My mother’s stepbrother Matvey was born in Vasilkov in 1905. After the revolution of 1917 [13] he moved to Kiev, finished a rabfak school and worked at a plant.
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Grigoriy Stelmakh
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With his plant he evacuated to the Saratov region and stayed there after the Great Patriotic War. During the war Matvey fell ill with tuberculosis. He died from it in 1947.
, Russia
All I know about my mother’s second brother Nukhim, born approximately in 1908, is that he perished during the Great Patriotic War.
My mother’s younger sister Frania, born in 1910, worked as a shop assistant before the Great Patriotic War.
Some time later our family moved to Kiev where they received half a house in the distant outskirt of Stalinka [it’s one of the central districts of the city now]. I don’t know exactly what work my father did for a living, but he earned well and was prosperous. He bought a motor cycle, a film projector and a piano for the children to study music when they grew up.
Although my father was a real communist, he continued to believe in God at the bottom of his heart, I think. He didn’t go to the synagogue. To go to the synagogue was like throwing away his Party membership book and an employment records book: the new regime adamantly struggled against religion [14]. However, our family always celebrated Jewish holidays, even in the late 1930s when Stalin’s arrests [15] began and people could suffer a lot for their faith. Of course, those were quiet celebration and there were no guests, but my mother cooked traditional food and there was a spirit of holidays.
My parents told me a lot about the first day of the Great Patriotic War. On this day of 22 June 1941 my father was going to a football match of his favorite team ‘Dynamo’ Kiev and my mother told him to take an umbrella since it looked like a rainstorm. My father heard about the war on his way to the stadium. He went to the military registry office with his umbrella and they recruited him to the army. He was sent to study in a flak/artillery school in Kiev. The management of his school decided to support evacuation of the families of their teachers and cadets. So we evacuated on trucks in the middle of July moving to the east.
In this mess and confusion I got on a different truck with strangers and some woman was holding me all the way to Kharkov, 450 km. I was absolutely calm, but my mother was almost ‘loosing her mind’. We were accommodated in a hostel in Kharkov waiting for departure. Unfortunately, my sister Raya fell ill with scarlet fever and we were not allowed to take her to a train. We left Kharkov in early October, when Germans were near the town. I don’t remember any details of our trip.
We arrived at the Shantala railway station where the families of the school employees were accommodated. From there, from Shantala, my childhood memory took its beginning. This was a station lost in the woods, somewhere at the distance of 200 km from Ulianovsk in the depths of Russia. My mother went to work in a hospital. Our Russian landlady Manya was very kind. There were six of us: my mother, my two sisters and I, my grandmother and my mother’s sister Frania. We had one room in a wooden house. We, kids, slept in bed with my grandmother and my mother and her sister slept on the floor. It’s hard to say anything about food: I didn’t remember anything else. Everything my grandmother made tasted delicious: pancakes with some herb, soup with unknown ingredients or pies. My grandmother was very handy with making a meal from ‘nothing’ and other women came to learn from her. My grandmother tried to observe Jewish traditions. She boiled few casseroles to make kosher utensils. I was told that there were sweets, ice-cream, candy and oranges in life, but I took it easy like any child since I didn’t know anything about them.
My sister Raisa studied at school, and Alexandr and I went to kindergarten. I remember a New Year party with Santa Claus, i.e., they were trying to create some living conditions for us and I am grateful to these people. I was small and didn’t know what was better and what was worse, but now I recall this with warm feelings.
Sometimes we went to see mother in hospital. She secretly brought us a cup of kissel (fruit jelly) to the front door: and this was such delicacy. Patients liked us. They put me on their lap and gave me sugarplums: those were the first sweets in my life, and they stroked my hair. I didn’t understand that they were missing their children. I called each man ‘papa’. I didn’t remember my father.
My father finished his artillery school in Gorliy town and wrote that my mother could visit him there before he went to the front. My mother went to Gorkiy from Shantala. The moment they met and hugged a terrible bombing began and my father, praying for my mother to survive, sent her back right away. My father wrote letters from the front. I remember a postman walking along the street and nobody knew what news he was bringing. Sometimes we heard wailing and screams from a house: it meant that they received a death notice. Fate guarded my father, though he was wounded several times. After hospitals he went back to the front. Once he visited us bringing some food that he managed to save. I finally saw my father: big that he was and a stranger. I enjoyed breathing in the smell of tobacco. My father stayed with us three days and went back to the front.
Once he visited us bringing some food that he managed to save. I finally saw my father: big that he was and a stranger. I enjoyed breathing in the smell of tobacco. My father stayed with us three days and went back to the front.
Finally in 1943 Kiev was liberated. My father took part in the attack with armored troops. He sent us a permit for reevacuation and we went home. I have dim memories about our return trip. We arrived in Kiev in winter. My father was with his unit somewhere near Zhytomir. I was struck to see the destitution and ruins in Kiev. Where was this beautiful town they told me about? There were other tenants in our apartment. Our neighbors took our furniture, carpets, and the piano and crystal crockery. When my mother asked them to return our belongings they replied that she had to be happy to have survived and that she wasn’t with those ‘zhydy’ [kike] buried in Babi Yar [16], и and closed the door before her. Then my father came to Kiev for few days. He went to see this neighbor and threatened him with a gun and they returned our belongings. However, we didn’t have a place to live and we went to my mother’s aunt Dvoira Brodskaya. Life was hard. There was little food and I had to stand in long lines for bread sold by coupons. I also remember delicacies: American canned meat and egg powder that my father sent us occasionally. I went to school in 1946 and we wrote on newspaper sheet margins since there were no notebooks or textbooks.
We lived so until 1947.
We lived so until 1947.
, Ukraine
My grandmother did the housekeeping till she fell ill and became bedridden. She kept the Jewish spirit at home. We had traditional Jewish food at home: gefilte fish, sweet and sour stew and strudels with jam. On Friday she cooked a festive meal, put on a white kerchief, prayed and lit candles. On Saturday my father and she went to the synagogue arm-in-arm. Although it was dangerous for a member of the party to go to the synagogue, my father said that he feared nothing any more, and he said it jokingly, it seemed to me.
On Pesach he always bought matzah at the synagogue. My grandmother had special crockery and even special napkins for Pesach. During seder there were always mandatory products on the table according to haggadah: meat on a bone, eggs, ground apples with cinnamon and herbs. There was wine on the table. I often went to see my grandfather Abram and grandmother Yenta. My grandfather read extracts from the Torah to me, explained what I didn’t understand and told me about the Jewish history.
My older sister Raisa entered the Engineering Construction College and Shurah studied in the school of everyday services to the population.
I worked in a shop few months and then I went to the army. I served in the engineering troops and my unit was in Kiev region.
I have good memories about the army. There was no discrimination and senior comrades always supported the newcomers. We had plain, but sufficient food. There was one Jew from the Western Ukraine in my platoon. Once, during our leisure time in the barrack one guy began to provoke me telling about ‘zhydy’ and caricature features that people ‘granted’ to them. I understood that he was doing it on purpose and if I didn’t react than anybody would humiliate me. I didn’t think long: I approached him and hit him on his face heartily, from all Jewish people, so to say. My fellow comrades started talking: ‘Good for you, you’ve done right’. ‘However, none of them spoke in my defense till I did it myself, but it strengthened my authority in the unit.
I have good memories about the army. There was no discrimination and senior comrades always supported the newcomers. We had plain, but sufficient food. There was one Jew from the Western Ukraine in my platoon. Once, during our leisure time in the barrack one guy began to provoke me telling about ‘zhydy’ and caricature features that people ‘granted’ to them. I understood that he was doing it on purpose and if I didn’t react than anybody would humiliate me. I didn’t think long: I approached him and hit him on his face heartily, from all Jewish people, so to say. My fellow comrades started talking: ‘Good for you, you’ve done right’. ‘However, none of them spoke in my defense till I did it myself, but it strengthened my authority in the unit.
When I returned from the army, both of my grandmothers had passed away. In 1957 grandmother Yenta and in 1959 grandmother Ronia died. They were buried in the Jewish cemetery and there were attendants from the synagogue to recite prayers at the funerals.
When in the army, I began my ‘writings’ that were published in the regional newspaper ‘Leninskoye znamia’ (The Lenin’s banner’). They gave me recommendations for a college. I submitted my documents to the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow University. There was big competition. During our Russian exam – it was a composition – I saw a pretty Jewish girl nearby who was writing assiduously. The teacher approached her and told her to stand up. He opened her desk and took a textbook from there. It was closed and was near her bag, but she was ordered to leave the classroom disgracefully. I and few other Jewish applicants felt some bodily hatred toward us, anti-Semitism on the biological level. Of course, none of us was admitted. We failed at the competition. I had good marks and went to see the rector. He said: ‘We shall admit you when you enter the party’. I understood that I had to give up my journalistic career and decoded to go to work.
I went to work as a locksmith at the Kiev motorcycle plant. I understood that I had to work better than the rest of us to avoid any complaints about my performance. I remember that when I received my first salary the foreman demanded that I bought a bottle of alcohol for him. I bought him the drink and then he shouted that he respected me, because I was young and technically smart. I worked there for some time and then I understood that I needed higher education. I entered the Mechanical Faculty of Agricultural Academy where I studied by correspondence. I worked at this plant all my life. I started as a locksmith and then I held many positions: controlling inspector, foreman of the Technical Control department, shop superintendent and was promoted to commercial deputy director. I was the only Jewish manager. Besides, I wasn’t a party member. At first they didn’t want to admit me to the party, because they were reluctant to admit Jewish engineers, but then my colleagues began to recommend me to join the party, but I didn’t want to. In contrast to my father, I didn’t have belief in the party.
Lubov is Ukrainian. Her father came from the Ukrainian village of Sukhoruchiye in Polesiye and her mother came from Gomel region in Belarus. They escaped from their villages during the period of dispossession of the kulaks and worked at construction sites moving from one place to another. They came to the construction of the exhibition of achievements of the public economy in Moscow. They stayed in Moscow during the war.
After Sarrah Musia was born in 1915. Musia went to the front during the Great Patriotic War. He never returned from the war.
Grandfather Abram was trying to teach his children the Torah following his firm convictions, but life was changing and the communist propaganda happened to be stronger than grandfather’s lectures and the children grew up to be atheists.
s. During the Great Patriotic War grandfather, grandmother and Adel were in evacuation in Uzbekistan. They lived in a kolkhoz [4] where grandfather worked as an accountant.
They lived in a kolkhoz [4] where grandfather worked as an accountant. After the war my grandparents and Adel returned to live in Kiev. From 1945 and almost to the day he died my grandfather was a representative of the Art Fund of the USSR in Kiev. He was responsible for tax payment inspection and reported to Moscow. He was valued at his work. They employed him till he turned 83! More than that: when he grew old, my grandfather began to compose music. We have a pile of his scores: he wrote quartets and romances. He studied music in his childhood. I would say, the music sounded in him. He wrote music by inspiration. He particularly got fond of music after grandmother Yenta died in 1957. He started going to the synagogue more frequently and wrote music for the synagogue.
Grandfather died in 1967. He was buried in the Jewish sector of the town cemetery and an attendant from the synagogue recited a prayer. When Chairman of the Union of composers saw my grandfather in the casket, he exclaimed: ‘Ah, this is Stel’makh, almost a composer’. He said it with slight humor, but this was sad humor.
My father’s life story is quite interesting. He was the product of his epoch. He was born in 1912. He went to cheder like all Jewish boys and then finished a Jewish school. And then… I would say he was drawn in with the ‘wheel of history’. The revolutionary outburst had its impact on children: Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and Jewish boys and girls had gatherings and marched across the town with slogans and banners in support of the soviet power and Lenin [5] calling to refuse from religion: ‘Away with rabbis and priests’. There were many religious people in Khmelnik and my religious grandfather was ashamed of meeting eyes with other respectable people in the town when his son propagated such slogans. My grandfather beat my father many times for sound reasons. He was not allowed to leave the house and tied inside. These contradictions developed into a conflict between my father and religious grandfather and as a result, my father left his home at the age of 14. He headed to Kamenets-Podolskiy, 100 km west of his home where he joined Komsomol [6]. He became a Komsomol activist. Komsomol sent him to the Kiev region where he was involved in various Komsomol activities: struggle against kulaks [7], organization of kolkhozes and Komsomol units in towns. By the age of 20 he already joined the Communist Party.
My father married a Russian girl, his comrade, in Tarascha village of Kiev region in 1933. I don’t know her name. He didn’t even tell his parents about his marriage since his marrying a Russian girl would have been a reason for another conflict with his parents. My father’s wife died at childbirth, and grandfather Abram and grandmother Yenta took little Raya to raise her forgetting their resentment. She lived with my grandparents for about a year. After my father married my mother the girl came to live with them.
My mother’s father Shulim Khalfin was born to the family of a store owner in Germanovka village in about 80 km from Kiev, in 1882. There were many Jewish families in Germanovka.