Back in those times there were Fascist Organizations: followers of Professor Cuza [13], the so-called Cuzists [14], and the Legionary Movement [15]. They advocated Fascist ideas of racial and nationalistic hatred and threatened the Jews. Kishinev Jews who survived the Pogrom of 1903 [16], dreaded to think that it would recur. Fortunately it didn’t come to that, though anti-Semitism was felt in everyday life. One evening, when Father was on his way home from the synagogue, two gangsters, Cuzists, attacked him and hit him a couple of times, threatening to do away with him.
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Riva Belfor
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Pro-Soviet and pro-Communist ideas were also disseminated. I remember how my father was inspired to talk about Russia. He was a real zealot of Soviet power, national equality, propagated by the Communists. Father tried to find out about Russia as much as possible. At that time the USSR was a political enemy to Romania and there was no information about Russia. Father had a friend – a Moldovan, a medical assistant – who also cared for the USSR. He had a radio, which was a rare thing for people of our circle. Father came to him and they used to listen to the news from Moscow surreptitiously. Of course, neither Father nor his friends knew the truth about the USSR, they knew nothing about arrests and repressions of the innocent people [12].
My sisters didn’t get such a thorough education. The elder one, Bluma, was taught how to read and write by our parents. She thought it was sufficient for a girl like her. She was very good at embroidery since childhood. Later on she started taking orders and earned pretty good money. After finishing school, Rahil went to the technical school of the Tarbut school [11], one of those schools which prepared the youth for repatriation to Palestine. There were very many Zionist organizations in Kishinev, but I couldn’t join them because of my age and I don’t remember their names.
In 1939 our family moved to Kishinev. There was a vacant position for a shochet. We rented an apartment. It was a small three-room apartment in a private house. There was a shed in the yard, where my father did his job. My elder brother Motle helped my father so he could learn from him. Motle had been prepared for religious activity since early childhood. He finished cheder, which was customary for the boys. Father and Grandfather Ihil spent a lot of time teaching him. My brother got ready for the rite of bar mitzvah. The rite was carried out by Rabbi Zirelson in the central synagogue. After that Motle was enrolled in a yeshivah, where very literate, educated and religious Jews taught, such as Zirelson and Uncle Joseph Epelbaum.
My grandfather’s name means ‘a man, who rewrites the Torah’ in translation from Yiddish [Editor’s note: soifer or sofer (Heb.) is ‘scribe for holy books,’ a man especially trained for this holy task]. Men of his lineage were involved in this honorable and complicated matter from the ancient times. My grandfather fixed the Torah, wrote holy scripts, which were put in the tefillin and mezuzah. Apart from this craft, which was similar to the subtle art, Grandfather read the Torah and Talmud – all holy Judaic books and interpreted them. He discussed things that he read with the neighbors and acquaintances. He tried to live and to act in accordance with the Torah. He often told his kin how one was supposed to act in certain cases according to the doctrines of the holy books. In general he was a very religious and literate man.
My paternal grandfather, Ihil Soifer, was born in 1860 in the small town Medzhibozh [about 300 km from Kiev], located in South-Western Ukraine [in 1860 part of the Russian empire]. This town is known for being the center of Hasidism [1] [the Jewish community of Medzhibozh is one of the oldest in Ukraine and until 1648 one of the largest in Podolia. The number of Jews grew to 6,040 (74% of the total population) in 1897, then fell to 4,614 (58.2%) in 1926. The community was destroyed after the German occupation in 1941].
Frida Palanker
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They wore plain clothes – Korostyshev was a small town and there was no reason to wear fancy clothes. My grandfather used to wear dark trousers with a belt, a light shirt and a sleeveless jacket and a kipah to cover his head. He had a small beard and a moustache. My grandmother used to wear a long dark skirt and a light cotton polka dotted or flowered shirt and a light shawl on her head.
My grandmother always cooked something delicious for us. She cooked Jewish dishes: sweet and sour stewed meat, chicken broth, pancakes that she called “latkes” – this was everyday food. I can’t say what kind of dishes she cooked for Pesach, as we only visited Korostyshev in summer.
My grandmother and grandfather spoke Russian and Yiddish to us. They knew Russian well, but it was easier for them to communicate in Yiddish. However, they spoke both Russian and Yiddish to us - they wanted us to know our mother tongue Yiddish and made us speak it at home, too.
I remember their house. They lived in the very center of Korostyshev. They had a big house with few rooms. There was a cellar in the house where they had food storage. There was a kitchen garden and an orchard near the house. My grandmother kept a cow and chicken. I remember the hayloft over the shed and we loved to get into the smelling nicely hay. There was a well in the street close to the house from where they used to take water for the house.
They had a stove where my grandmother cooked food and made baked milk in ceramic pots. This milk had a very delicious goldish skin. There were other stoves to heat the house. In summer my grandmother used to purchase wood to last for the winter. They kept this wood in a shed in the yard.
They had a stove where my grandmother cooked food and made baked milk in ceramic pots. This milk had a very delicious goldish skin. There were other stoves to heat the house. In summer my grandmother used to purchase wood to last for the winter. They kept this wood in a shed in the yard.
My grandfather and grandmother didn’t do any work on Saturday. An Ukrainian woman, their neighbor, came to milk the cow and feed the chicken. On Friday morning my grandmother cooked food for Saturday. On Friday night my grandmother lit candles and prayed. I loved to watch her at such moments. They didn’t force us to pray and I don’t remember any traditional songs or prayers in Yiddish, although I heard lots of them when I was a child.
My grandmother took me with her to do shopping at the market. We bought kosher products from Jewish vendors at the market. If it was chicken or a goose, we used to take it to the shoihet. He had his shop at the market to comply with kosher food requirements. The farmers were selling their products: eggs, sour cream, cottage cheese and vegetables. Many of them had their customers and they brought food to their homes.
The children of my grandparents’ sons Yasha and Simon also came to visit them. Zlata, the wife of Uncle Yasha, brought her daughter Raya and son Moisey. Simon lived in Zhytomir and his two sons also visited my grandparents. We spent time together playing, going swimming in the Teterev river and to the forest. We played “hide and seek”, “diabolo” and skipping-rope. We used to hang hummocks in the wood and sleep in them in the afternoon heat. Korostyshev was in 100 km from Kiev and many people from Kiev used it as a country recreation spot to spend their summer vacation. Many families built small country houses in their yards to let them to the holiday-makers. It was another source of income for the locals.
Aunt Rahil, her husband and children were killed by Germans in 1941 along with all Jews in Korostyshev.
In Kiev Ion became a jeweler apprentice and became a skilled jeweler. He had a store in Podol during NEP. The authorities expropriated this store around 1925. He worked at the state jeweler store for some time. He was called several times to the NKVD office. They demanded that he gave away all his gold. This made Ion lose his love to the jeweler’s art. He became an apprentice of the tuner of musical instruments and worked as an engineer at the factory of musical instruments.
His daughter Maria was very beautiful and talented. She lived a long and happy life. Maria finished Acting Department at the Kiev Theatrical Institute. Before the war she was an actress of the Russian Drama Theater in Kiev. After the war Maria was a producer at the amateur theater. Later she graduated from the Department of Journalism at Kiev University and worked as a journalist for a newspaper.
, Ukraine
Grigory (Gersh), the son of Maria and Georgiy, worked at the radio engineering plant in Barnaul during evacuation and stayed there after the war. In due time Grigory became director of this plant.
, Russia
I knew my grandmother Sura and loved her much. She lived alone in a small room on the first floor in an old building in Podol. She earned her living by baking bread and rolls and selling them. I still remember her delicious little rolls with no stuffing. My grandmother had her big stove in the same room where she lived, she made rolls at home and always had lots of customers in the house. The room was very clean. Her bakeries were very popular. All of her neighbors were her customers. They knew that my grandmother’s bakeries were kosher. She often received orders to bake rolls and pies for family celebrations.
My grandmother was very religious. There was a synagogue not far from her house and my grandmother went there almost every day. She had a shelf with a curtain in her room where she kept her Easter dishes. She covered her head with a shawl before going out. I don’t remember her praying at home. On Friday she went to the synagogue after lighting candles and we tried to leave her alone at such moments.
In 1915 my father came to Kiev to learn a profession. He became a tailor’s apprentice and then developed into a real good tailor for women’s gowns. He worked as a cutter at the garment factory before the war. My father was a born tailor. Then my father’s brother Yasha came to Kiev and my father taught him the profession of a tailor.
My parents got married in 1917. I don’t know how they met. My mother told me once that it was love from the first sight. Both of them came from poor families and their wedding party was very modest. But it was still a real Jewish wedding with the huppah and all wedding rituals.
My parents got an apartment in Bolshaya Podvalnaya street in the center of Kiev. Our apartment was in the wing of a big 4-storied brick building. There were two rooms, a kitchen, a toilet and a hallway in this apartment. There was no bathroom and we washed ourselves in the kitchen. There was no running water in the house. We had a pump in the yard and brought water from there in buckets.
My father was a tailor and my mother was a housewife. She also learned to sew before she got married. She was an apprentice of a tailor and her specialty was making skirts. She didn’t work after she got married, because it was traditional for a Jewish woman to be a housewife. Although the family wasn’t wealthy my mother only made skirts for herself and her daughters.
My sisters and I lived in one room and my parents lived in another. I remember a yellow leather sofa in our room – it was in fashion at that time. There was a shelf on the high back of this sofa and a mirror above. There were small leather pillows on both sides of the sofa. I slept on it. There was a piano beside my sofa. There was a wider sofa by the opposite wall where my sisters slept. We also had a wardrobe and a bookcase and a desk in our room.
There was a nickel-plated bed and big mirror above it in my parents’ room. There was also a bookcase with many books in Yiddish and Russian. There was a big dinner table and a cupboard in the kitchen. My mother liked beautiful dishes. She had a set of dishes of blue color and beautiful silver utilities – Ion’s wedding present. The rooms were heated by the stove tiled with white and pink tiles.
There was a nickel-plated bed and big mirror above it in my parents’ room. There was also a bookcase with many books in Yiddish and Russian. There was a big dinner table and a cupboard in the kitchen. My mother liked beautiful dishes. She had a set of dishes of blue color and beautiful silver utilities – Ion’s wedding present. The rooms were heated by the stove tiled with white and pink tiles.
During WWI Uncle Yasha was at the front. He froze his feet and had his toes amputated on both feet.
My grandfather was the youngest son in his family. He was living in his parents’ house. He was a tinsmith and my grandmother was a housewife.
Their family wasn’t wealthy. The boys studied in cheder and Rahil received education at home. They only spoke Yiddish in the family.
Their family was religious. They observed Jewish traditions. My grandparents went to the synagogue on Saturday, celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays. My grandmother followed kashruth. She always wore a shawl when going out.
His brother Yasha often came to pick my father up to go to the synagogue together. During WWI Uncle Yasha was at the front. He froze his feet and had his toes amputated on both feet. He had a problem walking, but he still went to the synagogue two or three times a week.
Uncle Yasha and his family were in Gorky throughout the WWII. Uncle Yasha’s son perished at the front and the rest of his family returned to Kiev after the war.