You see, even after the end of the war I had no conflicts connected with my nationality.
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Displaying 39211 - 39240 of 50826 results
Isaak Rotman
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At that time I heard nothing about emigration of Jews. Nobody around me left anywhere. As for me I did not think about emigration at all: I was quite pleased both with my life and my work. My political views were Soviet, at that time a person like me was called a non-party Bolshevik (now it makes my gorge rise). I trusted Stalin implicitly.
I cannot say that I chose only Jewish friends, but for some reason it happened of itself. When I was young I went around with different people whom I did not like (I did not like unwarranted simplicity of relations between boys and girls). I never appeared in such companies for the second time. It resulted in the following: most of my friends were Jewish.
I got acquainted with my wife in one of such companies before the war. We understood that we love each other, but did not manage to say about it: I left for practice, then for front line, and Vera together with her parents was evacuated to Kazakhstan. After the end of the war we met and got married.
My wife’s name was Zabezhinskaya Vera Markovna, her Jewish name - Dvoyre Mendelevna. She was born in 1922 in Leningrad, and her parents came from Belarus. Her mother tongue was Russian, she did not know Yiddish. All her life she worked as a pediatrist. We have got 2 daughters, they both were born in Leningrad.
Together with my wife we told children about Jewish holidays, but not much. Occasionally we reminded them that they were Jewish. As for me, I sometimes visited synagogue, but I did not take children with me (to tell the truth, they would not go). I changed my life style after Perestroika [12] and openly spoke about it after 1985-1987. I tried to tell my daughters about the war, but they were not much interested. My grandchildren also don’t like to listen to me. Certainly we never celebrated either Pesach or Christmas. But we always had a New Year’s tree in our apartment.
Despite the fact that my children got no Jewish education, my elder daughter (as I already told you) left for Israel in 1990. In 1994 I decided to go to her. I hoped to find a soul mate there: I was very tired to live alone. I settled in Haifa where my daughter lived with her family. But in Israel I could not fit in: I did not speak Hebrew and understood that I would never master it. I also was not lucky with women: they all seemed to me too self-interested. But most likely I missed Petersburg. In a word, after 2 years of my life in Israel I returned and never regretted it.
By now I have not many friends and relatives left. Most of them died. I made friends with my former neighbor. But all my coevals (few in number) keep indoors, we speak to each other only by telephone. I also made new friends in Hesed Center. Of course they are Jews.
I do not think that I or my children were deprived of something because of their Jewish origin.
It was not easy for me to accept Perestroika. I guess that many Soviet citizens (me first of all) were not able to think normally. It was necessary to study thinking anew, and it is not easy, especially at my age. But I managed step by step. And when the Berlin wall fell down, I said ‘Gorbachev, well done!’ [14] You see, my second self always thought that the Iron Curtain was something unnatural.
Stalin's death made me very sad. At that time I thought that nobody was able to replace him.
Regarding the Hungarian events [15] and the Prague spring [16]: my opinion did not differ from the official one I read in Soviet newspapers.
Both my grandmother and grandfather spoke only Yiddish. Grandmother did not wear a wig and did not cover her hair.
My maternal grandmother and grandfather lived in Staraya Ladoga. I used to spend time at them several years running. My grandfather was an owner of bakery, he made bread and sell it. Soviet authorities liquidated his bakery and grandfather himself, too. I do not remember details, but grandmother came to Petersburg soon after the Revolution [1] and lived at us. She spoke poor Russian, did not tell fairy tales.
They had a nice small wooden house. There was no electricity supply, they used kerosene lamps. They heated their house with Russian stove [2], they also cooked food in it. They had no water supply, and brought water (by the way, very tasty water) from the well in the court yard. There were some furniture pieces inside (certainly), but we used to sleep on the floor. The town was very small; grandfather's shop was situated in its center, near the market building. We used to help him to bring bread from the bakery to the shop.
The house was surrounded by a small garden, full of old apple-trees. They produced poor crops. My grandparents had neither cattle nor domestic animals.
They had no assistants about the house. But in grandfather’s bakery, someone helped him for sure: otherwise he would have not managed.
The house was surrounded by a small garden, full of old apple-trees. They produced poor crops. My grandparents had neither cattle nor domestic animals.
They had no assistants about the house. But in grandfather’s bakery, someone helped him for sure: otherwise he would have not managed.
The only case when I dared to doubt correctness of the state policy was Doctors’ Plot [17]. At that time I was really scared, I felt that pogroms could be started, and authorities would rather add fuel to the fire than extinguish it.
In 1998 I got to the Hesed Center for the first time [18]. I clearly realized that I was Jewish and should be Jewish. At present I visit Hesed very often. I go to the library and sometimes visit doctors. But my great pleasure is to visit the Day Time Center. [Day Time Center is one of the Hesed programs.] Once a week they send a car to my house and bring me to Hesed. For me it is double pleasure: to visit the Day Time Center and make a trip round my favorite city. In the Center I spend all day long. We listen to lectures and visit interesting exhibitions, but the main thing is certainly the opportunity to communicate with each other. In Hesed we celebrate Jewish holidays. They also bring us food packages for holidays. I never got any help from Austria or Switzerland.
Pessya Sorkina
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My maternal grandparents knew Russian. And of course they spoke Yiddish.
My mother’s father was a timber examiner. In Riga most Jews were engaged in it. And I do not know where my father’s father worked. We visited them in Boychekovo only once. I guess my paternal grandfather occupied some position at the synagogue, I do not remember anything more...
My grandmothers and grandfathers were religious people, of course. I guess at that time most people were religious. We lived at my paternal grandfather in Ostashkov for a long time. There was a synagogue. In day-to-day life they used to wear ordinary clothes, but at the synagogue they certainly put on tallit, dressed in accordance with the rules. I do not remember if grandmother attended the synagogue. And at Peno railway station there was no synagogue, my paternal grandparents were the only Jews there. But they used to go to Ostashkov to visit synagogue, because my grandfather and father were religious.
I guess we arrived in Ostashkov in 1920. I remember that I finished 9 classes in 1929. I was fifteen years old when I finished my school, because I started from the 3rd form. My brother finished school the same year though he was three years younger than me.
So, I spent my childhood in Ostashkov, I went to school there. It was an ordinary school, not Jewish. But there were a lot of Jews. At that time I paid no special attention to nationality of the people around me. The school was divided into two steps: three or four classes of primary school and later classes of the so called real school.
Daddy was religious. But he taught his children neither Yiddish, nor religious Tradition.
At home we observed kashrut: meat was cooked separately from dairy, etc.
In Ostashkov grandfather and grandmother observed Tradition. They were very religious and celebrated all holidays for sure. At Pesach, I remember, they cleaned all corners of the house and put silver spoons and knives in boiling water according to procedure. We observed Sabbath. Daddy and Mom did it too, but my grandmother and grandfather were especially scrupulous.
In Leningrad I found job (at that time I was sixteen years old). Mom and Daddy attended synagogue, but Mom seldom visited it. As for me, I went to the synagogue during holidays - it was very interesting to be present at the synagogue during holidays [the St. Petersburg Great Choral Synagogue was closed under the communists, nevertheless at holidays a lot of people gathered there despite the prohibition of authorities].
In Leningrad Daddy was not able to find job according to his profession, therefore he worked at vegetable stores as a storekeeper. Those vegetable stores were usually situated in cellars.
I started working in 1931. At that time there were labor exchanges and it was not easy to find job. I was sixteen years old, and hence I was registered at the labor exchange for teenagers. They assigned me to a job of a copyist at the Electrosila factory. [Electrosila Factory is a Leningrad Corporation for construction of electric machines – one of the largest USSR factories in this sphere.] I managed to learn how to copy when we arrived in Leningrad.
While I was working at the Electrosila factory (I do not remember what year) I entered an evening course of its technical machine-building school. [Technical School in the USSR and a number of other countries was a special educational institution preparing specialists of middle level for various industrial and agricultural institutions, transport, communication, etc.] I finished it and entered the Leningrad College of Aircraft Instrument-Making [it was founded in 1941], evening course again.
At that time we had no problem entering a college, though we were Jews. At that time there was another problem: it was necessary to be a worker or to have parents-workers. And if your parents were not workers, it was impossible to become a student. I remember that I entered the technical school, studied there two days and was sent down: my Daddy was an employee and I was an employee, too. Next year the rules were changed and I entered the technical school again. And later place of parents’ work became insignificant.