We spoke Russian in the family. My grandmother Hana spoke Yiddish with our parents and horribly poor Russian with her grandchildren. My older brother Lazar could speak Yiddish; I don’t know where he learned it. He was the only one of all the children that knew Yiddish.
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Polina Levina
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I don’t know whether my parents were religious. While Grandmother Hana was with us we observed Pesach, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Now I remember that we didn’t observe Pesach in accordance with all Jewish rules. My mother tried to make delicious meals, but my father didn’t conduct the seder. However, we didn’t have any bread at Pesach. I know that we always had matzah, but I don’t know where my parents got it from.
At Rosh Hashanah our mother put pieces of apples and a saucer with honey on the table. We dipped apple into honey and ate it. At Yom Kippur our grandmother fasted a whole day, but the children ate as usual. At Purim our mother made delicious little pies with poppy seeds. I don’t remember observing any other holidays. I can say for sure that we didn’t have a Sukkah in the yard, otherwise I would have remembered it.
At Rosh Hashanah our mother put pieces of apples and a saucer with honey on the table. We dipped apple into honey and ate it. At Yom Kippur our grandmother fasted a whole day, but the children ate as usual. At Purim our mother made delicious little pies with poppy seeds. I don’t remember observing any other holidays. I can say for sure that we didn’t have a Sukkah in the yard, otherwise I would have remembered it.
We didn’t observe Sabbath either. Our mother cooked on Saturday and we lit lamps and started the stove as usual. We celebrated Soviet holidays. Our parents wore their best clothes and so did we. Our mother made a festive meal, sometimes we had guests. They were my mother’s colleagues. They sang Russian folk and contemporary songs and danced at such parties.
I had both Jewish and Ukrainian friends; nationality didn’t matter to us then. We were taught that we were Soviet children and belonged to the Soviet nation. Our neighbors were three Ukrainian families. After we moved there, their children and I became friends, we played hide-and-seek and ‘catch me.’ We didn’t have any toys and played outside games. This was a happy period of my childhood.
I went to school in 1926. We studied in Ukrainian. We didn’t have any problems with Ukrainian since it was the main language spoken in the village and we communicated in it. I wouldn’t be sure now that I was the only Jewish girl in my class. There were no negative attitudes toward me, nationality didn’t really matter.
There was no anti-Semitism in the USSR before the Great Patriotic War, authorities suppressed any demonstration of it. If someone dared to speak about someone else’s nationality in an abusive manner, he might have been sued. There was punishment for such actions and one could even go to jail.
I had my pioneer duties. I became a pioneer tutor in the 1st grade. I went to my pupils during intervals, read books to them and told them about heroic pioneers. We sang Soviet songs and recited poems. I attended their class meetings and felt like an adult.
In 1932 a famine 11 began in Ukraine. We ate bread made of flour half mixed with absinth. We had lunch at school. We got a boiled ground head of corn. In fall 1932 crops were good, but there was nobody to harvest since people couldn’t stand on their feet from hunger. Although it was officially announced that crops were poor, I don’t remember that it was really so. I remember well how Tamara and I went to the field to pick up spikelets. There were guards on horses that patrolled the fields and chased away villagers picking spikelets. Actually, those spikelets stayed in the field and became food for birds or grew anew, while people were not allowed to get them.
No one in our family starved to death. I think there is some exaggeration in how they present the famine nowadays. There was a real famine in Povolzhie, in Russia. People starved terribly there while we had something to eat even if it was bread with absinth. The famine lasted until 1933 and in summer 1934 life was like it used to be before the famine.
No one in our family starved to death. I think there is some exaggeration in how they present the famine nowadays. There was a real famine in Povolzhie, in Russia. People starved terribly there while we had something to eat even if it was bread with absinth. The famine lasted until 1933 and in summer 1934 life was like it used to be before the famine.
I finished lower secondary school in Babino in 1934. I went to Kherson to continue my studies. My mother went there to take her summer exams and I went with her. I entered the Rabfak at the Pedagogical College. That same year I joined the Komsomol at the Rabfak. After a year of studying at the Rabfak I was admitted to the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of the Pedagogical College without entrance exams since I had all excellent marks. There were five other Jewish students in our group, and there were no prejudiced attitudes toward us. All Jewish students in my group were the best students.
In 1936 [during the Great Terror] arrests began and lasted until the Great Patriotic War. The husband of my cousin Fenia, daughter of my mother’s sister Nastasia, was arrested and executed. I truly believed that ‘enemies of the people’13 were guilty. I don’t know if my mother believed this was true, as she didn’t discuss this with us. If the Party said they were enemies then it was true. I still believe that there were not so many innocent people arrested. There were some, probably, but most of them were guilty, indeed.
In 1938 I finished my college and stayed to work in Kherson. I got a job assignment as teacher of physics and mathematics in a Ukrainian lower secondary school. I received ‘allowances’ – some money to last until the first salary. I got a room at the teacher’s hostel at school. Teachers and schoolchildren were friendly with me. I began my career on 1st September. I also was a tutor in the 6th grade. There were both Ukrainian and Jewish children at school and children of other nationalities.
Vassili was Ukrainian, but it was no problem with my family or me. We never segregated people by their nationality. We got married on 1st October 1938, a month and a half after we met. We had a civil ceremony at the registry office and a small wedding dinner with our families and colleagues from school. Vassili’s parents treated me like their daughter from the very beginning.
I went to work as a teacher of physics in a Ukrainian school and my husband got a job there, too. He was a teacher of history.
Before World War II, teachers were released from the army, but then Voroshylov 15 issued an order to cancel all privileges and make all men subject to army service. On 29th November 1939 he was recruited to a tank unit and I never saw him again. He was sent to fight in the Finnish War 16.
When his service term was coming to an end, the Great Patriotic War began and Vassili went to the front. He perished near Moscow in 1942.
On 22nd June 1941 I heard on the radio that the Great Patriotic War had begun. At 12 o’clock Molotov 17 spoke on the radio. He said that fascist Germany had attacked the USSR without an announcement of the war. It was strange that I didn’t feel any fear. I was sure that the war would last a few days at the most – this was what we were all told.
On 9th July evacuation began. My daughter was two years old. I decided to go to Melitopol where my father’s sister Maria and her family and my mother’s sister Evgenia lived. At that time Maria was at the oncology hospital in Kharkov. When the war began the clinic evacuated to Kuibyshev. Maria evacuated there, too. Her husband Terenti and their two children were still in Melitopol. Their son was in the army and their son’s wife was a student. She evacuated with her college and took Evgenia with her. My daughter and I stayed with Terenti. The situation in town was so quiet that I even went to work.
We took another train for railroad employees that headed to Khasaviurt.
There I went to the hospital and the employees told me that Ivan Dmitrievich was a commissar of the hospital. A woman offered us accommodation in her house. We washed ourselves and burned my daughter’s clothes with lice. On the second day I went to the military registry office and received 3000 rubles as a military’s wife. I bought food products for this woman and went to hospital again.
I got Ivan’s address. His family was friends with Maria’s family. He helped me to get employment at the hospital. I became an attendant and received a room in the hospital for my daughter and me. I was responsible for accounting of clothing, bed sheets and laundry. The personnel and patients were good to me. My daughter went to a nursery school. She broke her leg at the nursery school and the chief doctor appointed a nurse to look after Valeria while I was at work.
There I went to the hospital and the employees told me that Ivan Dmitrievich was a commissar of the hospital. A woman offered us accommodation in her house. We washed ourselves and burned my daughter’s clothes with lice. On the second day I went to the military registry office and received 3000 rubles as a military’s wife. I bought food products for this woman and went to hospital again.
I got Ivan’s address. His family was friends with Maria’s family. He helped me to get employment at the hospital. I became an attendant and received a room in the hospital for my daughter and me. I was responsible for accounting of clothing, bed sheets and laundry. The personnel and patients were good to me. My daughter went to a nursery school. She broke her leg at the nursery school and the chief doctor appointed a nurse to look after Valeria while I was at work.
I corresponded with my brother Lazar. He was head of the financial department in unit 37 of the district air base. By the way, he was a party member; he joined the Party at the front in 1942. Their military unit went as far as Budapest from where they were sent to Kutaisi. From there my brother sent me a telegram telling me to come to stay with him.
The director of the hospital stamped this telegram with a stamp saying ‘approve resignation’ and my daughter and I could go to Kutaisi where I went to work in the military unit where my brother served. He rented a dwelling for us; a plank annex. There was a sofa by one wall of the room, a stool that served as table and a chair. I worked at the logistics department of this military unit. My daughter went to kindergarten.
The director of the hospital stamped this telegram with a stamp saying ‘approve resignation’ and my daughter and I could go to Kutaisi where I went to work in the military unit where my brother served. He rented a dwelling for us; a plank annex. There was a sofa by one wall of the room, a stool that served as table and a chair. I worked at the logistics department of this military unit. My daughter went to kindergarten.
My brother told me about what happened to our mother and sister Tamara. Our mother didn’t want to leave her cow and stayed in Kherson. At the beginning of the war my sister Tamara and her son Alexandr came to Kherson from Belaya Krinitsa. In 1942 the Germans organized a ghetto in Kherson. My mother, Tamara and her son were sent to the ghetto. The Germans allowed local residents to take some children that had one non-Jewish parent. A Russian family, the Ivanovs, took Alexandr. They had him stay with them until 1944.
Early in the morning of 9th May 1945 18 a messenger from headquarters brought the news to the military unit: the war was over. Then we heard an announcement on the radio that Germany had capitulated unconditionally. We were all happy. People in the streets greeted, hugged and kissed each other. Many had tears in their eyes. There were fireworks in the evening.
I knew that Krivoy Rog was liberated in 1943. Since there were metallurgical plants there it was categorized as a strategic town and entrance there was not allowed. I went to a hospital in Kutaisi and told the management that I could escort their patients going back home to Krivoy Rog. So I managed to come to my husband’s family. They were happy to see us. My daughter and I settled down with them.
After the war anti-Semitism was evident. Before the war we didn’t even know who had what nationality; we simply didn’t care. Krivoy Rog was a town of workers, the majority of its residents were uneducated and there was anti-Semitism in everyday relationships.
My mother-in-law offered me to change my Jewish last name to their Ukrainian name so that nobody could find out about my Jewish identity. Of course, I didn’t do it, but many at that time changed their names.
I kept looking for a job. There were only few pupils left at the school where I had worked before the war and there was no vacancy for me. I went to a construction agency hoping to get work at a construction site. They offered me a position as human resource manager.
Younger people were in the process of returning home from the front while there was lack of construction workers. Authorities mobilized older people of over 60 years of age to the construction. The work discipline was very strict: if somebody was late for work he might even have been arrested. Even if they had a valid excuse – they were older people and did not always feel fit to go to work – but they were kept responsible anyway, if they violated disciplinary requirements.
After I had to issue documents of one of such employee that was to go under trial, I went to the construction manager and said to him that I couldn’t go on working at the human resource department and was ready to become a worker. He tried to talk me out of it, but I insisted and he sent me to work at a woodwork factory.
I worked at the surface gage. The factory was out of town. There was no traffic and I had to stay at the barrack hostel of the factory. My work at the gage was dangerous. There were rotating blades and shafts that pushed a unit. One had to be careful working there. Once my friend got inattentive and had her four fingers cut.
Younger people were in the process of returning home from the front while there was lack of construction workers. Authorities mobilized older people of over 60 years of age to the construction. The work discipline was very strict: if somebody was late for work he might even have been arrested. Even if they had a valid excuse – they were older people and did not always feel fit to go to work – but they were kept responsible anyway, if they violated disciplinary requirements.
After I had to issue documents of one of such employee that was to go under trial, I went to the construction manager and said to him that I couldn’t go on working at the human resource department and was ready to become a worker. He tried to talk me out of it, but I insisted and he sent me to work at a woodwork factory.
I worked at the surface gage. The factory was out of town. There was no traffic and I had to stay at the barrack hostel of the factory. My work at the gage was dangerous. There were rotating blades and shafts that pushed a unit. One had to be careful working there. Once my friend got inattentive and had her four fingers cut.
At that time I began to work at a special department of the NKVD 19. The military unit where I worked before moving to Krivoy Rog gave me a recommendation to work in this special department. I shall not speak to anyone about my work in the special department. I signed a non-disclosure obligation and nobody has canceled it ever since. I remember they told me that nobody, not even my brother, was supposed to know about what I get to know at work.
When he arrived in Uzhgorod my brother obtained an invitation for me to join him there. I had received an invitation and assignment to Chust, a town in Subcarpathia, some 100 kilometers from Uzhgorod. At my brother’s request the manager of the Public Education Department in Chust – he was at the front with my brother – employed me in Uzhgorod.
When I arrived there my daughter and I got accommodation in a small room with plywood walls and a cement floor. There was a water drainage grid in the floor like in the street. I used a smaller room as a kitchen. There was a brick floor there. There was no water, toilet or bathroom. I lived there till 1949 and then I received this apartment where I live at the moment.
There was anti-Semitism in Subcarpathia after the war. I faced anti-Semitism twice, and once it was directed at me. In 1955 I was a teacher in the 9th grade. They were nice and gifted children, I still remember these children. In this class children teased one of their classmates who was a Jew. I interfered and explained that they were wrong doing so, but I don’t know whether they understood.
Later, I saw an inscription ‘Polina - zhyd’ [kike] on a laboratory table in my classroom. I pulled myself together to get through that lesson, but during an interval I burst into tears in the teacher’s room. It was a trauma for me. I didn’t try to find out who did this; besides, I don’t think I would have come to know who did this. I was hurt. So, I cannot say that I didn’t face any anti-Semitism.
Later, I saw an inscription ‘Polina - zhyd’ [kike] on a laboratory table in my classroom. I pulled myself together to get through that lesson, but during an interval I burst into tears in the teacher’s room. It was a trauma for me. I didn’t try to find out who did this; besides, I don’t think I would have come to know who did this. I was hurt. So, I cannot say that I didn’t face any anti-Semitism.
In 1948 the campaign against cosmopolitans 24 began. I put so much trust in our government that I believed that if they said that those people were enemies of the people then it was truly so. As for the Doctors’ Plot 25 that started in January 1953, I had a different attitude there. I couldn’t believe that professionals that took a Hippocratic oath could be accused of such crime!