My maternal and paternal ancestors came from Bershad, a Jewish town in Vinnitsa province. Bershad was a bigger Jewish town: its population in the early 1920s was over 6 thousand Jews. Jews lived in small houses closely adjusting to one another in the central part of the town: there was no place for gardens available. There were cobblestone streets with cunettes on both sides of streets and bridges over them to each house. In spring they were filled with rain water and melting snow flowing into the Dohna River surrounding the town on three sides. Jewish men were craftsmen: tailors, shoemakers, potters, glass cutters. They earned their living to the best they could. They spoke Yiddish (and so did we in the family), but they all knew Ukrainian, as well as Ukrainians spoke Yiddish. There was Pyatkovka village across the river where Ukrainians lived, and there was also a ‘katsap’ street in the town. Katsap was a jargon word for Russians. Residents of the town got along well and had good neighborly relationships. Jews attended a beautiful synagogue near the market in the center of the town. There were several smaller synagogues in the town. Ukrainians and Russians went to a big church over the river.
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Displaying 35611 - 35640 of 50826 results
Yevgenia Kozak
I believe my both grandfathers were raised Jewish: they studied in the cheder, but this was all education they got. My maternal grandfather Shloime-Yoina Mitzel, born in 1870, was a high-skilled cabinet maker. Mama told me my grandfather made not only solid and usable, but also beautiful furniture. My grandmother Etl Mitzel (I don’t know her maiden name), my mama’s mother, studied midwife’s vocation and became a good midwife. Many babies in Bershad entered this world through her kind hands. She taught young mothers to bathe and swaddle their babies. She handled the navel string and taught mothers to take care of their babies. Granny Etl was always busy with either her midwife’s business or having to look after someone’s baby – it’s amazing how she managed to raise her own eight children: four sons and four daughters.
Grandmother Etl baked bread and Saturday challit in this stove, and also kept Saturday dinners in it. My grandparents’ family strictly observed traditions, followed kashrut and honored Saturday. My grandfather was religious and always wore a kippah or a hat. Every morning he went to the synagogue in the center of the town and started work after he came back from the synagogue. He never worked on Saturday or Jewish holidays. Grandfather read religious books aloud and the family took a rest listening to him.
Mama’s brothers worked independently before and during the NEP 2. After the NEP they worked for a furniture shop in Bershad. Fortunately, our family escaped accusations of being declared to be kulaks 3, like it happened to many wealthier families – grandfather Shloime’s family was rather poor.
Mama didn’t have any education – this was quite customary for Jewish families. She helped grandmother Etl about the house since her early age, as grandmother Etl had to travel even to the neighboring villages: people believed her to be better than any educated assistant doctor. Mama learned to cook traditional food: gefilte fish, thick broth with delicious kneydlakh, sweet and sour stew and chalet for Saturday. She also cooked Saturday dinners and was good at preparing the house for a holiday.
My father Abram Shafer was born in 1888. He finished cheder and became a religious Jew. His father Gershko was even more religious than grandfather Shloime. He went to the synagogue every day, read the Torah and Talmud and raised his sons Jewish. David, the oldest son followed into his father’s steps and became a tanner. My father learned to make long and warm leather coats that were of great demand with Ukrainians. Coat craft was popular in Bershad: coats were also sold to neighboring villages. My father was not recruited to the army during WWI due to his hernia. By the time he proposed to my mother he was a skilled coat maker and could support his family.
My parents got married in 1919 during the outburst of the Civil War 8, the time of devastation, hunger and diseases, when the power switched from one group to another in the town, and each time there was a pogrom 9. However, they had a traditional Jewish wedding. There was a chuppah in the most beautiful synagogue in Bershad, and musicians played at the wedding. Grandfather Gershko Shafer bought them a house where they moved in after the wedding, only grandfather Gershko and grandmother Surah died from typhus shortly after the wedding.
During pogroms mother and father took hiding in grandfather Shloime’s cellar. Mama said they always ran to her parents’ home: she believed her father could protect her from pogrom makers. Once, during a pogrom mama put on a wet shawl on her head and lied down and father put a ‘typhus’ sign on the door, and pogrom makers didn’t dare to enter the house.
However, this lasted till the end of NEP only. Though I was only about 6 years old, I remember how our neighbors were dispossessed. They were taken to the railway station, including old people and children. Later it turned out that they were all sent to the virgin lands of the Kherson steppes. Some of them returned to Bershad several years later and others disappeared for good. I remember that men from kulak families were sent to the construction of the Dnieper power plant, the biggest in the USSR. When they returned, they told us that the conditions on this ‘socialist construction site’ were unbearable.
Our family was poor. My father earned to support the family and my mother was a housewife. We were not miserably poor, though. Mama always managed to make a special dinner on Saturday. We rarely had meat or fish, but she made delicious puddings, strudels with jam and challot. Before Pesach and other holidays we bought poultry in advance and kept them in a shed in the backyard. My father took them to the shochet and we always had all traditional food on holidays. I wouldn’t say my family was that religious. My father or mother didn’t have their heads covered. My father didn’t cover his head to sit at the table. Perhaps, this was the sign of time. However, my father put on a kippah and my mother had a kerchief on to go to the synagogue every Saturday. I liked going to the synagogue with my parents. I liked the ceremonious mood embracing the town on Saturday: all Jews and their children dressed up (we also had fancy outfits) to go to the synagogue. I usually carried my father’s book of prayers - he was not supposed to do even this kind of work on Saturday. Mama and I went upstairs where women were supposed to do their praying, and my father stayed downstairs with other men. I continued going to the synagogue, when I became a pioneer 10, though pioneers were not allowed to attend it. I liked Jewish holidays even without knowing their history: I enjoyed the happy moments of my childhood, going out with the family and having delicious food. On Purim mama and grandma made delicious hamantashen filled with poppy seeds. I remember Sukkot in autumn, when we had meals in the sukkah in the backyard, but my favorite holiday was Chanukkah, when we visited grandma, who gave us some money and we enjoyed nice doughnuts and potato pancakes. During Pesach my father didn’t conduct the seder – the family just sat at the table and enjoyed a special meal. However, we had fancy silver kosher crockery that was kept in the attic. His crockery, the matzah that my father brought from the synagogue and traditional food – this was all that marked the Pesach in our house. Sometimes we visited grandmother Etl on holiday where we met with mama sisters Mania and Golda and their husbands and children who also visited grandma and arrived from Odessa.
I studied in a Ukrainian school. I don’t know why my parents did not send me to the Jewish school in Bershad – probably because the Ukrainian school was quite near our home. There were many Jewish children in my school. My friends were mainly Jewish girls. Our teachers were Ukrainian, but they treated Jewish children well and did not discriminate between the children.
I remember the famine in 1932-33 11. I can’t imagine how we survived: probably people were more sympathetic and supported each other then. I remember my father bringing some cereals and flour from his clients in villages. The situation was also hard in villages, but they at least had some vegetables gardens where they could grow something. Mama baked bread to sell it at the market and we only could have some leftovers. Villagers occasionally paid my father for his work with potatoes an other vegetables. We were given a bun and some soup at school. Fortunately our family survived while many other people died in Bershad.
In summer I went to the bank of the Dohna river to bather and lie in the sun with other children. My brother Shloime and little sister also went with me and I watched them there. I was proud of having to be responsible for them. In winter mama and I did our laundry in the river. Sometimes I went to amateur concerts in the club in the central square of Bershad. I liked Soviet holidays. I went to parades with my school: we carried slogans, placards and flower garlands. There were parties at school. We didn’t celebrate Soviet holidays at home, though.
In the late 1930s arrests began [Great Terror] 12, when party and Soviet officials began to disappear. Nobody in our family was arrested. We didn’t give much thought to what was happening. We believed that punishment was the right thing for the guilty ones.
We also thought the situation in Western Europe and Germany in the early 1930s had little to do with us. From newspapers we knew about Hitler, who came to power, and about fascists, but neither newspapers nor radio mentioned anything about their attitude to Jews. However, we watched the ‘Professor Mumlock’ 13 film that showed the prejudiced attitude of Hitler followers to Jews, but again nobody in Bershad gave much thought to it.
On 22 June 1941 at noon our neighbors came to our home to listen to the radio – we bought it shortly before the war. Molotov 14 announced that the Great Patriotic War began. Mama started crying. Papa calmed her down saying that Germans were cultured people and were not going to hurt Jews.
On 22 July the first bombs fell on Bershad. They dropped bombs mainly to destroy the distillery, but one bomb hit a Jewish house and killed a woman. The next day mama, papa, my brother and sister and I left Bershad. Many Jews feared to leave their homes and thought that since Germans were quite civil during WWI, nothing bad was going to happen to them. This was what older people were telling the others. Grandmother Etl made my mother promise that we would follow them and evacuate before she left the town. There was no transport available and we left the town on foot. Riva and her children wanted to leave some days later.
The train was overcrowded. This was a train for cattle transportation. We had no food stocks left. We only had dried bread. When the train stopped, I fetched some boiling water in the kettle. Occasionally we could get some soup or cooked cereals at stations, but this happened rarely. During air raids the train stopped and we scattered around. Our trip took a month before we arrived in Ossetia in Northern Caucasus. The train stopped near Ordzhonikidze, Azerbaijan, and we were sent to a kolkhoz 15, in a village near Ordzhonikidze. We were given a warm welcome there. We were accommodated in a small room with a kitchen. A family from Kharkiv resided in the next-door room. Mama, my brother and I went to work in the field and my father went to work as a janitor in the kolkhoz granary. We received food products for work and in winter the kolkhoz provided wood for heating. The local residents gave us winter clothes and we managed through the winter.
Life was very hard. Mama and I went to work at the factory manufacturing cotton ropes. Mama and I were workers. Father also worked there as a janitor – he could not do hard physical work due to his hernia. My sister went to school. My brother Shloime (we addressed him Semyon and he adopted this name, when obtaining a passport) left and didn’t tell us where he was going. He just ran away from home with a bag of dried bread and we didn’t hear from him for ten years. We received workers’ cards, but we didn’t get sufficient food and were starving. We lived in a little room in a clay house. Its roof leaked when it rained and we had to sleep in wet beds. Actually we slept on some grass on the floor. However, we didn’t complain. This was a common situation. I suffered from malaria terribly. I had attacks, felt cold, fever and couldn’t wait to leave Uzbekistan.
In March 1944 we heard that Bershad was liberated and decided to go there immediately. I wrote my friend in Bershad and she sent us a permit to come home. We didn’t even wait till our documents were processed. We paid a railroad man and caught a train to Ukraine. Our trip lasted long and we changed trains, but our hearts couldn’t wait till we got home. We arrived in Bershad in May 1944.
Here we heard the horrible news: aunt Riva and her children left Bershad, but got in encirclement. She had to go back home and they stayed in the ghetto. Riva was a messenger for a partisan unit under command of Yasha Tahles, a Komsomol activist. Her home was their secret address. Fascists found out the truth and shot Riva in the central square of Bershad before everybody else. Fortunately Riva’s children Lusia and Semyon survived: the partisans managed to save them. Riva’s husband Rafael Podolskiy perished at the front.
The first postwar years were very hard. Father went around the neighboring villages fixing clothes, making coats and doing whatever job he could managed. People were poor and could only afford to alter or fix old clothes. He brought some food products from the village and this helped us to survive. Mama baked bread and I sold it at the market. However hard life was, mama was happy to move back into our house.
We faced anti-Semitism in those years. I cannot say there was much of it in Bershad where the population was mainly Jewish. I never heard direct abuses, but Jews had problems with getting a job since there were Ukrainian officials holding the leading positions in the town. I couldn’t get a job anywhere, though I addressed all kinds of offices. Well, I actually had no education: whatever knowledge I got at school was lost during and after the war.
However hard life was, we continued to observe Jewish traditions. My parents went to an old synagogue (the new one had been removed) but that one was all right. On Saturday father didn’t work and mama tried to cook something special: latkes, kugel, even there was nothing else, but flour that she had. Father always brought matzah from the synagogue on holidays, or sometimes we made it in the Russian stove. We fasted on Yom Kippur and I still keep fasting nowadays. On Chanukkah mama made buckwheat pancakes. My children also know this holiday – they always got a few coins for sweets on this day.
Meyer swore on his honor that he was not a traitor and had never been involved in any action against Jews and that he just worked as an interpreter in the town office of Odessa to save his life. I believed him – I liked Meyer. Besides, if he had been guilty he redeemed his fault. We got married in 1953: we just signed under our names in the registry office. We didn’t even have rings.
My parents helped me to raise the children. In 1958 I went to the town committee to ask them to help me with employment. My boys were with me. They gave me a job of a janitor and then I became a worker in the dyeing shop where I worked till I retired. They helped me to make arrangements for my older son to go to a kindergarten. Mama looked after my younger son. My work was very hard: there was no heating and it was freezing in winter. There were also hazardous vapors from paints, but I was glad to have this job. In the morning taking a slice of bread – my lunch – I ran to work and returned home late in the evening. I worked overtime to earn more. In the evening I did the laundry and fed my kids trying to give them whatever little bit of motherly care.
My parents and sister were buried in the Jewish cemetery following all Jewish traditions.
This was a period of emigration, when many Jews were leaving Bershad for Israel, USA and Germany. I didn’t even consider emigration: I didn’t have time to even look around.
In the early 1990s a Jewish community was established in our town, and it helped me to overcome my sadness and find myself in life. I attended Sabbath and participated in celebration of all Jewish holidays. We began to speak Yiddish and talk about traditions. I was involved in preparation to the events. I cooked gefilte fish for Sabbath and baked strudels like mama did it. Jewish women still consult me on recipes. I am not a religious person, but I try to celebrate major Jewish holidays like we always did in our family. I have had a hard life and have always been hard up. I’ve never been interested in politics. All I’ve thought about was how to manage from one payday to another and how to provide food for the family. Therefore, it’s hard for me to say, when life was harder – during the Soviet period or in the independent Ukraine. But I can say one thing for sure – and that is that I’m grateful to our country for giving an opportunity for religious communities to develop and restore Jewish traditions and religion. I am ill now – I have a severe fracture and cannot attend the community, but they do not leave me. Curator of Hesed, chairman of the community, often visits me. They deliver meals to me at home and buy medications. If it were not for my disease, I would think I have a better life than I’ve ever had before. I asked my sons to visit me to see each other before I die, but they either cannot afford or don’t want to come. My brother does not write me. I know he has two sons, whom I’ve never seen and cannot remember their names. He has grandchildren, too. I feel very distressed and lonesome. When I feel sad, I hum Jewish songs that my mama taught me. They are sad songs: I sing them and cry: about my bitter fortune, hard life and lonely old age.
Mikhail Leger
My grandfather’s name was Mihel Leger, and my grandmother’s first name was Gita. I don’t know my grandmother’s maiden name, or my grandparents’ date of birth. I guess they both came from Ozarintsy and were born around the 1850s. Ozarintsy was an old Jewish town. There were few synagogues and cheder schools and a Jewish cemetery in the town. There were hardly any newcomers in Ozarintsy, unless somebody brought a spouse from another village or town. There was a shochet in the town. Jews were all religious, and my father’s family was no exception.