Thus, we reached a village in Ordzhonikidze district [today Azerbaijan] in the Northern Caucasus, 2500 kilometers from Kishinev. We were assigned to a kolkhoz [19]; I don’t remember its name or location. My sister went to work as a teacher in a local school. I was young and strong and was sent to work at the threshing floor.
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Displaying 40081 - 40110 of 50826 results
Hana Muchnik
My sister’s husband Mendel found us. Bessarabians weren’t mobilized to the front-line forces, because the Soviet authorities didn’t fully trust residents of the areas recently annexed to the USSR, and he was released [Editor’s note: probably this fact had different reasons, since later on there were Bessarabians, as well as Bessarabian Jews in the Soviet army’s front line troops]. Mendel carried me to the car waiting by the front door of the hospital and the three of us drove to Makhachkala [Dagestan, today Russia]. From there we took a boat across the Caspian Sea and from there we took a train to Tajikistan. Our destination was Stalinabad [Dushanbe since 1962, today capital of Tajikistan] where we were accommodated in a barrack for over 100 people.
Mendel had been mobilized to the labor front [20] in the north and he occasionally sent us food parcels. A few months later we stopped receiving any parcels or even letters from him. Half a year later we received a letter where Mendel wrote that somebody had reported that during the Romanian rule he was a Zionist and an active participant of the Zionist movement. He was convicted to ten years of imprisonment and kept in a camp near Norilsk [Taymir, today Russia].
Life was improving. I made friends with Gita Luriye, a Jewish girl from Latvia. She convinced me to go to the course of medical nurses for the front. It lasted three months and I finished it with honors, but frankly, I didn’t even know how to make an injection. One month later I was summoned to the military registry office. I went there, but when they found out that I was from Bessarabia they released me. It happened one more time with the same result, but when I was summoned there for the third time, the military commander told me to come back with a spoon and a mug. I packed my clothes and my sister went with me to see me off.
I didn’t even realize that I was mobilized.
I didn’t even realize that I was mobilized.
I was released. My sister helped me to get a job as a medical nurse in a hospital. It didn’t take long for me to understand that this job wasn’t good for me. When a patient died and the doctor asked me to turn him on his bed I was horrified and ran out of the ward. The doctor told me to think over whether I could be a medical worker. I quit the hospital. My sister helped me again. She helped me to get a job as a medical nurse at the blood transfusion facility. I received rationed food and worked there until the re-evacuation.
When in summer 1944 the liberation of Moldova began, my sister started packing to go back home. Elka wrote a letter to the People’s Commissariat of Education in Soroki [Soroca in Moldovan]. Kishinev was still occupied. Shortly afterwards we received a response and started obtaining all necessary documents. We left home in December 1944. We took a train to Moscow where it took us two days to get tickets to Kishinev. It took us three days to get to Kishinev from Moscow. I had visited Kishinev twice before the war and admired the town. This time I saw it in ruins. We hired a wagon to take us to Orhei.
I went to where our house had been. I was born and grew up in this house, but I couldn’t find anything. Some passers-by told me that the house was hit by a bomb and the locals disassembled the ruins.
They told me about my parents and Aunt Beila, who died a terrible death. On the first day the Fascists gathered all Jews of the town at the quarry and killed them. [Editor’s note: not all the Jews were gathered and killed during the first days. For further information, see glossary 22.] Those people told me they saw my mother, father and Aunt Beila walking there.
Our life was going on. My sister’s husband was still in prison. Elka went to work at the Teachers’ Training School, where she received a room. It was a little room, but there were two beds, a table, two chairs and even a stove in it. It was all right to live in it! I went to work as a cashier in a canteen. My sister kept telling me that I had to continue my studies at the Medical College. However, after having typhus twice and malaria I was too weak to go to study in a college. My sister told me to try at least a technical school. I entered the Financial School in Kishinev, the Department of Finance and Taxation.
However, I have the brightest memories of my student years. There were many Jewish students at my school and I had many Jewish friends. There was no anti-Semitism in those years.
However, I faced prejudiced attitudes during the issuance of job assignments [23]. I requested a job in Orhei to be with my sister, but all Jewish students were assigned to the worst locations. I was sent to the godforsaken town of Bravicheny where no transportation was available. I had to walk there. Before long, I wrote a request to relocate me to Orhei and sent it to the Ministry of Finance. They relocated me to Susleny, 15 kilometers from Orhei. I worked in the financial department in Susleny for a few years. My boss was very good to me and helped me to get another assignment. I even had a choice between Bendery, Tiraspol or Beltsy and I chose Bendery.
In early 1953, I moved to work in this town. I worked as a financial officer in this town for 25 years. I received a small room in a shared apartment [24]. This was the period of the state level anti-Semitism. I wouldn’t say it affected me. I remember that during the period of the ‘Doctors’ Plot’ [25], when all Jews felt that their people were endangered, my supervisor, basically a nice person , told me how she went to a Jewish doctor, who took a long time to examine her, probably intending to poison her. I listened to such things, but had to keep silent.
When Stalin died in 1953, I didn’t grieve or cry. Somehow I knew he was the reason for many of our troubles.
My sister was a good teacher. She kept the fact that her husband was in prison secret, but shortly before 1953 her management declared that she would be fired, being the wife of an ‘enemy of the people’ [26]. Now I had to support my sister both morally and financially. Fortunately, shortly after Stalin died, her husband Mendel was rehabilitated [25] and returned to Orhei and Elka returned to work.
In 1976 my husband died from a heart attack. I buried him beside my daughter in the town cemetery in Bendery. There were no rituals, but my father-in-law recited the mourning prayer.
In the early 1990s my brother Haim found me. He lived in Haifa in Israel and I went to visit him. I was happy to have one member of my family in Israel. I admired Israel. What a beautiful country! What nice people: smiling, friendly people, the sea, so much sun! My brother was a worker at a plant, but he has had a very good life. He and his wife have a nice spacious apartment. Unfortunately, he lost his only daughter in the 1980s. She was seriously ill and died young. I was considering moving to Israel, but I’ve always been so irresolute and I feared changing my life at my old age. I feared loneliness in a nice, but different country. Haim didn’t try to convince me, giving me an opportunity to make my own decision. When leaving Israel, I knew it was my farewell to my brother.
I am very ill and hardly ever go out. I wouldn’t have lived this long, if it hadn’t been for the support of Jewish organizations and Hesed [27]. They give me moral, physical and financial support. There is a visiting nurse tending to me. I have many friends in Hesed. I attend the Day Center where I am taken by a bus and where we listen to Jewish songs. I read Jewish publications. I return to my little town in my thoughts. I would like to immortalize the memory of my dear ones and I write articles to our Jewish newspaper. I think, this story that I’m telling today, will also help to keep the memory of my family and the past of a little Jewish town in Bessarabia.
In 1955 Isaac and I registered our marriage, and there was a small wedding dinner. I was well-respected at work and shortly after the wedding I received a two-bedroom apartment. Isaac was a mechanic and a highly-skilled one. He was good to me and we had a good life.
My husband’s family celebrated all Jewish holidays, and my husband and I joined them and I felt like I was back in my childhood again. We also celebrated Pesach and had matzah at home. I wasn’t religious and my husband was an atheist, but we liked getting together at the table and giving and receiving gifts, being attached to the traditions of our ancestors.
e led a modest life. Financial employees had low salaries. However, we had everything we needed. I could even afford to take my daughter to the seashore every summer.
I come from the small town of Orhei located on the picturesque bank of the Raut River in Bessarabia [1], about 60 kilometers from Kishinev. The long street, I would even call it Jewish, leading from the river was populated by Jews. There were a number of stores and shops owned by Jews on it. Tailor Facer had clients as far as Kishinev, Nisemboin owned a confectionary, medications and hygienic means were sold by Fishelev, the banquet hall was owned by Breutman. Then there were Shistik, Volovskiye, Golbinskiye: they were our neighbors. The majority of houses in Orhei were one-storied buildings: only Fishelev, a wealthy man, built two two-storied houses: one for himself and one for his son. My grandfather and our family lived in a long one-storied building with two front doors: one for my grandfather’s and one for our family.
My paternal grandfather, Joiseph Muchnik, born in Orhei in the 1850s, was rather wealthy. He owned a big leather/shoe store: it sold shoes and leather, glue and components for shoemaking.
My paternal grandmother died long before I was born. I can’t even remember her name. My grandfather remarried. His second wife Udl boasted of her distant relation to the very Baal-Shem-Tov [2]. She was 20 years younger than my grandfather and agreed to marry him for his wealth. They didn’t have children together. She and Joiseph were very religious. They were real Hasidim [3].
My father, Duvid Muchnik, the oldest in the family, was born in the early 1880s. I don’t know whether my father had any education besides cheder. All I know is that he was a rather literate man. He could read and write Yiddish and Romanian. He must have also known Russian. He loved Pushkin [11], but we didn’t speak Russian in our family before the Soviet rule was established. My father, being the oldest son, was helping my grandfather Joiseph in the store before the Soviet rule was established. My father was raised in a religious Hasidic family, but he never became a Hasid. My father was very religious, but he observed religious beliefs other than Hasidic ones. It’s hard to say to what religious trend my father belonged to. All I remember is that he often argued with my grandfather about religious issues. My parents’ marriage was prearranged, as was quite common in Jewish families.
I heard that my grandfather Anchel Sorotskiy, born in the 1860s, was rather wealthy. He owned land and fields. He hired workforce to work in these fields. He also kept cows and sheep. Mama told me that her family lived in a big two-storied mansion. There was beautiful expensive furniture, musical instruments and toys at her home. Even her and her sister’s dolls, as tall as the girls, were purchased in England. Grandmother was a real lady and supervised housemaids and governesses helping her about the house.
My mother, Golda Sorotskaya, was born in 1886. I think she must have studied with a visiting teacher [melamed] at home: this was quite common with wealthier families. She could write and read Yiddish like my father. My parents didn’t tell me about their wedding, but I think it was a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah and lots of guests.
We lived in one half of my grandfather’s house. There were four big row rooms: a living room, a bedroom, another room, where Aunt Beila and the older children lived, a kitchen and a cellar in our part of the house. There was a store, two big rooms and a kitchen in my grandfather’s part of the house. There was a warehouse and sheds, where food products for holidays were stored in the big long backyard of the house. I remember Uncle Gershl riding his wagon into the yard to have sacks full of flour and cereals, jars of jam and jarred fat loaded on it to haul these food stocks back to his home in Chichelnitsa, where his numerous family were waiting for him. Gershl arrived quite often. My father thought we had too much for our family and just ignored these visits of his. Our family was rather wealthy: I guess the store brought good profits. However, there were no luxuries at our home. Mama did all housework herself and only Aunt Beila helped her about the house. Marusia, a Moldovan girl, came in to do the laundry. Marusia could often be late – she had a drinking habit – and I remember how nervous my mother was when she didn’t show up on time. When she did come in, everything got going: there were big boiling tubs with the laundry, the smell of soap and then the washing was hanged on a long line in the yard.
Jewish traditions were observed in the house, particularly, the kosher rules. The meat and dairy products were kept separately: there were separate utensils, preparation boards and knives for these products.
On Friday Mama started the preparations for the celebration of Sabbath. Beila usually did a general clean up and Mama did the cooking. She left the food in the oven to keep it hot. Our neighbors Volovskiye, older people, sent their housemaid to bring their food to keep it till the next day in our oven and pick it up on Saturday [Shabbath]. On Saturday we weren’t allowed to do any work. We had Alexei, a Moldovan old man, come in to stoke the stove, light a candle and take the dinner out of the oven. My father was back from the synagogue by that time, and the family sat down to dinner.
My father was very religious. He had a cap on working in his store and wore a kippah, tallit and tefillin on his hand and forehead. My father prayed every day at the nearby synagogue. This synagogue was called the ‘market’ synagogue in Orhei [the construction of this synagogue was funded by merchants and tradesmen]. On Saturday and on holidays my father went to the big, beautiful synagogue where my parents had seats they had paid for.