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mark golub
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I remember very well the first day of the war, 22nd June 1941 [13]. I had finished the 6th grade. It was Sunday and we were supposed to go to the country. At that time my father's sister Riva was staying at my grandmother's in Bessarabka in Kiev, and she was to join us for this trip. An alarm was given in the morning, but it didn't concern anybody. People thought it was part of the military training sessions that were conducted rather often. Riva was forced to hide in an entrance of a building on Kreschatik Street, Kiev's main street. She came to us around 10. We understood that the traffic wouldn't work until the alarm was over and that our trip was to be delayed. Then our neighbor told us that a woman in Kreschatik said that the aviation plant in Sviatoshyno was bombed. Then the planes came flying and guns shooting at them. People were used to it, because such trainings were quite often. Molotov [14] spoke at noon announcing the beginning of the war with Germany. The first thing I saw when I went onto the balcony were lines of people at the stores buying up everything they could.
The distillery where my mother was working was not evacuating, and it was difficult to go on one's own because of the panic and the crowds of people at the stations. Therefore, it was decided that my mother, Riva, Lev and I would go to Kharkov with the employees of Kiev's Military Hospital as my grandmother's sister Genia and her husband Yakov Schwartz' relatives. We went by boat at the beginning of July. My mother and Riva decided that we would get off in Kremenchug, a place not too far from Kharkov. I remember this trip. We had a lot of luggage. We reached Kobeliaki Station by train and took another train to Poltava. It was a real gypsy camp near the Poltava Station. There were thousands of evacuated people. It was next to impossible to get on the train. At night we were in a bombing, but we escaped all right. Riva found a car and arranged for the driver to take us to Kharkov. Riva left for Moscow from Kharkov. We went to my mother's sister Ruzia. In her two-room apartment there was Ruzia, her husband, their son, my grandmother, my mother, my brother and I, the mother of Ruzia's husband, his sister and her son, his brother's wife and their two children. There were 13 of us in all.
We stayed there until the middle of September when the evacuation from Kharkov began. We were thinking again about how to leave. Ruzia's husband Alexandr was working at a design institute and was supposed to leave for Stalinsk in the Kemerovo region or to Orsk, in the Chkalov region where they had their offices. He was only allowed to take my grandmother Enia and my brother Lev with them. My mother and I left with the Kiev Military Hospital, with which we were listed as members of Yakov Schwartz' family. Our trip across the country lasted almost a month, until we reached Tomsk. We found an apartment in Tomsk and my mother started looking for information about Ruzia's family. We found out that they were in Orsk. At the beginning of November Yakov bought us tickets to Orsk and my mother and I went on this trip.
We stayed there until the middle of September when the evacuation from Kharkov began. We were thinking again about how to leave. Ruzia's husband Alexandr was working at a design institute and was supposed to leave for Stalinsk in the Kemerovo region or to Orsk, in the Chkalov region where they had their offices. He was only allowed to take my grandmother Enia and my brother Lev with them. My mother and I left with the Kiev Military Hospital, with which we were listed as members of Yakov Schwartz' family. Our trip across the country lasted almost a month, until we reached Tomsk. We found an apartment in Tomsk and my mother started looking for information about Ruzia's family. We found out that they were in Orsk. At the beginning of November Yakov bought us tickets to Orsk and my mother and I went on this trip.
We heard about Babi Yar for the first time on this train. There was an article in the newspapers stating that thousands of Jews had been shot in Kiev.
We could hardly make ends meet. The salary was too small to buy anything. We exchanged clothes for food. I worked a week at the collective farm picking potatoes. Every 10th bucket was ours and I earned potatoes for the winter.
I finished the 7th grade of school in Orsk. There were many evacuated children at school. There were many Jews among the schoolchildren and teachers. There were no expressions of anti-Semitism.
My mother wrote to Riva and we decided that we would leave Orsk for Charjou to join them. We arrived at Charjou at the end of May or beginning of June 1943. My grandfather worked in his kitchen garden, but he wasn't a big success. My mother worked as a waitress at the canteen for cadets and Lev went to kindergarten. I studied with the 9th grade class at school.
In May 1944 we returned to Kiev by freight train. In Kiev we got a temporary dwelling at the hostel of the Institute. My father had been released from the camp by then and he found us on the following day after we arrived in Kiev. After a few days he got a job in the Sanitary Engineering Department at Gorkommunstroy. He worked there until he retired. My mother was an accountant at the Aviation Institute until she retired in 1960. My father bought an apartment in a one-story building across the street from the Aviation Institute where Leonid and my mother were working. There was one room and a kitchen in this apartment. My father refurbished this apartment, turning the kitchen into a room. My grandmother, grandfather and Leonid moved into this room, and my father, my mother, Lev and I lived in the other room. My father installed water piping and a gas stove in the hallway between the two rooms. There was a small plot of land near the house and my grandfather turned it into a kitchen garden. He was 80 years old, but he went to work as a janitor in Sviatoshyno. After a few days he got into a near-miss car accident and his sons forbade him to work, so he worked in the kitchen garden, read the Bible, prayed and helped my grandmother with the housework.
Another event was the campaign against cosmopolitans [15]. We had meetings at the Institute which covered with mud the names of talented Jewish scientists. They fired a few of the lecturers. We also had a hard time. My father was accused of anti-Soviet activities and Zionist propaganda and he began to prepare for arrest. My parents burned their notebooks and letters. The situation was very tense. My father and mother were prepared for the worst. Fortunately, everything turned out all right.
I defended my diploma in 1949 and got an assignment as a foreman at the Santechmontazh Department in Minsk. I lived at the hostel. I worked in Minsk for a year and went to work in the Sanitary Engineering Department of the Ukrpromproject Design Company. I was an engineer and was promoted to senior engineer after a year. In June 1951 I went into the army. I served at the Aerodrome Construction Regiment in Nezhin, in the Chernigov region. I was an engineer. I served about half a year in Nezhin. Then our regiment and I moved to Chernigov. In the summer of 1953 I was transferred to Kiev. From there I was transferred to the Aerodrome Construction Regiment near Pevek village in Chukotka. I arrived there at the end of September.
1953 was the year of the Doctors' Plot [16] that I believed was a continuation of the campaign against cosmopolitans. The doctor in our unit was a Jew and the situation became very tense.
The following day the authorities announced Stalin's ill health and on 5th March 1953 he died. It was a time of mourning. All the theaters and museums were closed. Crowds of people tried to get to Moscow for his funeral. The trains to Moscow were overcrowded, there were people even on the roofs of the trains. For many people Stalin's death was like the end of the world. His death wasn't a tragedy for me. My parents called him 'shister' -- 'bungler' in Yiddish. I didn't have any illusions about him after 1937. We understood very well that he was aware of everything happening in the country. Of course, many people associated the victory over the fascists with the name of Stalin. They forgot about the beginning of the war and about the numerous senseless victims of the regime. I had a feeling of relief when Stalin died. In April there was a publication circulated concerning the rehabilitation of the Kremlin doctors, and I thought the situation was going to improve. Then came the 20th Party Congress [17].
There was a big amnesty after Stalin's death. It didn't cover political prisoners, though. They released from the prisons a large number of criminals. Thousands of these people were at the airport in Pevek. [This is a big town in the north with a prison. There were hundreds of camps and jails in the North with millions of prisoners.] They were waiting at the airport for their turn to take a plane, playing cards and drinking. It was a dangerous situation for the people and the military. The criminals had clashes and hundreds of people were killed in a month's time. The criminals attacked people in the smaller villages. Only one soldier was murdered in our military unit, but in distant military units the number of victims was significant.
There was a big amnesty after Stalin's death. It didn't cover political prisoners, though. They released from the prisons a large number of criminals. Thousands of these people were at the airport in Pevek. [This is a big town in the north with a prison. There were hundreds of camps and jails in the North with millions of prisoners.] They were waiting at the airport for their turn to take a plane, playing cards and drinking. It was a dangerous situation for the people and the military. The criminals had clashes and hundreds of people were killed in a month's time. The criminals attacked people in the smaller villages. Only one soldier was murdered in our military unit, but in distant military units the number of victims was significant.
We celebrated Soviet and Jewish holidays. My mother became the guardian of Jewish traditions in our family after my grandmother died. She began to arrange family gatherings at Jewish holidays. Our whole family got together on Yom Kippur and Pesach. Aunt Riva came from Moscow every year to spend Pesach with us. Mother made traditional Pesach food. She took her chickens to the shochet at Podol. My father went to synagogue on all the holidays. There was one synagogue on Schekavitskaya Street in Kiev. I don't remember anybody praying at home. They all prayed at the synagogue. We bought a lot of matzah, although I took plain sandwiches with bread to work. Our family fasted on Yom Kippur. They didn't follow the laws of kashrut, although my father never ate pork, sausage or tinned meat. My mother was less strict about such things, and she loved to treat all of us except for my father, of course, with a pork chop or a ham.
I got married in 1962. My wife Maria Golub [nee Dinavetskaya], a Jew, was born in Uman in October 1927. Her father Naum Dinavestky was an accountant and her mother Anna Dinavestskaya was a housewife. They didn't celebrate any Jewish traditions and they spoke Russian in the family. They had two daughters: Maria, and Sophia, who was born in 1915. In 1934 the whole family moved to Kiev. Maria went to school and finished 6 grades before the war. We didn't have a wedding party. We had a civil ceremony and my mother cooked a festive dinner for all the members of our families.
Maria took a preparatory course at the Institute of Civil Engineers and after finishing it became a student at the Institute. In 1949 she graduated from the Sanitary Engineering Faculty of the Engineering Construction Institute and received a job assignment at the construction site of the Volga-Don Channel. She had to work with prisoners there. Upon completion of the construction she was transferred to the construction site of the Stalingrad power plant. She was an engineer in the Operations Department of the Sanitary Engineering Headquarters. Some time in 1955 Sophia quit her job to look after her mother who got sick. Maria also managed to quit work. She returned to Kiev and was hired as an engineer in the Sanitary Engineering Department at the Giprograd Institute. She developed designs for apartment buildings. In 1963 Maria was transferred to the Regional Housing Design Institute where she worked until she retired in 1983. She worked as senior engineer, chief engineer and chief specialist at the Institute. In 1987 she had a myocardial infarction and had to go to the hospital every 4-5 months afterwards.
I was supposed to go to school in 1935, but I wasn't admitted, because I hadn't yet reached the age of 8. The next year I was admitted to the 2nd grade of a Russian school. It was not far from our house. Before the war, there was a grammar school in this school. But there were too many schoolchildren and they had to study in 3 shifts. We had a good gym and a concert hall at school. It was a model school and all the children of the 'beau monde' studied there. In our school we had a teacher for each subject from the 3rd grade on, while in other schools there was one teacher per grade up to the fifth grade. I didn't do very well in school. I did better in language courses (Russian, Ukrainian and German) than in mathematics. After finishing the 4th grade we were transferred to another school - it still exists. There were many Jewish children in my class. The majority of the teachers were Jews, too. There was no anti-Semitism at that time. Of course, I knew that I was a Jew, but it never occurred to me that I might be different from the other pupils, or that this might be a cause for abuse. The word 'zhyd' [kike] was not in wide circulation back then. I became a Young Octobrist [8] at school and a pioneer when I was in the 4th grade. I wasn't actively involved in any activities, but I collected waste steel and waste paper with my classmates. Besides school, I attended the History Club at the Historical Museum and had a firm intention to become a historian in the future.
At school we attended parades on Soviet holidays. We also celebrated Soviet holidays at home - a holiday provided a good excuse to invite guests and have a party. We visited my grandparents (my father's parents) on all traditional Jewish holidays. The whole family gathered at their place. My grandmother cooked traditional food for every holiday. At Pesach we had chicken broth with dumplings made from matzah flour, chicken, gefilte fish, baked pudding from matzah and potatoes. There was always a lot of matzah in the house. My grandmother bought chickens and took them to the shochet in Bessarabka. She baked hamantashen for Purim. When I turned 5 my grandfather started taking me to the synagogue with him. It was called the Merchants' Synagogue. The people in the synagogue were all praying, but I didn't take much interest in what was going on.
We lived a wealthy life. We went to vacation resorts until 1935. In 1935 my father and Uncle Yankel received a big plot of land for a country house in Irpen, near Kiev. Before my father was arrested, he and my uncle managed to construct the foundation for a rather large apartment, but they only brought two smaller rooms to completion: one for us and another one for Uncle Yankel. The rest of the house was in the process of construction and was used as a shed. We went to rest in this country house every summer before the war.
On 29th September 1937 my father was arrested. [Editor's note: This happened at the time of the so-called Great Terror.] [9] I remember the search that lasted a whole night. The policemen took father away in the morning. They also took my mother's younger brother's stamp album, books by Sholem Aleichem, and a book about the Belomorcanal. [This was one of the construction sites of the Stalinist epoch. Thousands of prisoners were involved in the construction of this canal.] They made a list of all the valuables to be confiscated, if required, and left it with my mother. I became the son of an 'enemy of the people'. I can't say that the attitude towards me changed - I wasn't the first or the last in my class to have his father arrested.
In prison my father was accused of espionage for Poland. During the investigation my father confessed to crossing the border, but rejected the charge of espionage. In his file there is a report of his co-prisoner stating that my father made counterrevolutionary statements in the cell, was negative about the term of 25 years of imprisonment that had been introduced before, and told stories from ancient Jewish history. This was made a basis for the additional accusations of counterrevolutionary propaganda in the cell, and of preaching Zionism. In the verdict issued by a special meeting of the NKVD [10] representatives, he was accused of counterrevolutionary activities and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in a special prison camp. The verdict was issued on 2nd November 1937. One was not allowed to write letters to or visit the prisoners. One was only allowed to take parcels containing cigarettes and dried bread to the jail.
My father was sent to Ivdellag in the north of the Middle Ural. He became a head of the sanitary engineering department there. He was free to go to the neighboring village without any escort. My mother, Uncle Yankel and Aunt Riva visited him before the war. In February 1938 his management solicited for a 2-year reduction of his term in prison. My mother and father also sent requests to have his term reduced, but these were not successful.
In prison my father was accused of espionage for Poland. During the investigation my father confessed to crossing the border, but rejected the charge of espionage. In his file there is a report of his co-prisoner stating that my father made counterrevolutionary statements in the cell, was negative about the term of 25 years of imprisonment that had been introduced before, and told stories from ancient Jewish history. This was made a basis for the additional accusations of counterrevolutionary propaganda in the cell, and of preaching Zionism. In the verdict issued by a special meeting of the NKVD [10] representatives, he was accused of counterrevolutionary activities and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in a special prison camp. The verdict was issued on 2nd November 1937. One was not allowed to write letters to or visit the prisoners. One was only allowed to take parcels containing cigarettes and dried bread to the jail.
My father was sent to Ivdellag in the north of the Middle Ural. He became a head of the sanitary engineering department there. He was free to go to the neighboring village without any escort. My mother, Uncle Yankel and Aunt Riva visited him before the war. In February 1938 his management solicited for a 2-year reduction of his term in prison. My mother and father also sent requests to have his term reduced, but these were not successful.
After my father was arrested my mother went to work as an accounting clerk at the distillery factory where she worked until the beginning of the war.
I was too small when Hitler came to power and don't remember anything about it. But when I was studying in school, I knew that fascism was the main enemy of the Soviet people. This was propagated in the mass media, in literature and at the cinema. I remember the film entitled If There is a War Tomorrow. My friends and I watched it several times and sang the song 'If there is a war tomorrow and we have to go, we need to get ready today'. This film was made in 1939 before the non-aggression pact with Germany was signed [The interviewee refers to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.] [11]. This was a very characteristic film of that time. It described a war with Germany that would be over within 3 days. That was what we were convinced of.
In the 1970s Jews began moving to Israel. We were very sympathetic to them. We were also thinking about emigration. My father was willing to go. But the circumstances were such that we couldn't leave. Maria's sister was very ill and we couldn't leave her alone.
I continued to work after I retired. My pension was too small, and I had to earn extra money. In the late 1980s the whole sanitary engineering group of which I was the manager moved to Israel. I got a job offer from the Yuzhgiprostroy where I worked at the beginning of my career. I accepted this offer and that's where I work now.
Over the past 10 years Jewish life in Ukraine has become more active. I can't say that I'm far removed from these activities, but I rarely get involved in them. I receive food from Hesed and I appreciate their efforts. My co-student and close friend Henry Filvarov is an activist in the Jewish movement. He keeps me posted on all Jewish events. I appreciate his care. Henry is vice-president of the Jewish Heritage Institute which is involved with the Jewish Heritage Restoration Program funded by Jerusalem. Filvarov is program manager. I prepare materials for this program and take an active part in its implementation. We issue descriptions of buildings that previously belonged to Jewish communities: synagogues, schools, hospitals, etc. We have issued descriptions of over 100 facilities. I'm very happy to participate in this noble mission.
. I entered a preparatory course at the Kiev Institute of Civil Engineers. The director of the Institute, Mikhail Khutorianskiy, was a Jew. The majority of the students and many of the lecturers at the Institute were Jews.
There were two events in 1948 that I remember well. The first was the establishment of Israel. Our family was very enthusiastic about it. We celebrated the Israeli Independence Day as a family holiday each year.
Sami Fiul
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After I graduated from university, I went in the army, in the 2nd regiment of the Railways, in Chitila. I liked the life in the army, but I did not like the lack of freedom, I was used to live a free life., I was the founder of the regiment's orchestra, I couldn't live in the army without music. So first I needed instrumentalists; there was one who played the violin, another who played the guitar, but they were not enough. So I asked the commander to let me pick the ones I needed one night, and I did so, no offense, after their color: whoever had the darkest complexion [here Mr. Fiul refers to gypsies] I would ask them: 'What do you really play?' 'Clarinet, Sir!'; 'what do you play?' 'Kobsa, or dulcimer!' But I still had no instruments; the sergeant told me that in one of the barracks' attics there were old instruments, because the regiment once had a fanfare. I went and I chose what we needed, a clarinet, a trumpet, then we sent them to be reconditioned, they had no luster. We found the drums, but there was no more leather on them, the rats had eaten it. So the company commander had a calf cut, and I found some tanners in the company, we tanned the skin and fixed the drums. We had a real orchestra in the end, and the company gave us uniforms, boots, like the officers had; we played for different balls and events.
I did think of making aliyah, but I was too caught up in the political whirl back then, and I was naive enough to think the Jewish problem can be solved through communism. The theory of socialism was excellent, but what came out of it wasn't what I expected. I was deeply mistaken. After I realized that, it was already to late for me.
So I returned home, and Cristian, the lawyer I mentioned before, who had a good heart and who was well-off, helped me finish my last two years of high school and then get into university. I finished the grades eleven and twelve in Bacau and I took the school leaving examination in 1945 in Botosani, at 'Laurian' high school, and Cristian helped me get into a faculty in Bucharest, subsidized by the Ministry of Transportation, the former railway company. But I was obliged that upon graduation I would have to work in the railway company.
So I left for the Conservatory, but I had to come home: I needed money to pay taxes, I didn't have food, I didn't have a winter coat, and the winter was harsh, it was mostly because of the winter that I came home, I was too cold!