I explained that it was not my idea: I had to work there because of my father-in-law’s illness. The officer agreed that it altered the case. Finally I managed to return to the Krylov Academy. There were also some difficulties with accommodation, but the problem was settled.
His death was a great loss not only for his relatives, but also for medicine. His patients carried his coffin to the grave in their arms. I am sure that his arrest hastened his death.
In the Navy Staff I served at the operations department (the most secret one), and I was the only Jew there. Perhaps that was the reason why they moved me to another department: Navy Scientific Committee. They did it nicely, and reasoned that it was necessary to satisfy the requirements of my own scientific interests.
During the war, I never came across manifestations of anti-Semitism. By the way at our School there were 7-8 Jews for 1,000 cadets. Among crew members there were few Jews, too. My comrades, who were not naval, told me that there were manifestations of anti-Semitism. But of course state anti-Semitism took place: both I and people around me came across it.
I wrote a letter to the flagman navigator with a request to send me to some ship. A month later I was lucky to receive an assignment of navigator. Later I understood why it happened: shortly before the war the flagman navigator himself was arrested, therefore he understood well that accusations could be false.
I got to an absolutely different ship: a mobilized sweep vessel. It had 2 small guns and carried out patrol service at the entrance of Kola bay. That ship was an easy target. Flying back after an unfortunate bombardment of Murmansk, German airplanes always had an opportunity to bomb our vessel. A lot of such trawlers went down, but we were lucky. One day we received a radiogram: to the north they found a boat going full stream and carrying 50 people, more dead than alive (they were from a bombed-out convoy). We found them, lifted aboard, warmed up, and brought to the hospital. Fifty years later Englishmen, participants of northern convoys, visited Leningrad. I spoke at that meeting and told that story. A month later I received a letter from England from one of those rescued guys. We are in touch now.
At that ship I was the only professional soldier. I served there 8 months. I am not going to bore you with technical details, I’ll tell you only that I noticed certain disorders in navigation system and informed the flagman navigator. They set eyes on me and sent me from the trawler to a fighting ship. Later I started serving on board the Razumny torpedo boat and served there till the end of the war. I finished war as a captain of the torpedo boat.
I got to an absolutely different ship: a mobilized sweep vessel. It had 2 small guns and carried out patrol service at the entrance of Kola bay. That ship was an easy target. Flying back after an unfortunate bombardment of Murmansk, German airplanes always had an opportunity to bomb our vessel. A lot of such trawlers went down, but we were lucky. One day we received a radiogram: to the north they found a boat going full stream and carrying 50 people, more dead than alive (they were from a bombed-out convoy). We found them, lifted aboard, warmed up, and brought to the hospital. Fifty years later Englishmen, participants of northern convoys, visited Leningrad. I spoke at that meeting and told that story. A month later I received a letter from England from one of those rescued guys. We are in touch now.
At that ship I was the only professional soldier. I served there 8 months. I am not going to bore you with technical details, I’ll tell you only that I noticed certain disorders in navigation system and informed the flagman navigator. They set eyes on me and sent me from the trawler to a fighting ship. Later I started serving on board the Razumny torpedo boat and served there till the end of the war. I finished war as a captain of the torpedo boat.
When I was a cadet, I got married. My first wife Galina was German. As soon as the communist leader of our crew got to know about it, I understood that there was no escaping fate. One day in our wardroom we were talking about prisoners of war. I expressed my opinion that not every prisoner of war was a traitor. The communist leader perverted my words and said that I called upon to give up. A week later I was read out of the Party and transferred from my ship. By that moment I had already taken part in 9 convoys. I was appointed a commander of the girls’ platoon (at that time they drafted girls).
When I was a cadet, I got married. My first wife Galina was German.
I’d like to tell you about my attitude to the lend-lease program. During the Cold War aid of allies was belittled. They used to say that it made only 4% of the total number of armament. It is true, but what 4% and during what time. In the beginning of the war our army suffered heavy losses. Without tanks, airplanes, and automobiles received according to that program, we would have not survived. That program played an important role in our war! And now it is recognized.
This cargo had to be transferred past Norway (occupied by Germans). The ships had to move along a narrow corridor: occupied Norway staffed with German airplanes on the one side and Arctic ice bar on the other one. The way was a week long, and German airplanes needed only half an hour to reach us from the Norwegian shore and drop their bombs upon us. Foreigners called that way to Murmansk real hell. It came about the following way: 20-30 trading vessels with cargo moved towards Murmansk. They were surrounded by warships forming a circle. Sometimes (if the number of warships was enough) they formed 2 circles. Patrol ships took the lead destroying German submarines. English warships moved from the West guarding cargo ships against German warships. Two groups of trading vessels started from Murmansk and from England simultaneously. We had to escort our ships and meet English ones.
In the certain point (at the 20th meridian) Soviet warships joined the accompanying ships. All these ships were called a convoy. The convoy was slow-footed. Many ships had been taken down by German airplanes. The water was icy. If a person fell down into water, he had no chance to survive. Besides the ship guns became iced and it was necessary to chop off the ice. Germans learned about a convoy long before it approached Norway and started preparing submarines and heavy bombers. Germans not only bombed us from airplanes, but also torpedoed. Very soon we learned how to shoot into the water from our biggest guns. It was necessary to shoot so that a wall of water rose in front of a dive-bomber, and it crashed into it. That was the way I served.
I participated in 23 convoys. Englishmen, who took part in 2 convoys and survived, thought they were lucky. Our ship was lucky to catch the bomb lying in dock. It made a hole, but did not reach the engine-room, and that was the most important. But you see, about 15 persons were lost that day.
This cargo had to be transferred past Norway (occupied by Germans). The ships had to move along a narrow corridor: occupied Norway staffed with German airplanes on the one side and Arctic ice bar on the other one. The way was a week long, and German airplanes needed only half an hour to reach us from the Norwegian shore and drop their bombs upon us. Foreigners called that way to Murmansk real hell. It came about the following way: 20-30 trading vessels with cargo moved towards Murmansk. They were surrounded by warships forming a circle. Sometimes (if the number of warships was enough) they formed 2 circles. Patrol ships took the lead destroying German submarines. English warships moved from the West guarding cargo ships against German warships. Two groups of trading vessels started from Murmansk and from England simultaneously. We had to escort our ships and meet English ones.
In the certain point (at the 20th meridian) Soviet warships joined the accompanying ships. All these ships were called a convoy. The convoy was slow-footed. Many ships had been taken down by German airplanes. The water was icy. If a person fell down into water, he had no chance to survive. Besides the ship guns became iced and it was necessary to chop off the ice. Germans learned about a convoy long before it approached Norway and started preparing submarines and heavy bombers. Germans not only bombed us from airplanes, but also torpedoed. Very soon we learned how to shoot into the water from our biggest guns. It was necessary to shoot so that a wall of water rose in front of a dive-bomber, and it crashed into it. That was the way I served.
I participated in 23 convoys. Englishmen, who took part in 2 convoys and survived, thought they were lucky. Our ship was lucky to catch the bomb lying in dock. It made a hole, but did not reach the engine-room, and that was the most important. But you see, about 15 persons were lost that day.
Stalin tried to gain time. I know that our naval attaché in Berlin got to know for sure that Germans were going to attack the USSR on June 22. He informed Kuznetsov (Naval Minister) about it, and Kuznetsov reported to Stalin. Stalin said “Don’t give way to provocations.” I guess Stalin could not believe that someone was more artful than him, and swept aside all hints about beginning of the war. On June 14 PRAVDA newspaper published denial by the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union: “…the Germans meet all their engagements, therefore we have to stop panic mood.’ And we were lucky in a certain sense. Naval minister N.G. Kuznetsov was very capable, resolute, a man of insight (in contrast to many army generals, for example Voroshylov and even Zhukov [16, 17]. At our School they told us that newspapers could write what they wanted, but we had to keep our powder dry. The point was that Kuznetsov visited Spain in 1937 [18] and saw Spanish battleship shipwrecked by German airplanes. He was impressed. Therefore he introduced into practice the following rule: only one word had to be broadcast in case of danger and that word meant combat readiness. When the war burst out, he managed to transmit that word by radio, while generals of other armies wrote long encryptions which had to be decoded. That was why during the 1st days of the war no warships were destroyed, while almost all our aircrafts were crushed.
My service was to accompany escorts. Englishmen and Americans sent to the USSR lend-lease aid: tanks, airplanes, tinned stewed meat. Lend-lease aid was given on credit. [Lend-lease was a system of loaning or renting arms, ammunition, strategic raw material, foodstuffs, goods and services to countries - allies.] They sent their aid through northern way (where I served), Pacific Ocean (from the Western coast of the USA to Vladivostok), and by trains from Iran. The 3rd way was the safest, but the longest (it took many months). The northern way was the shortest one, but it was the most dangerous.
Stalin tried to gain time. I know that our naval attaché in Berlin got to know for sure that Germans were going to attack the USSR on June 22. He informed Kuznetsov (Naval Minister) about it, and Kuznetsov reported to Stalin. Stalin said “Don’t give way to provocations.” I guess Stalin could not believe that someone was more artful than him, and swept aside all hints about beginning of the war. On June 14 PRAVDA newspaper published denial by the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union: “…the Germans meet all their engagements, therefore we have to stop panic mood.’ And we were lucky in a certain sense. Naval minister N.G. Kuznetsov was very capable, resolute, a man of insight (in contrast to many army generals, for example Voroshylov and even Zhukov [16, 17]. At our School they told us that newspapers could write what they wanted, but we had to keep our powder dry. The point was that Kuznetsov visited Spain in 1937 [18] and saw Spanish battleship shipwrecked by German airplanes. He was impressed. Therefore he introduced into practice the following rule: only one word had to be broadcast in case of danger and that word meant combat readiness. When the war burst out, he managed to transmit that word by radio, while generals of other armies wrote long encryptions which had to be decoded. That was why during the 1st days of the war no warships were destroyed, while almost all our aircrafts were crushed.
Stalin tried to gain time. I know that our naval attaché in Berlin got to know for sure that Germans were going to attack the USSR on June 22. He informed Kuznetsov (Naval Minister) about it, and Kuznetsov reported to Stalin. Stalin said “Don’t give way to provocations.” I guess Stalin could not believe that someone was more artful than him, and swept aside all hints about beginning of the war. On June 14 PRAVDA newspaper published denial by the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union: “…the Germans meet all their engagements, therefore we have to stop panic mood.’ And we were lucky in a certain sense. Naval minister N.G. Kuznetsov was very capable, resolute, a man of insight (in contrast to many army generals, for example Voroshylov and even Zhukov [16, 17]. At our School they told us that newspapers could write what they wanted, but we had to keep our powder dry. The point was that Kuznetsov visited Spain in 1937 [18] and saw Spanish battleship shipwrecked by German airplanes. He was impressed. Therefore he introduced into practice the following rule: only one word had to be broadcast in case of danger and that word meant combat readiness. When the war burst out, he managed to transmit that word by radio, while generals of other armies wrote long encryptions which had to be decoded. That was why during the 1st days of the war no warships were destroyed, while almost all our aircrafts were crushed.
The war burst out when I was in Leningrad passing examinations. We were divided into 2 groups: submariners and sailors. I became a submariner. We were sent to Vladivostok to finish our education. That was why I spent the first 2 months of war in the Far East. Later they divided us into 4 groups and sent to different seas. I was sent to the North. We were moving very slowly (in heated goods vans). [A heated goods van was a freight car adapted for transportation of people.] We were passing through Moscow in the beginning of November, the city was almost empty. It was a sad sight. One car was destroyed by bombing and one of our cadets was seriously wounded: he lost his legs. Before that case I was not serious thinking about the war, but then I suddenly understood how dangerous it was. We reached Arkhangelsk, and then went to Murmansk by the ship across the sea coated with ice. There I went to the staff department. They asked me where I wanted to serve. I preferred surface ship and they appointed me a junior navigator to Gremyaschiy torpedo boat.
The war burst out when I was in Leningrad passing examinations. We were divided into 2 groups: submariners and sailors. I became a submariner. We were sent to Vladivostok to finish our education. That was why I spent the first 2 months of war in the Far East. Later they divided us into 4 groups and sent to different seas. I was sent to the North. We were moving very slowly (in heated goods vans). [A heated goods van was a freight car adapted for transportation of people.] We were passing through Moscow in the beginning of November, the city was almost empty. It was a sad sight. One car was destroyed by bombing and one of our cadets was seriously wounded: he lost his legs. Before that case I was not serious thinking about the war, but then I suddenly understood how dangerous it was. We reached Arkhangelsk, and then went to Murmansk by the ship across the sea coated with ice. There I went to the staff department. They asked me where I wanted to serve. I preferred surface ship and they appointed me a junior navigator to Gremyaschiy torpedo boat.
She graduated from the Physics Faculty of the Moscow University and worked in Leningrad at the Television Institute.
In 1947 I married Lubov Mironovna Vovsi.
Due to some reasons my first marriage was broken.
Lyudmila Matsina
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My mother Аida Leibovna Levit (nee Golshmid) was born in 1906 in St.Petersburg. Before revolution, in lower classes, she studied in the well-known female Stayuninskaya grammar school. She was telling me about that grammar school with delight, that there was good order and, by the way, no anti-Semitism ever existed. One of the subjects was the Law of God, and the Jews were allowed to skip those lessons. And in general there was no anti-Semitism in the attitudes of people with whom my grandmother and grandfather communicated. Anti-Semitism in their circle in general was considered a shame. A person who showed any sign of anti-Semitism, was simply announced a boycott.
Mother and her cousin Abram Isaevich Zlobinsky entered the Leningrad University. But they both were dismissed from the university - as persons of bourgeois origin. Abram became a journalist, for a long time worked in "The Red Newspaper" and took a pseudonym Lukian Piterskoi. And mother entered the Leningrad Institute of Municipal Construction Engineers which was then referred to as LIIKS, and later it merged with the Institute of Civil Engineers.
My Daddy Samuil Berkovich Levit was born in Simferopol in 1904. Their family was also rather rich - they owned a house, I think in Kanatnaya Street. As a boy Daddy, it seems, went to Cheder, but I do not know for sure. Then he studied in a vocational school, in the commercial department. In 1929 Daddy graduated from the Institute of Civil Engineers in Leningrad and was assigned to Murmansk, the city under construction then. Daddy was one of the first builders and designers of that city.
Mum got acquainted with Daddy during the students’ practical training session in Kronstadt and they got married in 1928. Parents didn’t tell me anything about their wedding, I don’t even have any photos of this event. Maybe there weren’t any wedding at all, they could have just register their marriage with state bodies or live in civil marriage.
,
1928
See text in interview
Before the war, our family lived rather well financially. Daddy worked as an engineer and architect in a design organization and, probably, earned good money.
When the war began, we were in our summer residence in Sestroretsk, but returned to the city in a rush. Soon Daddy was enlisted in the army, and Mum was urgently sent to a business trip, and I stayed with my relatives.
In the summer of 1942 Daddy came and took me to Udmurtia, the city of Izhevsk, where Mum was already waiting for me. We lived in the Tatar family, nobody spoke Russian, except for the elder daughter. There was no furniture in this log hut - pillows and blankets were just piled up in the corner and were picked up for the night. We slept in our clothes, without any linen … Mum and me lived in a narrow room, separated from the landlord’s room with a partition not reaching the ceiling, the light bulb was only in master's "half".
In the autumn of 1943, when Oryol and Smolensk were liberated, Daddy was sent there for mine clearing operations - he first studied the craft at some courses and trained soldiers later. In February 1944 we joined him in the town of Lyudinovo. We lived in a semi-destroyed house, which Daddy restored somehow with the help of his soldiers. Everyone wondered how we could live in it. Then we followed Daddy to the town of Kirovsk of the Kaluga region.
Mother’s cousin - Aunt Polya Zlobinskaya, with whom they lived together in their childhood in Leningrad in the apartment in the 2-nd Sovetskaya Street, had suffered severe ordeals during the war. She married Yakov Bronshtein in 1930 or a little later. His father was a doctor, and he later moved to live in Kislovodsk, where he became the chief doctor of the Kislovodsk sanatorium. On June 7, 1941 Aunt Polya gave birth to a daughter, and their son was five years old by that time. When the war began, her husband decided to send his wife together with his two kids and a nurse, to his father in Kislovodsk – as far as possible from the war. But as you know, in 1942 the Germans broke through to the Caucasus and seized all the Caucasian area, the entire region. They issued an order for all Jews to come to a certain place with their belongings. But Aunt Polya said that she wouldn’t go there with her children. Her father-in-law started assuring her, that Germans were not brutal beasts, that he finished a medical faculty in Germany and perfectly knew Germans and did not believe in all those ball yarns about Germans. He and his wife, as well as his younger daughter and others - the family was quite large - all set off to this assembly point, and, of course, everyone was shot.
Mum and me returned to Leningrad in August 1945, and Daddy still stayed in army, he was demobilized in 1946.
During the war I continued to study, and at all schools I was an excellent pupil. But when we returned, Mum was given advice that I should proceed not in the 6th, but in the 5th form: "We know, how they teach in this evacuation!" But Mum persuaded them, and I didn’t lose one year because of the war. I continued to study at school 175 in the 2nd Sovetskaya Street, where before the war I managed to finish the first year. At our school nobody was in the slightest degree interested, who was Russian and who was Jewish, however, the two of my nearest friends were Jewish. I finished school with a silver medal in 1950.
And, following my father's path, I entered LISI - the Leningrad Institute of Construction Engineering. Those were the terrible years of 1952 and 1953. In those years, the last years of Stalin’s rule, there was an onslaught of anti-Semitism in the country. Jews were fired from work in enterprises and factories, they were banned from entering higher school institutions. Propaganda was claiming that Jews were the nation of “poisoners” – meaning the medical doctors from the notorious “Doctors’ Case”, fabricated by Stalin’s companions-in-arms in 1952. But in our students’ environment there wasn't a trace of anti-Semitism. But I remember, that when my relatives learned that Jews were going to be exiled, Mum burnt all the photos of our American relatives - Grandfather’s elder brother, who left for America in 1920s, and his letters, because everyone was scared of the worst. But nothing happened. God was merciful to us.
In 1955 I married Yuri Matsin. He, as well as I, entered LISI in 1950, the evening branch, and came to day-time lecture sometimes, participated in amateur art performances, but I had other company then, and we did not pay much attention to each other. And in 1954, when he returned after service in the fleet and continued studies, - from the second term of the first year, - we got really acquainted at some party, before November holidays, and in 1955 we were already a husband and wife.
At the end of the war he entered a choreographic school, but, unfortunately, or - fortunately, he felt that he had no calling for that profession, and shifted to a comprehensive school, after ending of which entered the Leningrad Institute of Construction Engineering. From the first year in the institute he was taken to the army – where he served four years in the Fleet. Then he graduated from LISI and became a mechanical engineer. And the life of an ordinary Soviet Jew with all the following consequences began.
He had encountered manifestations of anti-Semitism in the army, where he served in the most difficult years: from 1951 to 1954. He was the secretary of Komsomol organization of the ship, very active. And, from his words, the Deputy Commander on political education put much pressure on him, especially in 1954, when Yuri, being "a Komsomol figure", wanted to join the Communist Party. The Deputy Commander assured Yuri that he is never going to become a party member … And it was clear that reason was "a wrong nationality". A year earlier, when the so-called "Doctors’ affair" emerged, the sailors on the ship started to sing all sorts of anti-Semitic songs. Yuri expressed his discontent to the Deputy Commander, but the answer was that the guys were just fooling around, and no measures at all were taken.
He had encountered manifestations of anti-Semitism in the army, where he served in the most difficult years: from 1951 to 1954. He was the secretary of Komsomol organization of the ship, very active. And, from his words, the Deputy Commander on political education put much pressure on him, especially in 1954, when Yuri, being "a Komsomol figure", wanted to join the Communist Party. The Deputy Commander assured Yuri that he is never going to become a party member … And it was clear that reason was "a wrong nationality". A year earlier, when the so-called "Doctors’ affair" emerged, the sailors on the ship started to sing all sorts of anti-Semitic songs. Yuri expressed his discontent to the Deputy Commander, but the answer was that the guys were just fooling around, and no measures at all were taken.